Political Climate Articles
Addressing Systemic Failures: Merkley's Plan to Reduce U.S. Oil Dependence
Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) unveiled his 20-year plan to reduce U.S. oil consumption on Monday at an event sponsored by the Center for American Progress. Senator Merkley stressed the importance of rapidly enacting his plan given the ongoing devastation from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In Monday's speech, Senator Merkley highlighted several additional costs and risks of continued U.S. reliance on foreign oil. He pointed out that 70 percent of oil consumed domestically comes from overseas, and this fraction is projected to only increase since the U.S. has only 3 percent of world oil reserves left. Senator Merkley called plans to accelerate domestic oil drilling misguided, saying they would increase dependence on foreign oil by depleting U.S. reserves even faster and failing to encourage the transition to a clean energy infrastructure. His plan states that even an aggressive pursuit of domestic oil that would open all offshore resources to drilling immediately would reduce the price of gasoline by only three cents per gallon in 2030.
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Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, U.S. House of Representatives
Read the testimony of Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, who appeared before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on May 20 to discuss in part the findings of three new National Research Council reports from the America's Climate Choices project: Advancing the Science of Climate Change, Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change , and Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change.
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The Prelude to Cheney's Katrina
Former Vice President Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy Task Force concluded in May 2001 that "advanced, more energy efficient drilling and production methods: reduce emissions; practically eliminate spills from offshore platforms; and enhance worker safety, lower risk of blowouts, and provide better protection of groundwater resources." At that time, with two oilmen in the White House and two more Texans leading an emboldened Republican majority in the House of Representatives, Big Oil had an unprecedented opportunity to set U.S. energy policy.
Big Oil did not miss the opportunity. A deeper look at the energy legislation based on Cheney's secret energy task force underscores how the unabashedly pro-oil policies and permissive regulatory environment created during the Bush administration set the stage for Cheney's Katrina-the BP oil disaster.
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China Spends $34.6 Billion on Renewables, Ernst & Young Says
China joins America as the most attractive location in which to invest in renewable energy after spending $34.6 billion on clean-fuel projects last year, almost double the investments by the U.S., Ernst & Young LLP said.
The world's third-largest economy climbed two points in Ernst & Young's Renewable Energy Country Attractive Indices while the U.S. fell a point, the accounting firm said in an e- mailed report dated June 3.
China has vowed to cut carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product by as much as 45 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 to slow global warming linked to greenhouse gases. The government will subsidize manufacturers of fuel-efficient electric motors and power generators, according to a statement this month from the finance ministry.
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BP and Halliburton build legal teams, attempt to buy off government officials
Facing possible jail time for their roles in the largest oil spill in American history, BP and Halliburton are building high-powered legal teams with "deep Department of Justice and White House ties." But the companies are pursuing other means to defend themselves as well, as TP explains in this repost.
Halliburton's campaign donations have spiked as it tries to curry favor with key members of Congress investigating the disaster. The company donated $17,000 in May, making it "the busiest donation month for Halliburton's PAC since September 2008," Politico reports. Thirteen of the 14 contributions from May went to Republicans, while seven went to members of Congress who are "on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath":
About one week before executive Timothy Probert appeared before the House Energy and Commerce's investigative subcommittee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to Ranking Republican Joe Barton's reelection effort. It was Halliburton's second-largest donation of the month - topped only by $2,500 to former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is running for the Senate.
In the Senate, Idaho Republican Mike Crapo, who serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, who serves on the Commerce Committee and North Carolina Republican Richard Burr (N.C.), who serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, all got $1,000. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also got $1,000.
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Barbour compares small animals suffocating from oil to people covered in toothpaste.
On Tuesday, "oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster hit Mississippi shores for the first time," covering about two miles of Petit Bois Island's beach. And that meant more tone-deaf greenwashing from dirty energy lobbyist-turned-Governor Haley Barbour, as reported in this Think Progress repost.
