In an interview on CNBC this morning Texas oil billionaire and wind energy advocate T. Boone Pickens blamed "lack of leadership" from George W. Bush and "that speech" from Nancy Pelosi for the vote against the Bail-Out plan in the House yesterday:

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Another day dawns, and the list of failed banks grows ever longer.  Congress has renamed the Bail-Out as The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.  The House has just rejected the latest draft by 228 votes to 205. George W. Bush said he was "very disappointed". Whilst Congress were extending the new act to a total of 109 pages over the weekend, banks around the world were dropping like flies as the virus spread.

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Just over a week ago I found myself once again on EasyJet flight EZY6167 heading from Bristol to Amsterdam.  I asked the head of the cabin crew if he knew Dawn, who operated the camera on one of our previous internet videos.  He said he did.  I showed him one of our "Water Connects Us" leaflets, and I asked him if it would be OK if I handed some out to his passengers.  He said that would be fine as long as I didn't get in the way of the cabin crew as they went about their duties.

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Barack Obama gave a speech on Monday in Lansing Michigan, an area very familiar with the decline in the US automobile industry. He took the opportunity to outline his current energy policy, and he started out by laying his cards on the table:

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This week's issue of the Economist magazine contains their verdict on the G8 summit in Japan – They came, they jawed, they failed to conquer.

On the positive side the Japanese hosts managed to get most of the world's greenhouse-gas emitters around a table together. The attendees included the G8, plus the so called G5 which consists of Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Also present were Australia, Indonesia and South Korea.

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