Political Climate Articles
Conservatives Tend to Conserve Less, When It Comes to Energy -- Study
Political ideology helps determine whether homeowners respond to voluntary energy conservation programs, two University of California, Los Angeles, economists have found.
In a study published last month on the National Bureau of Economic Research website, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn concluded that providing feedback on energy use can actually backfire with some conservatives.
Costa and Kahn merged utility data from 80,000 homes with corresponding voter registration and donation records. The economists found that a Democratic household with green bona fides -- paying for electricity from renewable sources, donating to environmental groups and living in a neighborhood of fellow liberals -- will reduce its consumption by 3 percent in response to feedback.
Meanwhile, a Republican household that doesn't adhere to environmental behaviors will actually increase its consumption by 1 percent. The households that received home energy reports reduced their consumption by about 2 percent overall, but the Republican subset of this group reduced their energy use by 0.4 percent.
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Exxon CEO whines about push to cut Big Oil's subsidies, after making $6.3 billion last quarter
In its last two budgets, the Obama administration has proposed ending a series of tax subsidies collected by Big Oil companies. This year, the target is $36 billion in tax breaks, including nixing deductions that oil companies collect to write-off the cost of drilling.
In light of the ongoing oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it makes sense to reevaluate whether we want to be using the tax code to subsidize drilling for oil, particularly after oil companies reaped billions in profits during the first quarter of this year. Big Oil is unhappy about this, as discussed in the Wonk Room repost.
Last month, I spoke to Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), who characterized tax subsidies like those received by oil companies as "barnacles on the code" that aren't fair to working people. Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, however, appeared on CNBC this morning to claim that the tax breaks are necessary for the oil industry to preserve jobs:
We already are probably the most heavily taxed industry in this country, and these tax breaks as they're characterized — and I think many times they are mischaracterized — are simply provisions in the tax code that are made available to all businesses.
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Fuel Efficiency and the False Choice between Coastal Safety and Oil Supply
This morning, I am traveling to Louisiana to see for myself what the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster has done to this bountiful but deeply stressed region. I am going to meet with local environmental justice groups in New Orleans and talk with fishermen and biologists along the coast.
I want to hear what Louisianans have to say about this disaster, because they and their Gulf Coast neighbors are paying a very steep price for America's failed energy policies.
In the days since the spill, some lawmakers have given Americans a false choice. They claim we must either drill for more oil offshore or import more oil from foreign regimes.
They refuse to talk about the other option: fuel efficiency.
We don't have to risk American lives--either on dangerous offshore rigs at home or on frontlines in the Middle East--to power our cars and trucks. Making engines run farther on less fuel is the cheapest, safest, and cleanest choice we have.
Earlier this spring, President Obama announced cleaner car standards that will increase the fuel efficiency of America's vehicles. By 2030, those standards will save 10.2 billion barrels of oil--that's more oil than is included in the entire offshore area President Obama opened to drilling in March.
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Poll: Climate/Energy Bill Actually Quite Popular
As noted below, the BP oil spill doesn't seem to be causing many members of Congress to change their minds about drilling, or fossil fuels, or much of anything. The conventional wisdom in D.C.
still holds that a climate/clean energy bill is political dicey and will be impossible to pass this summer, regardless of whether major oil company has just poisoned vast swaths of the Gulf.
But is a climate/clean energy bill really that dicey? I've never seen good evidence that this is the case. In fact, most signs suggest the opposite. Case in point: CleanEnergyWorks just commissioned a poll from the Benenson Strategy Group—the group that did polling for the Obama campaign—and came away with some results that jibe with a lot of the other polls out there:
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Rig Owner Had Rising Tally of Accidents
The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which triggered the spill spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, caught the energy world by surprise. The operator, Transocean Ltd., is a giant in the brave new world of drilling for oil in deep waters far offshore. It had been honored by regulators for its safety record. The very day of the blast on the rig, executives were aboard celebrating its seven straight years free of serious accidents.
But a Wall Street Journal examination of Transocean's record paints a more equivocal picture.
Nearly three of every four incidents that triggered federal investigations into safety and other problems on deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico since 2008 have been on rigs operated by Transocean, according to an analysis of federal data. Transocean defended its safety record but didn't dispute the Journal's analysis.
In addition, an industry survey of oil companies that hired Transocean perceived a drop in its quality and performance, including safety by some measures, compared with its peers, though it still scored tops in one safety category.
