Infrastructure improvement of bridges, highways, roads, ports, waterways, and airports—accounts for only $157 billion, or 7%, of the plan’s estimated cost. The definition of infrastructure can reasonably be expanded to include upgrading wastewater and drinking water systems, expanding high-speed broadband Internet service to 100% of the nation, modernizing the electric grid, and improving infrastructure resilience. That brings the total to $518 billion, or 24% of the plan’s total cost.

The rest mostly for buying votes via pork.

I installed a cabinet in a basement kitchen that had big cast iron wastewater pipes in the back of the cabinet behind the drawer. I shortened the back of the drawer 4 inches.
Yeehaw!

The cost of retrofitting old houses with more efficient systems will always be more than the difference between the cost of building a new efficient house and the cost of building a new inefficient house. Nearly everything I suggested will pay for itself in electricity savings in under 5 years in the latter case. Just ban the construction of new homes that don't meet very good efficiency standards -- new homes without e.g. wastewater heat exchangers aren't even saving the owners any money in the >1 year term. Most new homes are purchased on >=20 year mortgages anyway.

"Only one in five families outside Baghdad has access to functioning sewage facilities. One-third of wastewater and sewage produced in Baghdad is treated, with much of the rest discharged as raw sewage into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers."

(source)

Yeah, we really did them a big favor by spreading democracy.

Good old USA, always watching out for the little guys.

If I am accused me of polemics, I stand guilty as charged. But not without reason.

http://www.hennesseyingalls.com/hennessey/product.asp?dept_id=4155&pf_id=PAAAIADJFEHOJHBD&ad_id=froogle&key_id=BigandGreenTowardSustainableArchitectur
einthe21stCentury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_architecture
http://www.wisebread.com/sustainable-architecture-and-design-a-book-review-of-living-homes
http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/IntInfo/ConsI.pdf
http://www.wastewater.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_architecture
http://www.wisebread.com/sustainable-architecture-and-design-a-book-review-of-living-homes
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sustainable-Architecture-Low-Tech-Houses_W0QQitemZ170127281000QQihZ007QQcategoryZ378QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem?refid=store
http://www.cleancars.nh.gov/pdf/NHCPS.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Green-Urbanism-Learning-European-Cities/dp/1559636823
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7202410/claims.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_energy_building

I'm sorry my numbers can from a lecture at UNM. But a few of these links give reference to the outcome, you'll have to do the percentages yourself. I may have jumped the gun from 4% to 2%. I apologize. Remember that cars always drive no matter what the emissions register. The books are really worth checking out if you have the time. Sorry it's kind of a mishmash, but I'm sure you will work it out.

In reply to this comment by EDD:
I call bull on you, sir. Back up and reference your would-be data.

>> ^Bleedingsnowman:
If everyone switch to a hybrid car right now the effect on oil consumption would be less than 2%. If every skyscrapper in the country replaced its windows and slightly modified its design consumption would be reduced by more than 40%. We hear about hybrid cars because someone can make a profit off of it.

If I am accused me of polemics, I stand guilty as charged. But not without reason.

http://www.hennesseyingalls.com/hennessey/product.asp?dept_id=4155&pf_id=PAAAIADJFEHOJHBD&ad_id=froogle&key_id=BigandGreenTowardSustainableArchitectur
einthe21stCentury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_architecture
http://www.wisebread.com/sustainable-architecture-and-design-a-book-review-of-living-homes
http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/IntInfo/ConsI.pdf
http://www.wastewater.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_architecture
http://www.wisebread.com/sustainable-architecture-and-design-a-book-review-of-living-homes
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sustainable-Architecture-Low-Tech-Houses_W0QQitemZ170127281000QQihZ007QQcategoryZ378QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem?refid=store
http://www.cleancars.nh.gov/pdf/NHCPS.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Green-Urbanism-Learning-European-Cities/dp/1559636823
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/7202410/claims.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_energy_building

I'm sorry my numbers can from a lecture at UNM. But a few of these links give reference to the outcome, you'll have to do the percentages yourself. I may have jumped the gun from 4% to 2%. I apologize. Remember that cars always drive no matter what the emissions register. The books are really worth checking out if you have the time. Sorry it's kind of a mishmash, but I'm sure you will work it out.

