Public Citizen's Energy Program's Tyson Slocum: Hurricane-Ravaged Puerto Rico Could Become a Model for Green-Energy Conversion

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

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The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

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Hurricane-Ravaged Puerto Rico Could Become a Model for Green-Energy Conversion

Posted Oct. 4, 2017

Interview with Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

On Sept. 20th, Hurricane Maria flattened Puerto Rico and its electrical grid, plunging the entire island of 3.4 million people into darkness amid a late season heat wave. Two weeks later, just a tiny fraction of the power had been restored, and officials are predicting it will take six months to get the electrical grid back online. But the system that existed before the storm was almost entirely powered by dirty fossil fuels, coal and oil. Despite the fact that the sun shines on the island almost every day, cheap, clean solar power was not being harnessed. The cruel irony is that the burning of fossil intensifies climate change, which generates stronger storms with more rainfall, just like Maria.

By some estimates, the island of Puerto Rico has the potential to become a learning lab for a conversion to renewable energy. Rather than importing coal and oil, which provides precious few jobs, local people could be hired to build out a sustainable energy grid, using solar, wind and other renewables.

Between The Lines' Melinda Tuhus spoke with Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, who says the first order of business is to get the electrical grid up and running again. He then discusses some of the opportunities and obstacles that could stand in the way of such a wholesale conversion to renewables on Puerto Rico. [Rush transcript]

TYSON SLOCUM: Puerto Rico has what’s known as a publicly-owned power system, so as a result, the political entities in Puerto Rico have enormous leverage over the future direction of their electrical system, because government institutions have total control over the operations of the utility. The problem in Puerto Rico is staggering debt.

You have a lot of younger, able-bodied people flee the island; the island’s finances in general are in not very good shape, and the utility itself was forced to declare bankruptcy. So to make new investments and especially to contemplate significant new investments in different types of infrastructure, different types of renewable energy, is going to take money that right now Puerto Rico and its utility do not have, so you’re talking about significant outside investment.

I think one of the things the U.S. ought to do to show a commitment to growth in Puerto Rico is to focus on investments that are going to help grow the Puerto Rican economy. And one way you can do that is by focusing on renewable energy, but there’s going to have to be outside capital, whether that’s in the form of the U.S. federal government or private sector actors coming in.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What indications do you see that it’s really feasible to convert Puerto Rico's energy grid to renewables?

TYSON SLOCUM: What we’re seeing in U.S. electricity markets is a new era of renewable energy dominance. We’re seeing massive growth in the deployment of renewable energy, particularly what’s known as utility scale renewables in wind and solar. These are large-scale renewable installations. The economics of these types of deployments of renewable energy – they are out-competing incumbent fossil fuel and nuclear power plants. This is just a remarkable technological period that we’re in right now where renewables are ascending, and they’re ascending rapidly.

And so, the question is, as we are contemplating changes to our electric grid – particularly in the wake of a devastating natural disaster like what has afflicted Puerto Rico – there’s an opportunity here to lay that groundwork. The government always needs to play a role, especially in the case of Puerto Rico given the special circumstances we have, the government has to play a leadership role in laying that infrastructure groundwork.

And the question is, is the Trump administration just going to focus on a replacement and overlay of fossil fuel infrastructure, or is there an opportunity here for innovation and sustainability?

And I think it is important to have that conversation and to immediately start a feasibility study to assess what kind of renewable energy deployment we can get on to Puerto Rico in the medium term that are going to replace ineffective or damaged fossil fuel infrastructure.

And you know, rooftop solar has been an option, but the economical choice that is better than rooftop solar, is utility-scale solar, and that’s where you have large arrays in some sort of concentrated area; it can be on top of some very large housing development or commercial development, but the larger the system, the economies of scale drive those prices down, and so there is a huge opportunity here to start to consider distributed energy systems, that instead of having a handful of very large, central power plants that historically have been powered by coal, natural gas, or nuclear energy, instead you disperse dozens or hundreds of smaller scale units closer to neighborhoods and communities, that are renewable – solar or wind.

And studies have shown, time and time again, that these decentralized systems actually have greater resilience in the face of most types of reliability events or other types of natural disaster events, because if you’ve got a centralized model, which is the handful of large power plants all connected by large transmission lines, you knock out some of that and huge geographic areas go down, whereas if a storm affects one part of the island but not others, it’s not going to knock out all of these decentralized grids, and so you’re able to have greater resilience.

Learn more about the viability of renewable energy systems by visiting Public Citizen's Energy Program at Citizen.org/our-work/climate-and-energy and Citizen.org