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Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Observed From the International Space Station
On April 20, 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon suffered an explosion and sank two days later. Shortly thereafter, oil began leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from ruptured pipes deep on the ocean floor. NASA satellites have been tracking the growth of the oil spill as it has spread towards the northern Gulf Coast. This detailed astronaut photograph from May 4 provides a different viewing perspective on the ongoing event. The image is oblique, meaning that it was taken from a sideways viewing angle from the International Space Station (ISS), rather than from a "straight down" (or nadir) view, which is typical of automated satellite sensors. The view in this image is towards the west; the ISS was located over the eastern edge of the Gulf of Mexico when the image was taken.
The Mississippi River Delta and nearby Louisiana coast (image top) appear dark in the sunglint that illuminates most of the image. Sunglint is caused by sunlight reflecting off the water surface—much like a mirror—directly back towards the astronaut observer on the Space Station. The sunglint improves the identification of the oil spill. Oil on the water smoothes the surface texture, and the mirror-like reflection of the Sun accentuates the difference between the smooth, oil-covered water (dark to light gray ) and the rougher water of the reflective ocean surface (colored silver to white). Wind and water currents patterns have modified the oil spill's original shape into streamers and elongated masses. Among the coastal ecosystems threatened by the spill are the Chandeleur Islands (image right center).
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Will Taxpayers Bail Out Big Oil?
The Obama administration has made it very clear that it intends to force BP to pay all of the costs associated with the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But that might be easier said than done, thanks to a law passed by Congress in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill that puts a $75 million cap on liability for spills.
The costs associated with the Deepwater Horizon spill are numerous. BP is already spending $6 million a day on clean-up efforts. The government is expending millions as the Coast Guard and numerous state and federal agencies rush to provide back-up. The spill has halted local fishing, an industry that brings in $41 billion to the Gulf region every year. It also threatens to seriously harm the region's tourism industry, which brings in $100 billion for Gulf states annually. And then there are damages that are more difficult to measure. The blast killed 11 workers and injured 17 others, and hundreds of gallons of oil are still seeping into the Gulf every day, standing to destroy fragile coastal ecosystems. It's hard to put a dollar figure on such losses.
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Comparing the American Power Act with the House climate bill and clean energy jobs bill
Last night, Climate Progress examined the key provisions of the American Power Act, the comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation being introduced today by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). This Wonk Room repost by Brad Johnson compares key elements of Obama's campaign promises from 2007 and 2008, the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act as passed by the House of Representatives, and the elements of the Kerry-Lieberman draft legislation, as based on leaked summaries.
The Kerry-Lieberman legislation has a 15-year transition period that supports state-level renewable and energy efficiency initiatives (which will create millions of jobs), invests in smart transportation, and rebuilds American manufacturing, much like Waxman-Markey, but with new support for nuclear energy and natural gas that reflects the interests of large blocs of senators.
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Heritage concocts flawed analysis to demonstrate supposed harms of using renewable energy
The Heritage Foundation opposes energy efficiency. And they recently lost their grip on reality, calling science "magic." So it's no surprise that they are trying to mislead the public about how a renewable electricity standard (RES) would impact electric bills. CAPAF's Richard Caperton has the debunking.
In a piece posted to their website on May 5, "A Renewable Electricity Standard: What it Will Really Cost Americans", several researchers from Heritage's Center for Data Analysis claim that a renewable electricity standard would increase annual electric bills for consumers by $300, decrease GDP by $5.2 trillion, and cost over 1 million jobs. Fortunately for those of us who care about making sure that America's energy future includes plenty of clean energy, these numbers are deeply flawed.
Analysis of how much a federal RES standard would affect consumers is extremely complicated, but government agencies have done the analysis. For example, the Energy Information Administration looked at the RES in the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) and found that in 2030, electricity rates would be exactly the same with or without a RES (see the table on page viii for a summary).
How does Heritage get such different results than the non-partisan EIA? It's simple: Heritage's report isn't based on real understandings of electricity markets or how proposed RES policies will work. Instead, they oversimplify and exaggerate and come up with unfounded results.
Here are a few examples of gross distortions from Heritage:
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Expert: Based on video, BP undersea volcano spewing 3 million gallons a day — two Exxon Valdezes a week
BP still channels Goldman Sachs: CEO says, "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."
NPR's Richard Harris has learned that much more oil, 70,000 barrels a day or more than ten times the official estimate, is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon pipe, based on scientific analysis of the video released Wednesday.
That's the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days.
Some people weren't sure about my earlier metaphor, "Time to stop calling the BP-Halliburton oil disaster a ‘leak' or a 'spill' — Try ‘an undersea volcano of oil'." But now it seems clear that even my May 1 post questioning the official "leak" rate — Oilpocalypse Now: WSJ reports BP oil disaster may be leaking at rate of 1 million gallons a day — was an understimate.