As ThinkProgress noted, the appearance of oil onshore led Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour to shift his upbeat rhetoric about the approaching oil, acknowledging that "this could turn out to be something catastrophic and terrible." But after Barbour visited Petit Bois Island yesterday and saw that the oil that came ashore had "been washed away by storms," he returned to the positive spin, saying, "I don't think the island was hurt one iota." Barbour even downplayed concerns about animals being suffocated by the oil in the ocean, comparing it to humans being covered in toothpaste:
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Jindal jumps the shark, crashes into oil-spoiled Gulf
Faced with devastating BP disaster, Louisiana's governor demands ... more deepwater drilling ASAP?
A stunning new letter by the oil-addicted governor of Louisiana gives the lie to right-wing claims that environmentalists are to blame for the BP oil disaster.
On Wednesday, Bobby Jindal, who blames everybody but himself for the environmental disaster hitting his state, wrote to President Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pleading with them to end the deep water drilling moratorium immediately.
Jindal has been trying to position himself as the can-do guy in the face of the worst environmental disaster in US history, but fundamentally like so many Louisiana politicians, he is beholden to Big Oil, and thus inherently oblivious to the consequences of the states addiction to petro-dollars. My latest Salon piece discusses the shameless letter he wrote and what it says about pro-pollution politicians like Jindal - and Palin.
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Virginia's religious leaders call on senators to support climate change bill
More than 100 clergy from across the state called on U.S. Sens. Jim Webb and Jim Webb on Wednesday to support comprehensive climate legislation that includes strong emission reductions and protections for low-income families.
The religious leaders signed a letter that was hand-delivered to Webb's and Warner's state offices in downtown Richmond Wednesday morning.
"As religious leaders from across the Commonwealth, we are writing to express our alarm at the state of environmental stewardship here in Virginia, and nationwide," the letter states. "For us as people of faith, this is an issue of basic fairness and justice; not only because we are called to care for creation, but because of who will be harmed most by inaction: the poor and voiceless."
The clergy represents Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Unitarian Universalism and seven denominations of Christianity.
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Does the Senate climate bill "gut" the Clean Air Act?
Does the Senate climate bill tie the EPA's hands? You increasingly hear from progressives that the American Power Act -- the energy and climate bill introduced by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.) -- "guts" the Clean Air Act. Some groups have put this critique at the center of a campaign to improve the bill. If blog comments and email chatter are any indication, lots of grassroots greens have adopted it as a red line -- reason to oppose the bill entirely.
So what would the bill do to the Clean Air Act, and how bad would it be? Let's explore!
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Sen. Lugar to propose climate bill alternative
A senior Republican in the Senate next week will propose energy and climate legislation that aims to cut emissions of planet-warming gases, but with far lower goals than President Barack Obama seeks.
Senator Richard Lugar, whose home state of Indiana relies heavily on dirty-burning coal to power electric utilities, is crafting legislation he says would achieve about half of the 17 percent cut from 2005 levels in carbon emissions by 2020 proposed by Obama.
At international negotiations on tackling global warming, many countries already are criticizing the United States, saying the 17 percent goal is too meek to be effective.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration has said the country's carbon dioxide emissions, which represent about 80 percent of overall greenhouse gases, have already fallen more than 9 percent since 2005. The recession has played a role, along with heavier reliance on natural gas and more efficient use of fuels.
Lugar's legislation would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions through a mix of better fuel efficiency for vehicles, using more renewable fuels for those cars, making new homes and commercial buildings more energy efficient and expanding nuclear power generation.
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Vitter proposed legislation to reduce criminal liability of oil companies for spills
This week, Attorney General Holder announced the Obama administration had opened criminal and civil investigations into the companies involved in the Gulf oil disaster. Officials said they were looking into potential violations of the Oil Pollution Act [OPA] of 1990, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
But if Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) had his way, BP and its partners would have been off the hook for violations of all but the weakest of U.S. laws. TP has the story in this repost.
In July 2000, when Vitter was in the House, he introduced a bill that would make penalties under the OPA "the exclusive criminal penalties" for oil spills:
(a) IN GENERAL- Notwithstanding any other provision or rule of law, sections 4301(c) and 4302 of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-380; 104 Stat. 537) and the amendments made by those sections provide the exclusive criminal penalties for any action or activity that may arise or occur in connection with a discharge of oil or a hazardous substance hreferred to in section 311(b)(3) of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1321(b)(3)).
