Fast Fact

As much as 60 percent of the $107 billion in rebates being sent to individuals and families starting this week as part of the Bush administration's economic stimulus plan will be used to pay down debt, according to a survey by Goldman Sachs. Another survey by the University of Michigan and Reuters said that only three in 10 rebate recipients plan to spend their rebate checks.

The largest component of renewables generation capacity is wind power, which grew by 28 percent worldwide in 2007 to reach an estimated 95 GW. Annual capacity additions increased even more: 40 percent higher in 2007 compared to 2006.

Renewable electricity generation capacity reached an estimated 240 gigawatts (GW) worldwide in 2007, an increase of 50 percent over 2004.

The fastest growing energy technology in the world is grid-connected solar photovoltaics (PV), with 50 percent annual increases in cumulative installed capacity in both 2006 and 2007, to an estimated 7.7 GW. This translates into 1.5 million homes with rooftop solar PV feeding into the grid worldwide.

Currently, thirty-four states have wind farms.

Medicare cost savings rose to $1.2 billion in 2006 from $136 million in 2001

Approximately 1 percent of prescription costs are likely due to fraud, waste, or abuse. This amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in unnecessary costs for the Medicare Part D program and its beneficiaries.

Between 1960 and 2004, the average tax rate fell by nearly 14 percentage points for the top 1% of earners, while it has increased slightly (from 15.9% to 16.1%) for earners in the middle 20%.

Iran has started installing “6000 new centrifuges” at the Natanz enrichment plant, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad announced after visiting the nuclear enrichment facility on Tuesday.... In his address at the meeting, the president said the testing of the new advanced centrifuges, which can enrich uranium five times faster than the current machines, will be finished in the next three months.

Of the 3,201 questions the major TV networks directly asked the presidential candidates in 2007, only eight were about global warming.