And it's now as clear as unpolluted water exactly why BP suppressed for weeks the release of their video of the gusher:
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After Saying Senate Should Prepare For Other Spills, Murkowski Votes Against Increasing Big Oil's Liability
As the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico continues to ravage the southeastern coast of the United States, Congress is working on federal reforms that would decrease the likelihood of future disasters and force oil companies to take more responsibility for the financial cost of such catastrophes. One senator who claims to be in support of such reforms is Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). TP reports on her hypocrisy in this repost.
Murkowskiprotest Following the spill, she introduced legislation that would increase the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a special fund paid for by a pennies-per-barrel fee that oil companies pay into to cleanup potential spills, up to $10 billion — an increase from the $1.6 billion currently in it. In a statement accompanying the introduction of her legislation, Murkowski claimed the amendment is "one of several steps" Congress should take to make sure we're "prepared to respond adequately in the unlikely event of future spills":
In 2005, Sen. Murkowski proposed increasing the industry per-barrel fee that supports the liability fund by 60 percent. Her new amendment make sure the fund would not be depleted by a single catastrophic spill.
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NY Times, WSJ, and Washington Post all rejected op-ed/letter from 255 National Academy of Sciences members defending climate science integrity
MSM largely ignored it, but unintentionally clever ploy by Science with polar bear artwork got the anti-science crowd to read it
Last week, I wrote about the remarkable letter in Science supporting the accuracy of climate science, signed by 255 National Academy of Sciences members, including 11 Nobel laureates.
The insufficiently-covered letter has been kept alive as a story for two reasons. First, the editors at Science ran the letter with a ‘photoshopped' ‘collage' (see above). Second, we learned that the authors first tried to get some of the newspapers that have been publishing dubious attacks on climate scientists to publish the piece as an op-ed, but were rejected.
Let's start with the second. I asked the lead author, Pacific Institute President Peter Gleick, if the bombshell about the rejections buried in the NYT Green blog story were true. He wrote me back:
We sent it first as an op-ed (one at a time, in order) to the WSJ, then the NY Times, then the Post. Each rejected it. No reasons given (they don't usually). We then took it to Science, rather than try other smaller circulation newspapers. They agreed, and as you know, ran it on May 7th. The media coverage has been substantial, though mostly electronic media. And in terms of "mainstream media" more attention was given OUTSIDE of the US than inside — so some of the major papers in the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Portugal, but not here. But some good coverage here too. I've attached a long, long list of media coverage (incomplete, but you'll get the idea why I say "substantial').
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GOP blocks the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act
The WSJ just reported "an effort by a few Senate Democrats to raise the cap on damage claims that BP PLC must pay for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill was blocked Thursday after Republicans said the plan wouldn't work. This CAP repost explains the issue and what's at stake.
JR UPDATE: Mclatchy reports "Federal investigators are likely to file criminal charges against at least one of the companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico spill, raising the prospects of significantly higher penalties than a current $75 million cap on civil liability, legal experts say." The NYT reports, "If it is found that BP was grossly negligent or broke federal safety regulations, there is no limit to what it must pay." At this point, it be be pretty surprising if they weren't found at least grossly negligent (see Stupak stunner: Oil well's blowout preventer had leaks, dead battery, design flaws, "How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?") — in not in outright violation of their permit (see "Shocking allegations against BP").
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U.S. Companies Dodge $60 Billion in Taxes With Global Odyssey
Tyler Hurst swiped his debit card at a Walgreens pharmacy in central Phoenix and kicked off an international odyssey of corporate tax avoidance.
Hurst went home with an amber bottle of Lexapro, the world's third-best selling antidepressant. The profits from his $99 purchase began a 9,400-mile journey that would lead across the Atlantic Ocean and more than halfway back again, to a grassy industrial park in Dublin, a glass skyscraper in Amsterdam and a law office in Bermuda surrounded by palm trees.
While Forest Laboratories Inc., the medicine's maker, sells Lexapro only in the U.S., the voyage ensures most of its profits aren't taxed there -- and they face little tax anywhere else. Forest cut its U.S. tax bill by more than a third last year with a technique known as transfer pricing, a method that carves an estimated $60 billion a year from the U.S. Treasury as it combines tax planning and alchemy. (See an interactive graphic on Forest's tax strategy here.)
Transfer pricing lets companies such as Forest, Oracle Corp., Eli Lilly & Co. and Pfizer Inc., legally avoid some income taxes by converting sales in one country to profits in another -- on paper only, and often in places where they have few employees or actual sales.