In reply to this comment by EDD:
I call bull on you, sir. Back up and reference your would-be data.

>> ^Bleedingsnowman:
If everyone switch to a hybrid car right now the effect on oil consumption would be less than 2%. If every skyscrapper in the country replaced its windows and slightly modified its design consumption would be reduced by more than 40%. We hear about hybrid cars because someone can make a profit off of it.

For someone who says the sky is falling, [Al Gore] does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film's distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore's office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.
USA Today


But our current President, George W. Bush, owns a sustainable home that’s off-grid, that features geothermal cooling and heating, passive solar, and greywater systems.

“Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into purifying tanks underground; one tank for water from showers and bathroom sinks, which is so-called graywater, and one tank for black water from the kitchen sink and toilets. The purified water is funneled to the cistern with the rainwater. It is used to irrigate flower gardens, newly planted trees and a larger flower and herb garden behind the two-bedroom guesthouse. Water for the house comes from a well. The Bushes installed a geothermal heating and cooling system, which uses about 25% of the electricity that traditional heating and air-conditioning systems consume. Several holes were drilled 300 feet deep, where the temperature is a constant 67 degrees.”
Off-Grid.net

Even portions of the home are made from waste materials from a local quarry!

If we use Al Gore as our role model for being environmentally friendly, Planet Earth is screwed.

The Phosphate Fertilizer Industry: An Environmental Overview
http://www.fluoridealert.org/phosphate/overview.htm

INTRODUCTION

They call them "wet scrubbers" - the pollution control devices used by the phosphate industry to capture fluoride gases produced in the production of commercial fertilizer.

In the past, when the industry let these gases escape, vegetation became scorched, crops destroyed, and cattle crippled.

Today, with the development of sophisticated air-pollution control technology, less of the fluoride escapes into the atmosphere, and the type of pollution that threatened the survival of some communities in the 1950s and 60s, is but a thing of the past (at least in the US and other wealthy countries).

However, the impacts of the industry's fluoride emissions are still being felt, although more subtly, by millions of people - people who, for the most part, do not live anywhere near a phosphate plant.

That's because, after being captured in the scrubbers, the fluoride acid (hydrofluorosilicic acid), a classified hazardous waste, is barreled up and sold, unrefined, to communities across the country. Communities add hydrofluorosilicic acid to their water supplies as the primary fluoride chemical for water fluoridation.

Even if you don't live in a community where fluoride is added to water, you'll still be getting a dose of it through cereal, soda, juice, beer and any other processed food and drink manufactured with fluoridated water.

Meanwhile, if the phosphate industry has its way, it may soon be distributing another of its by-products to communities across the country. That waste product is radium, which may soon be added to a roadbed near you - if the EPA buckles and industry has its way.

visit the link to read more

1) Introduction
2) Effects of Fluoride Pollution
3) Litigation from Fluoride Damage
4) Scrubbing away the problem
5) A Missed Opportunity: Little Demand for Silicofluorides
6) Fluoridation: "An ideal solution to a long-standing problem"?
7) Recent Findings on Silicofluorides
Gypsum Stacks & 'Slime Ponds'
9) Radiation Hazard
10) Will radioactive gypsum be added to roads?
11) Commercial Uranium Production
12) Cold War Secrets & Worker Health
13) Wastewater Issues
14) References
15) Photographs of the Phosphate Industry
16) Further Reading

"btw i would rather have one nuclear power station than seven gajillion acres of inefficient turbines. They are not made of recycled paper, you know?"...

"If you like progress, and you think a fucking windmill is progress, then you're mental."

You're comparing plastics with nuclear waste and you're calling me mental? At least plastic can be recycled. Nuclear power plants aren't made of recycled paper either, and they must continually be re-fueled every 18 months. Do you think they that fuel grows on trees? Wind turbines require no fuel, and need very little maintenance.

Progress is building more safe, renewable resources for power such as wind, hydro and solar power plants, not building more nuke plants.