Fortunately, the bill - which attracted only two cosponsors - never made it out of committee. If it had become law, BP and the other companies would be exempted from more stringent criminal penalties under the other environmental laws. It would also potentially exempt BP from any workplace safety violations on the rig or during the cleanup.
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Many Gulf federal judges have oil links
MIAMI - More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.
Thirty-seven of the 64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have links to oil, gas and related energy industries, including some who own stocks or bonds in BP PLC, Halliburton or Transocean - and others who regularly list receiving royalties from oil and gas production wells, according to the reports judges must file each year. The AP reviewed 2008 disclosure forms, the most recent available.
Those three companies are named as defendants in virtually all of the 150-plus lawsuits seeking damages, mainly for economic losses in the fishing, seafood, tourism and related industries, that have been filed over the growing oil spill since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. Attorneys for the companies and those suing them are pushing for consolidation of the cases in one court, with BP recommending Texas and others advocating for Louisiana and other states.
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BP Oil: Coming Soon to a Beach Near You
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) just released this horrifying animation of how ocean currents may carry all the oil in the Gulf of Mexico. According to their computer modeling of currents and the oil, the spill "might soon extend along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast and open ocean as early as this summer."
"I've had a lot of people ask me, 'Will the oil reach Florida?'" says NCAR scientist Synte Peacock in a statement accompanying the animation, which he worked on. "Actually, our best knowledge says the scope of this environmental disaster is likely to reach far beyond Florida, with impacts that have yet to be understood."
The models show oil hitting Florida's Atlantic coast within a few weeks, then moving north as far as about Cape Hatteras, N.C., before heading east.
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The Next Deepwater Horizon?
Obama halted new offshore drilling, but allowed existing production to continue-including another BP Gulf rig flying numerous red flags.
Last week, President Barack Obama put new deepwater drilling operations on hold for another six months. With the Gulf of Mexico spill entering its fifth week, this move was meant to show that the administration is taking a more cautious approach to offshore drilling, after it had announced a vast expansion just weeks before the BP disaster.
Many news accounts on the moratorium extension implied that all deepwater Gulf operations had been shut down. But that's not the case. The administration is allowing deepwater drilling operations already in production in the Gulf to continue-including some that may pose a greater risk than the Deepwater Horizon. Exhibit A: BP's other major Gulf operation, the Atlantis, which sits 124 miles off the Louisiana coast.
Kenneth Abbott, a project control supervisor BP contracted to work on the Atlantis, and the environmental group Food & Water Watch filed suit against the federal government on May 17 seeking a temporary injunction to force the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to shut down the platform. Abbott claims that his contract was terminated shortly after he alerted management to the rig's lack of crucial engineering documents in late 2008.
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U.S. Navy Takes Another Shot at New Clean Energy Tech
The U.S. Navy has been placing a well-aimed barrage of funding toward sustainable new energy technology in recent years, including new solar installations at naval bases, high-efficiency desalination systems, and even camelina biofuel for Navy fighter jets. Now the Office of Naval Research has upped the ante with grants for nine new green tech research projects. The grants go to the nine winners of a clean energy challenge that the Navy issued at its recent Naval Energy Forum. The awards underscore the importance of new sustainable technology for Naval operations, but the Office of Naval Research also observes that investing more money in new technology is only part of the solution.
In order to effect a broad new approach to energy, the Navy needs to implement a sweeping "policy change to help make the necessary cultural shifts in how its people think about energy use and the decisions they make in all settings, including acquisition, tactical and shore use." It's a call for introspection that political leaders in the civilian sector should take to heart.
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Taiwan outlying islands to lead emissions cut effort
(Reuters) - Taiwan aims to transform several of its outlying islands into models of green energy production as part of a 10-year effort to cut its overall greenhouse gas emissions, the government said on Monday.
Industrialized Taiwan, a major semiconductor, chemicals and steelmaker, will invest heavily in wind power on the Penghu islands in the Taiwan Strait. The aim is to raise renewable energy production to half total consumption of the 90,000 population, officials said.
On the Kinmen islets, also known as Quemoy, T$3 billion ($90 million) will be spent to develop solar power, recycle water and push eco-friendly architecture for the 70,000 people who live there, the Environmental Protection Administration said.
