June 2 – Supreme Court Issues Go-To-Jail Ruling to Reporter; Does Replacing Coal Plants with Gas Reduce Emissions?; A New Economic Vision to Address Climate Change

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the Supreme Court’s rejection of New York Times reporter James Risen’s claim of First Amendment protection of a source which means the government can now compel the reporter to reveal his source or face jail time. Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy and a former Deputy Attorney General in the Justice Department joins us to discuss the upholding of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Virginia’s decision denying the existence of any reporter’s privilege in the First Amendment or common law and the Attorney General’s recent remark that under his watch no reporter doing his job is going to jail.

Part 2

Then we look into the Obama Administration’s plans to address climate change with the EPA’s new rules unveiled Monday to reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired electrical generating plants by 30% from 2005 levels over the next 15 years. David Freeman, the former head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, New York Power and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power joins us to discuss the political cost to Democrats in the coal states and whether eliminating coal plants and replacing them with natural gas-fired plants will reduce the current 40% of emissions from power plants that cause climate change, given the doubts about how much seepage of methane from the natural gas grid offsets the advantage of the smaller carbon footprint from burning natural gas.

Part 3

Then finally we talk with Jeremy Rifkin, the author of “The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism”. He joins us to discuss the Third Industrial Revolution underway where Germany is already generating 27% of its electricity from renewable energy and China is investing an initial $82 billion in an alternative “Energy Internet” in which prosumers can make and share their own green energy. We also discuss his latest article at The Huffington Post “Beyond Obama’s Plan: A New Economic Vision for Addressing Climate Change”.