I know all about Chernobyl and nuclear reactors, I used to work at one. I know the designs are different, my point is that it only takes one accident and the effects on the environment and life lasts for generations. Do you realize how many nuclear accidents there have been, besides the two major ones (TMI and Chernobyl)? There's more than just accidents at nuclear plants, accidents occur during the manufacturing, transport, storage, and disposal of the nuclear fuel. They may not be as big as Chernobyl, but the damage to the environment has been done, and the "pollution" will be around longer than you or I.

Here's a list of just some of the nuclear accidents in just the US alone:

July 1959 - Boeing-Rocketdyne Nuclear Facility in Ventura County, California, A clogged coolant channel resulted in a 30% reactor core meltdown, which led to the release of the third greatest amount of radioactive iodine-131 in nuclear history.

July 1956 - Sylvania Electric Products' Metallurgy Atomic Research Center, Bayside, Queens, New York, nine people were injured when two explosions destroyed a portion of the facility.

December 1958 - Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico. A nuclear criticality accident killed 1 operator.

1959 - Santa Susana Field Laboratory in Simi Valley Hills, California. A partial sodium reactor meltdown occurred.

January 1961 - National Reactor Testing Station in Arco, Idaho. A reactor explosion, killed 3 technicians, and released radiation. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste, and their bodies were buried in lead coffins.

October 1966 - Detroit Edison's Enrico Fermi I demonstration breeder reactor near Detroit, Michigan. A sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial core meltdown.

November 1971 - Northern States Power Company's reactor in Monticello, Minnesota. The water storage space filled to capacity and spilled over, dumping about 50,000 gallons of radioactive waste water into the Mississippi River.

1972 - The West Valley, NY fuel reprocessing plant was closed after 6 years in operation, leaving 600,000 gallons of high-level wastes buried in leaking tanks. The site caused measurable contamination of Lakes Ontario and Erie.

March 1972 - A routine check in a nuclear power plant in Alaska indicated abnormal radioactivity in the building's water system. Radioactivity was confirmed in the plant drinking fountain. Apparently there was an inappropriate cross-connection between a 3,000 gallon radioactive tank and the water system.

December 1972 - A plutonium fabrication plant in Pauling, New York. An undetermined amount of radioactive plutonium was scattered inside and outside the plant, after a major fire and two explosions occurred resulting in its permanent shutdown.

May 1974 - The Atomic Energy Commission reported that 861 "abnormal events" had occurred in 1973 in the nation's 42 operative nuclear power plants. Twelve involved the release of radioactivity "above permissible levels."

March 1975 - Browns Ferry reactor, Decatur, Alabama. A fire burned out electrical controls, lowering the cooling water to dangerous levels, before the plant could be shut down.

1979 - The Critical Mass Energy Project tabulated 122 accidents involving the transport of nuclear material in 1979, 17 involving radioactive contamination.

March 1979 - Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. After cooling water was lost, the top portion of the reactor's 150-ton core collapsed and melted. Contaminated coolant water escaped into a nearby building, releasing radioactive gasses. A study by Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, professor of radiation physics at the University of Pittsburgh, showed that the accident led to a minimum of 430 infant deaths.

July 1979 - Church Rock, New Mexico. A dam holding radioactive uranium mill tailings broke, sending an estimated 100 million gallons of radioactive liquids and 1,100 tons of solid wastes downstream.

August 1979 - A nuclear fuel plant near Erwin, Tennessee. Highly enriched uranium was released. About 1,000 people were contaminated with up to 5 times as much radiation as would normally be received in a year. Between 1968 and 1983 the plant "lost" 234 pounds of highly enriched uranium, forcing the plant to be closed six times during that period.

January 1980 - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (where large amounts of nuclear material are kept). An earthquake caused caused a tritium leak.

September 1980 - Two canisters containing radioactive materials fell off a truck on New Jersey's Route 17. The driver, en route from Pennsylvania to Toronto, did not notice the missing cargo until he reached Albany, New York.

1981 - The Critical Mass Energy Project of Public Citizen, Inc. reported that there were 4,060 mishaps and 140 serious events at nuclear power plants in 1981.

February 11, 1981 - Tennessee Valley Authority's Sequoyah I plant in Tennessee, 110,000 gallons of radioactive coolant sprayed into the containment building, which led to the contamination of eight men.