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Transocean dodges paying U.S. corporate taxes by locating its headquarters in Switzerland
Transocean, Ltd, the company that operates the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which recently exploded in the Gulf, is the "world's biggest offshore drilling contractor."
We've already seen that the Deepwater Horizon drill rig used the Marshall Islands' flag as a "flag of convenience" so it "could comply with that country's standards, and not the U.S. regulations" (see "Oil well's blowout preventer had leaks, dead battery, design flaws").
Now the AP reports today that Transocean, after moving its headquarters from the U.S. to Zug, Switzerland, two years ago, paid a paltry 16 percent on its corporate income last year, less than half of the current American corporate income tax rate of 35 percent:
In the foothills of the Swiss Alps four new steel-gray towers rise from what used to be a grassy field. One of them is home to Transocean Ltd., the world's biggest offshore drilling contractor and owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, leading to one of the worst oil spills in history.
Low taxes prompted the decision two years ago to move to landlocked Switzerland: The company paid 16 percent tax on its $4.4 billion global operating income last year. The regular corporate income tax in the United States stands at about 35 percent.
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University may fight Cuccinelli demand
The University of Virginia has hired a law firm to explore its options in responding to a demand by state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli that UVa turn over documents and correspondence related to a former climatology researcher.
Cuccinelli sent UVa a civil investigative demand — which has the legal force of a subpoena — to investigate the research activities of Michael Mann, a former UVa professor of environmental science who is widely known for his research into global climate change.
UVa had previously said it had no choice but to comply with Cuccinelli's demand, despite objections from UVa's Faculty Senate, the Virginia ACLU, the American Association of University Professors and other groups that allege that Cuccinelli's actions were politically motivated and could infringe on academic freedom.
"The university and its Board of Visitors believe it is important to respond to this CID," said John O. Wynne, university rector, in a news release Friday evening. "Research universities must defend the privilege of academic freedom in the creation of new knowledge."
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Congress blocks major U.S. competitiveness bill
Can you imagine our Congress blocking major legislation to support U.S. competitiveness in technology and innovation -- especially related to the clean energy industry -- in the name of pornography issues?
*It sounds absurd, but that's exactly what just happened.**
*The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 -- a flagship proposal for U.S. innovation and competitiveness containing critical funding authorization for ARPA-E, Energy Innovation Hubs, clean energy STEM education, science R&D budgets, and more -- was blocked on the House floor yesterday due to political point-scoring over a small pornography scandal.
"Six newly proposed programs encouraging science research and technological innovation are casualties of Thursday's House fight over porn," reports *The Hill*
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What we can learn from studying the last millennium (or so)
With all of the emphasis that is often placed on hemispheric or global mean temperature trends during the past millennium, and the context they provide for interpreting modern warming trends, one thing is often lost in the discussion: space matters as much as time. Indeed, it is likely that the regional patterns of past climate changes, rather than simple hemispheric or global mean temperature trends, will best inform our understanding of the dynamical mechanisms involved. Since much of the uncertainty in future projections relates to regional climate change impacts, it makes particular sense to focus on those changes in the past that involve regional changes and the underlying mechanisms behind them.
For instance, melting of the cryosphere (and consequent rises in sea level), subtle shifts in drought and rainfall patterns, and extreme events, are all regional effects that could be important threats to ecosystems and our environment. Such changes are often associated with phenomena like ENSO or the North Atlantic Oscillation. Yet there remain large uncertainties about how such mechanisms will respond to anthropogenic climate change.
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Eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies
President Obama's 2011 budget proposes to eliminate nine different tax expenditures that primarily benefit oil and gas companies. Cutting these special tax deductions, preferences, and credits would save the government about $45 billion over the next 10 years. CAP's Sima Gandhi has the story in this repost:
CAP has previously argued for eliminating tax expenditures for multibillion-dollar oil companies such as BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevron that would be profitable even without government subsidies. Here are the tax expenditures that the Obama administration has targeted for elimination.
1. Intangible drilling costs. Firms engaged in the exploration and development of oil or gas properties may expense (deduct in the year paid or incurred) certain types of drilling expenditures from their taxes. These costs include wages, fuel, repairs, hauling, and supplies related to and necessary for drilling and preparing wells for the production of oil and gas. Other companies incurring similar types of costs must recover this cost over the life of the investment. The administration expects that eliminating this subsidy will produce budget savings of about $7.839 billion over 10 years.