The agency said it was hoped the investments could deliver a rapid transformation of the energy supply on the islands and help drive efforts on the more industrialized main island, with a population of 23 million.
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Barbour downplays BP oil disaster again:
"The coast is clear, come on down!" - blames media for "misperception of what is going on down here."
Former dirty energy lobbyist joins Jindal in calls for more deepwater drilling before cause of disaster is found
On Fox News Sunday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) continued to aggressively downplay the massive BP oil gusher, explaining that tar balls washing up on his state's beaches are "no big deal" because you can "pick them up and throw them in the bag." And instead of attacking BP for causing the spill, he blamed the media for creating a "misperception" of crisis by daring to call attention to one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. TP has the story:
BARBOUR: Well, the truth is, Chris, we have had virtually no oil. … We have had a few tar balls but we have tar balls every year, as a natural product of the Gulf of Mexico. … So, tar balls are no big deal. In fact, I read that Pensacola or the Florida beaches when they have tar balls yesterday didn't even close. They just sent people out to pick them up and throw them in the bag. The biggest, the biggest negative impact for us has been the news coverage. … The average viewer to this show thinks that the whole coast from Florida to Texas is ankle-deep in oil. … So it may be hard for the viewer to understand, but the worst thing for us has been how our tourist season has been hurt by the misperception of what is going on down here. The Mississippi Gulf Coast is beautiful. As I tell people, the coast is clear. Come on down!
Barbour has consistently hrefused to accept the gravity of the situation in the Gulf, and blamed the media for supposedly over-hyping the disaster. He's compared oil to tooth paste, said all the oil on Mississippi's beaches could barely "fill up a milk jug," and handed out gas cards to encourage tourists to "[c]ome on down here and play golf, enjoy the beach, catch a fish." Meanwhile, dead dolphins have washed ashore on Mississippi's beaches.
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Liz Cheney sticks up for Halliburton: 'I don't know what planet you live on'
Sunday on ABC's This Week had a must-see slugfest. In one corner was Arianna Huffington of our very own planet Earth, laying out the case for Cheney's Katrina. In the other corner was Liz Cheney of the Bizarro World, Htrae, a planet where her father and her father's former company are champions of the environment and public safety. In this repost, ThinkProgress has the blow-by-blow.
On ABC's This Week, Arianna Huffington brought up the role the Bush administration played in creating a regulatory system "full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies they're supposed to be overseeing," especially when it comes to the oil industry. Indeed, a 2008 report by the Interior Department's Inspector General found that workers at the Minerals Management Service were "partying, having sex, using drugs and accepting gifts and ski trips and golf outings from energy company representatives with whom they did government business." She then tried to talk about the role Halliburton, the energy giant formerly run by Dick Cheney, has in the oil spill, but she was soon cut off by Liz Cheney, who rushed to defend her dad and the corporation:
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Video: Thad Allen rebukes BP for being 'very pleased' about efforts to contain disaster
Turns out BP is very easily pleased.
National Incident Commander Thad Allen has rebuked BP for being "very pleased" about the company's failed efforts to contain the disaster he described as an "insidious enemy" that is "holding the gulf hostage." In this repost, WE's Brad Johnson has the story and videos:
On Saturday, BP Senior Vice President Bob Fryar said "the company funneled about 250,000 gallons of oil in the first 24 hours from a containment cap installed on the well" to a drilling ship on the ocean surface. "That operation has gone extremely well," Fryar said at an Alabama news conference. "We are very pleased." On CNN's State of the Union, Allen rebuked Fryar, telling Candy Crowley that nobody "should be pleased as long as there's oil in the water":
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Four Reasons Why Measuring Flow in BP's Spill Matters
Estimating oil flow from BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico has consistently been a subject of contention among the oil company, the government and the skeptics who believe that official estimates significantly low-ball the scale of the disaster.
Both BP and the government knew early on that the disaster could be far worse than what official statements hreflected. Early last month, behind closed doors, BP officials told some lawmakers that the spill rate could be as much as 60,000 barrels a day [1]. Last week the Center for Public Integrity reported that even before a leak was announced, the Coast Guard's estimate of flow rate in case of a blowout was changed from 8,000 barrels a day to between 64,000 and 110,000 barrels a day [2].