July 1981 - Nine Mile Point's Unit 1 in New York state. A flood of radioactive wastewater in the sub-basement caused approximately 150 55-gallon drums of high-level waste to overturn, some of which released their highly radioactive contents. Some 50,000 gallons of radioactive water were subsequently dumped into Lake Ontario to make room for the cleanup.

January 25, 1982 - Rochester Gas & Electric Company's Ginna plant near Rochester, New York. Fifteen thousand gallons of radioactive coolant spilled onto the plant floor, and radioactive steam escaped into the air after a steam generator pipe broke.

January 1983 - Browns Ferry power plant, Athens, Alabama. About 208,000 gallons of water with radioactive contamination was accidentally dumped into the Tennesee River.

February 1983 - Salem 1 reactor in New Jersey. A catastrophe was averted by just 90 seconds when the plant was shut down manually, following the failure of automatic shutdown systems. The same automatic systems had failed to respond in an incident three days before. Other problems plagued this plant as well, such as a 3,000 gallon leak of radioactive water in June 1981 at the Salem 2 reactor, a 23,000 gallon leak of radioactive water (which splashed onto 16 workers) in February 1982, and radioactive gas leaks in March 1981 and September 1982 from Salem 1.

December 1984 - The Fernald Uranium Plant, a 1,050-acre uranium fuel production complex 20 miles northwest of Cincinnati, Ohio. The Department of Energy disclosed that excessive amounts of radioactive materials had been released through ventilating systems. Subsequent reports revealed that 230 tons of radioactive material had leaked into the Greater Miami River valley during the previous thirty years, 39 tons of uranium dust had been released into the atmosphere, 83 tons had been discharged into surface water, and 5,500 tons of radioactive and other hazardous substances had been released into pits and swamps where they seeped into the groundwater. In addition, 337 tons of uranium hexafluoride was found to be missing, its whereabouts completely unknown. The plant was not permanently shut down until 1989.

1986 - A truck carrying radioactive material went off a bridge on Route 84 in Idaho, and dumped part of its cargo in the Snake River. Officials reported the release of radioactivity.

6 January 1986 - The Sequoyah Fuels Corp. uranium processing factory in Gore, Oklahoma. A container of highly toxic gas exploded, causing one worker to die (when his lungs were destroyed) and 130 others to seek medical treatment.

December 1986 - Surry Unit 2 facility in Virginia. A feedwater pipe ruptured, causing 8 workers to be scalded by a release of hot water and steam. Four of the workers later died from their injuries. In addition, water from the sprinkler systems caused a malfunction of the security system, preventing personnel from entering the facility.

1988 - It was reported that there were 2,810 accidents in U.S. commercial nuclear power plants in 1987.

November 1992 - The Sequoyah Fuels Corp. uranium processing factory in Gore, Oklahoma closed after repeated citations by the Government for violations of nuclear safety and environmental rules. It's record during 22 years of operation included an accident in 1986 that killed one worker and injured dozens of others and the contamination of the Arkansas River and groundwater. The Sequoyah Fuels plant, one of two privately-owned American factories that fabricated fuel rods, had been shut down a week before by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when an accident resulted in the release of toxic gas. Thirty-four people sought medical attention as a result of the accident. The plant had also been shut down the year before when unusually high concentrations of uranium were detected in water in a nearby construction pit. A Government investigation revealed that the company had known for years that uranium was leaking into the ground at levels 35,000 times higher than Federal law allows.

March 1994 - A nuclear research facility on Long Island, New York. A fire resulted in the nuclear contamination of three fire fighters, three reactor operators, and one technician. Measurable amounts of radioactive substances were released into the immediate environment.

February 2000 - Indian Point II power plant in New York vented radioactive steam when a an aging steam generator ruptured.

March 2002 - Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Workers discovered a foot-long cavity eaten into the reactor vessel head. Borated water had corroded the metal to a 3/16 inch stainless steel liner which held back over 80,000 gallons of highly pressurized radioactive water.

Do you honestly think that more of this is worth not having to look at a field of wind turbines (they're not windmills btw, yes I get the refrence )? As far as I know, wind turbines have not killed anyone or released toxic and radioactive materials into the environment.