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Climate Bill Cheat Sheet
After six months of grueling negotiations, John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) on Wednesday unveiled a 987-page draft of climate and energy legislation that they believe can win the support of 60 senators. "We are closer than we've ever been to a breakthrough," said Kerry at the bill's release. Notably absent, however, was their onetime Republican co-author, Lindsey Graham (SC), who walked away from the effort amid partisan wrangling over the legislative calendar. So, after all the delays and setbacks and suspense, what's in the bill?
The draft is a complex attempt to balance competing demands. In a nod to environmentalists, it imposes some new restrictions on offshore drilling. And it retains the same key targets included in the House bill that passed last June: a 17 percent reduction of carbon emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050. But in a move to please polluters, it establishes a slower phase-in of carbon regulations for many of the country's biggest emitters. Utilities will be subject to carbon restrictions beginning in 2013, followed by manufacturers and other heavy emitters starting in 2016. The legislation also lavishes major financial incentives on coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.
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U.S. Confirms Criminal Probe in Mine Blast
Federal prosecutors confirmed they are investigating possible "willful criminal activity" at a Massey Energy Co. subsidiary where 29 miners were killed in an April 5 explosion at a West Virginia coal mine, according to a letter from the U.S. Attorney for Southern West Virginia.
The federal criminal investigation came to light April 30, but Justice Department officials had declined to confirm an investigation.
On Friday, U.S. Attorney Chuck Miller in Charleston, W.Va., wrote to lawyers for the Labor Department's Mine Safety and Health Administration saying that his office is currently conducting an investigation at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine. In the letter, Mr. Miller asks that MSHA suspend any civil litigation related to the Upper Big Branch mine until the criminal investigation is completed.
Mr. Miller's letter states that part of the criminal investigation involves whether "directors, officers and agents" of Massey subsidiary Performance Coal "engaged in willful criminal activity at UBB." The letter indicates that the probe is looking at alleged violations of federal mine safety law at the mine from 2007 to 2010.
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WashPost: Senate needs to act now on climate bill
Quotes IEA: "Every year the world fails to seriously deal with climate change raises the price tag by $500 billion -- a lot of which, no doubt, Americans will be on the hook for"
Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) have provided Congress with an opportunity. Their climate bill, released last week, is imperfect. But it offers a start, very much in the right direction. Contrary to popular wisdom, acting on global warming is not going to get easier after this year's election. Legislators should seize this moment.
Since its opinion pages have been quite dreadful on this issue, the Washington Post's editorial on the climate and clean energy jobs bill deserves to be read in full:
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2,000 Hispanic business leaders urge support for clean energy and climate bill
Recent polls show Latinos strongly support action on climate change and clean energy jobs. On Wednesday, a group of Hispanic business leaders from Florida headed to the Capitol to urge their Senators – Bill Nelson (D-FL) and George LeMieux (R-FL) – to support comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation.
The group brought a petition signed by 2,000 Hispanic business owners from South Florida to bolster their cause. CAP intern JT McLain has the story.
Hispanic business leaders are at the forefront of the push for energy and climate legislation. Wednesday's fly-in, organized by American Businesses for Clean Energy, is another reminder that Hispanics continue to be amongst the most active proponents of comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation. As Climate Progress reported here, Hispanics and African Americans overwhelmingly support the transition to a clean energy economy, and they are disproportionately likely to vote on climate in the 2010 elections. Those same demographics also have strong majorities who believe that that a low carbon economy will create jobs, and oppose the idea that policies which curb global warming harm the economy.
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As oil continues to gush into the Gulf, Mississippi offers $75 gas cards to tourists.
Downplaying the BP disaster, Gov. Barbour encourages tourists to ‘enjoy the beach' as dead dolphins wash ashore
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has been an outlier amongst Gulf Coast governors, downplaying the BP oil spill instead of working to mitigate the disaster and rethinking the wisdom of offshore drilling. TP has the story in this twin repost.
1) Mississippi officials are encouraging tourists to use more oil, offering people gas cards if they come to the region:
Gov. Haley Barbour said that the Mississippi Gulf Coast is open for business, despite the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In an effort to encourage tourism, Mississippi Gulf Coast officials are offering $75 gas cards for those who book a two-night stay at one of the participating hotels or resorts listed online at www.gulfcoast.org. Resident can also sign up online for a chance to win one of four getaway packages.
Hotel room cancellations are above 50 percent right now, even though the Mississippi beaches are clear of oil, said Linda Hornsby, director of the Hotel and Lodging Association.
State tourism officials are planning to pressure BP to "pay $7.5 million a month for a national advertising campaign" in the aftermath of the oil spill. While encouraging tourism to the region is important, it's also necessary to be honest about the environmental damage of the spill, and as questions arise about U.S. dependency on oil, offering gas cards might not be the best idea.
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