BP's executives have said that the oil flow is "impossible to measure [3]," and that the company's top priority is plugging the well rather than measuring it.
But having a lower estimate for the amount of oil that has flowed into the Gulf matters for several reasons:
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"The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen!"
A prominent Houston attorney with a long record of winning settlements from oil companies says he has new evidence suggesting that the Deepwater Horizon's top managers knew of problems with the rig before it exploded last month, causing the worst oil spill in US history. Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing 15 rig workers and dozens of shrimpers, seafood restaurants, and dock workers, says he has obtained a three-page signed statement from a crew member on the boat that rescued the burning rig's workers. The sailor, who Buzbee hrefuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."
Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am fucking calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"
At that point, the boat's captain asked Harrell to leave the bridge. It wasn't clear whether Harrell had been talking to Transocean, BP, or someone else.
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Ending Fossil-Fuel Aid Will Cut Oil Demand, IEA Says
(Bloomberg) -- Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency's chief economist, called on leaders of the Group of 20 Nations to fulfill their pledge to end fossil-fuel subsidies, a move he said will cut oil demand and greenhouse-gas emissions.
Stopping aid by 2020 would reduce global oil demand by 6.5 million barrels a day, he said, or about a third of the current U.S. use. Subsidies that promote consumption, such as below- market gasoline prices, totaled $557 billion in 2008, he said. Nations that use them the most include China, Venezuela, Egypt Iraq and Iran, according to IEA surveys.
"This is the only single policy item that could make such a major change in the global energy and climate-change game," Birol said in a telephone interview today.
Global leaders are searching ways to reduce dependency on oil and tackle global warming as the BP Plc oil spill focuses attention on the broader cost of fossil fuels. G20 leaders, who failed to broker a deal on restricting carbon emissions at the Copenhagen climate summit, will discuss how to implement their pledge in Toronto this month, Birol said.
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McKibben: Mr. President, lead now on fossil fuels
Bill McKibben - counder of 350.org, long-time guest blogger, and the author most recently of the must-read book Eaarth - has an op-ed in the LA Times on the spill-to-bill pivot:
Here's the president on March 31, announcing his plan to lift a longstanding moratorium on offshore drilling: "Given our energy needs, in order to sustain economic growth and produce jobs and keep our businesses competitive, we are going to need to harness traditional sources of fuel even as we ramp up production of new sources of renewable, homegrown energy."
And here he is on May 26, as political pressure started to really build over BP's hole in the bottom of the sea: "We're not going to be able to sustain this kind of fossil fuel use. The planet can't sustain it." Still, he added quickly: "We're not going to transition out of oil next year or 10 years from now."
And here is the president Wednesday, after yet another gimcrack solution at 5,000 feet under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico had gone awry and real anger at the administration's lackluster performance was cresting: "The time has come to aggressively accelerate [the transition from fossil fuels.] The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean-energy future."
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White House smacks down Jindal and other Big Oil shills
...like Barbour who demand a premature end to the moratorium on deepwater drilling
When we last left Bobby Jindal, oil-addicted governor of BP-ravaged Louisiana, he was demanding more deepwater drilling ASAP. Former dirty energy lobbyist Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MI) also demanded renewed drilling before the cause of disaster was found.
The White House has now responded, as HuffPost reports:
The 6-month moratorium on deepwater drilling was instituted for a clear reason: the President believes we must ensure that the BP Deepwater Horizon spill is never repeated. This will allow for the new safety equipment and procedures announced in Secretary Salazar's May 27th report to be implemented and for the independent commission to review the cause of the spill and analyze the rules and regulations governing offshore drilling.
A repeat of the BP Deepwater Horizon spill would have grave economic consequences for regional commerce and do further damage to the environment.
Among the drilling rigs that have frozen exploration in the Gulf are 2 operated by BP, and 2 jointly operated by BP and another company. Proceeding without the moratorium would mean that BP would continue deepwater exploration in the Gulf.
