May 1, 2024

Search Results for: Ohio River

At Start of Second Term Obama Declares “We Are Made For This Moment”

by Keith Schneider1

After delivering a second inaugural address fused with measured confidence, President Obama beams at the huge, cheering crowd that greeted him along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route. Photo/Keith Schneider WASHINGTON — Four years ago, when crisis lay like a dark shadow across the land, and President Obama’s first inaugural address served as a kind of pep talk to refute what he called “the nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable,” this week’s inspiring and dignified …

In Obama Election Victory A New Test of “Governmental Progress Of Humanity”

by Keith Schneider1

In 2008, on the eve of his election to the presidency, Barack Obama greeted a huge and bouyant crowd in Chicago with this invocation to unity: “This is our time – to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth – that out of many, we are one; that while …

Danger in Attacking China Is The Big Hurt It Would Put On US

by Keith Schneider0

China’s steady growth relies, in part, on its capacity to build new rail lines, a transportation option available here in Beijing and throughout the country. Photo\Keith Schneider BEIJING — The Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of the U.S. government’s marvelous data gathering groups, has spents months making public facts about job and business growth that tell an unexpected story about the American economy. Two of the biggest generators of new jobs and rising incomes in …

In New York Times, Louisville’s New Growth Sector

by Keith Schneider1

  A new geography of economic growth is unfolding in places that few people anticipated even a decade ago. In my work on energy development, I’ve seen how the northern Great Plains quickly became a center of oil and gas development. The entire Great Plains has generated low unemployment numbers as a result of energy production and rising farm commodity prices. I’ve also followed the trend into the Ohio River Valley, which is among the …

Behind New Generation Mineral Leases: More Money, Less Hazards

by Keith Schneider3

CALDWELL, Ohio — The day before they received a $280,000 check for leasing their oil and gas development rights to Eclipse Energy, Arthur and Sharon Stottsberry stopped in Marietta to remind their attorney that they had almost an acre more to lease. I caught up with the Stottsberrys as they were leaving Jennifer Garrison’s office, as ebullient and keyed up as a retired senior couple from this part of southeastern Ohio is likely to get …

Critique of Natural Gas Boom Explores More Important Risk: Fear of the Future

by Keith Schneider2

This week, Ohio counted over 130 drilling permits that it had approved since last summer to a select group of big energy companies to drill for oil and gas in counties along the upper Ohio River. The state says 45 wells, aimed at the oil- and gas-saturated Utica shale, have already been drilled. River towns that have been growing old and shedding their talented young people for two generations are suddenly awake with jobs and …

Owensboro’s Downtown Development Plan in New York Times

by Keith Schneider6

The New York Times today published my article on Owensboro’s downtown development plan, much of it financed by a local tax increase enacted in 2009. Though the public spending has spurred new development and thousands of jobs in the last two years — Owensboro has generated 2,400 jobs in 2010 and 2011, more than any other Kentucky metro area — just two of the seven elected leaders who voted for it are still in office. …

Latest in NY Times: Kids Sports As Development Tool

by Keith Schneider0

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. — Since 1937, when the Treasury Department established a bullion repository at nearby Fort Knox, gold has been the principal attraction of this city of 28,531 south of Louisville. Now, travel and tourism executives are counting on a $29 million youth sports complex under construction northwest of town to help fill Elizabethtown’s 1,525 hotel rooms and drive development of hundreds more. Along with China, I’ve spent a good bit of time this summer …

About ModeShift

Welcome to Mode Shift, a blog that describes the collision between the operating principles of the 20th century and the disruptive market and calamitous ecological trends of the 21st. ModeShift chronicles how far mankind is being stretched by an era-transforming transition that is reshaping every aspect of life on the planet. ModeShift is mindful that Earth itself is forcing this new reckoning with floods, droughts, storms, earthquakes, and plagues. In few places have economic systems …

“Best Management Practices” Aren’t Best and Don’t Work to Curb Farm Nutrient Contamination

by Keith Schneider0

America’s immense, productive, polluting, and disease-generating farm sector is a big target for reform and improvement. It has been every year since Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture during the Nixon administration counseled farmers to “plant fence row to fence row,” and “get big or get out.” Congress complied with changes in farm policy that encouraged payment of subsidies for field crops that eventually were uncapped, promoted ethanol from corn as a substitute for gasoline, …