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Massive Flow Of Bullshit Continues To Gush From BP Headquarters
LONDON-As the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico entered its eighth week Wednesday, fears continued to grow that the massive flow of bullshit still gushing from the headquarters of oil giant BP could prove catastrophic if nothing is done to contain it.
The toxic bullshit, which began to spew from the mouths of BP executives shortly after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April, has completely devastated the Gulf region, delaying cleanup efforts, affecting thousands of jobs, and endangering the lives of all nearby wildlife.
"Everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest," said BP CEO Tony Hayward, letting loose a colossal stream of undiluted bullshit. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean, and the volume of oil we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total volume of water."
According to sources, the sheer quantity of bullshit pouring out of Hayward is unprecedented, and it has thoroughly drenched the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, with no end in sight.
Though no one knows exactly how much of the dangerous bullshit is currently gushing from BP headquarters, estimates put the number at somewhere between 25,000 and 70,000 words a day.
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Years of Internal BP Probes Warned That Neglect Could Lead to Accidents
A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.
The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company's publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.
Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations - from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas.
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As Oil Plumes Are Confirmed, Scientist Calculating Flow Rate Blasts BP
As recently as last week, BP officials said they were not convinced [1] of the existence of those giant, underwater oil plumes that independent scientists had discovered in the Gulf of Mexico.
Perhaps this will dispel their doubts: The government confirmed the existence of these plumes this morning.
Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press that the water tests showed "there is definitely oil sub surface [2]," even if it is at very low concentrations.
BP CEO Tony Hayward had previously told The AP that "the oil is on the surface [3]," and "there aren't any plumes."
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Read Documents Showing BP's Pattern of Neglecting Its Own Safety Policies
We've just published an investigation into BP's systematic disregard for worker safety and environmental rules [1] in its North American operations. Co-published with The Washington Post, the story cites a string of internal BP probes that warned about the risk of serious accidents. These internal probes flagged safety problems with BP operations all over the country, from Alaska's North Slope to hrefineries in Texas City and Los Angeles.
Check out the documents at the center of our story:
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Two More Gulf Spills?
The BP oil spill is still dominating headlines, 50 days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. But how much oil leaks into the Gulf on any other day of the year? Satellite images and photographs from the region indicate that there may be two other offshore drilling units leaking oil into the ocean.
John Amos, head of the West Virginia-based nonprofit SkyTruth, was looking at satellite images of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon site when he noticed what appeared to be another small slick of oil about 11 miles off the coast of Louisiana and about 40 miles from the major spill. Amos' group uses the images to assess environmental problems; he was among the first independent experts to point out that the spill estimates from BP and the government were far too low, which has now been confirmed. Amos reported a "small but persistent leak or oily discharge" at a second site in the Gulf, one that appeared to be coming from platform 23051 in the Gulf of Mexico. It can be seen on multiple satellite images of the region. Minerals Management Service (MMS) records indicate that the platform belongs to Taylor Energy Company.
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My BP Mole Spills the Secrets of BP's Cleanup Ops
BP's got a mole working on its cleanup team. The company might be able to keep the press from getting to oiled-up Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, but as long as people have cell phones, it's going to have a hell of a time keeping Elmer's Island from getting to the press.
Late Wednesday night I talked to a spill worker involved in the efforts to clean up South Louisiana's barrier islands. Let's call him Elmer, because we spoke under condition of strict anonymity. Though he hasn't signed one of the BP contracts that bars workers from communicating with reporters, he has been told "500 times" that if he talks, he's fired. He certainly didn't contact me because his politics are similar to mine. "George Bush was too liberal for me," he explained. But: "I like the media. The country couldn't run without it, and it's important to have media from both the left and right."
He also called because on Tuesday BP told me (again) that I couldn't go to Elmer's Island with a producer from PBS's Need to Know because the road to it "needed more gravel." This was a lie: "Everyone else," Elmer said, "is driving on that road"-about 20 cars and vans going up and down a day, and the re-graveling had happened the day before we arrived. Since BP was making my job so much harder, Elmer wanted to make it a little easier.
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Federal government loses a battle against a Massey mine in Virginia
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Massey Energy Corp. coal mine with one of the highest safety violation and injury rates in the nation did not commit enough serious safety violations to qualify for a special enforcement program that could lead to a shutdown.
The ruling marked the end of the latest battle in the government's decades-long effort to rein in the mine, and Mine Safety Health Administration director Joseph A. Main said that it showed "the system is broken."
The MSHA sought to implement a "pattern of violations" program with the Tazewell County, Va., mine. Congress created the program in 1977 to give federal mining inspectors the authority to shut down dangerous mines when wide-scale, serious safety problems persist.
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The Climate Majority
ON Thursday, the Senate will vote on a resolution proposed by Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, that would scuttle the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to limit emissions of greenhouse gases by American businesses.
Passing the resolution might seem to be exactly what Americans want. After all, national surveys released during the last eight months have been interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is real, human-caused and threatening to people.
But a closer look at these polls and a new survey by my Political Psychology Research Group show just the opposite: huge majorities of Americans still believe the earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it.
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Dispersal of Oil Means Cleanup to Take Years, Official Says
Although the Coast Guard had trained for the possibility of cleaning up a disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it had never anticipated that oil would spread across such a broad area and break up into hundreds of thousands of patches as the current spill has done, the commander heading the federal response to the spill said Monday.
"It's the breadth and complexity of the disaggregation of the oil" that is now posing the greatest clean-up challenge, the commander, Adm. Thad W. Allen, said at a news conference at the White House.
He underscored the challenge by acknowledging, in response to a reporter's question, that it would take years to mitigate the impact of the spill on the marshes, beaches and wildlife on the Gulf Coast. On Sunday, the admiral had said it could take well into autumn to deal with the slick that is spreading relentlessly across four states of the gulf.
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, Former Friend of Climate Legislation, Now Foe, and Acting Denier-ish
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has told reporters that he will vote against the climate bill that he helped to craft along with remaining co-sponsors Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). According to CongressDaily (sub. req'd), Graham says he doesn't like "new changes [to the bill] that further restrict offshore oil and gas drilling and the bill's impact on the transportation sector."
As David Roberts at Grist writes:
"Yes, you read that right: He says he's bailing from the bill because, in the wake of one of the greatest offshore oil drilling disasters of all time, a bill devoted to reducing climate pollution does not expand offshore oil drilling enough. Such is the Bizarro World of the U.S. Senate."
Graham previously yanked his name off the bill out of anger surrounding Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-NV) decision to prioritize immigration hreform over climate and energy.
While some still hoped that Graham would suck it up and vote for whatever eventually became of the bill he helped create, he dashed all hopes of that happening today.
Instead, Graham says he now will only support a bill that allows polluting utilities more time to meet their emission reduction targets and completely exempts energy-intensive manufacturers and other industries from a carbon control plan.
He said Congress should "start over and scale down your ambitions."
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Another recent BP spill of 500,000 pounds of toxic chemicals at Texas plant where 15 people died in 2005.
BPRefinery2While BP touts the mild success of its most recent attempt to contain the massive gusher spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, they would probably rather people don't notice the other spill they recently caused, this one of deadly benzene from a hrefinery in Texas City, TX. In this repost, TP has the story.
The hrefinery released more than 400 pounds a day of the chemical over a 40-day period from early April to mid May of this year, BP quietly informed the state environmental regulator yesterday. Over that period, the hrefinery released 500,000 pounds of benzene and other toxic chemicals into the air, the Galveston Daily News reports:
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Political Spin Surrounds Energy Bill
Operation Free purchase billboard space on Interstate 64 linking failure to pass climate legislation with the Iranian president.
Motorists driving east towards Charleston on Interstate 64 are greeted by what many would view as an unwelcome sight: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's face plastered on a billboard.
The eye-catching advertisement, along with a similar one along the West Virginia Turnpike near the exit 45 rest stop, tells passersby that Iran is reaping millions of dollars in oil profits every day Congress delays passage of a proposed Senate energy bill, the American Power Act.
It also tells them they can learn more at the website PasstheAmericanPowerAct.com.
The American Power Act is one of two energy bills before Congress that, among other provisions, would limit carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Both bills are currently stalled, and both are the middle of a public relations tug-of-war between interest groups that want to either see the legislation passed or defeated.
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