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Obama’s ocean chief dismisses loop current threat: ‘Very little tarballs!’
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Yesterday, Obama’s ocean chief said that the threat of the BP oil disaster getting caught in the Loop Current “sounds scarier than it is.” As she was making these statements, satellites imagery showed the Maryland-sized slick being entrained in the Loop Current, which loops through the Gulf of Mexico and […]
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10 ways MMS makes FEMA look good
1. You got a problem with paper towels? One big reason the means of cleaning up oil spills have barely changed since the Exxon Valdez spill is that the Minerals Management Service’s budget for oil-spill research has been stuck at roughly $6 million a year since 1990. That’s one-tenth of a penny for every dollar […]
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Big Green and little green clash over the American Power Act
When Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) unveiled their long-awaited American Power Act last week, it drew two sharply different responses from two collections of activist groups. Two hundred groups that might be called “little green” immediately condemned the climate and energy bill in a joint letter, calling it “greenwashing in the extreme.” […]
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Shell moves forward with Arctic drilling without a backup plan
We’ve all seen the horrifying footage of the oil leaking, leaking and still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. And we’ve watched as BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has made such ludicrous statements as the Gulf is a big place, there really isn’t that much oil if you compare it to all that water. What’s more, […]
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A closer look at the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade proposal
As with the Waxman-Markey bill (H.R. 2454), passed by the House of Representatives last June, there is now some confusing commentary in the press and blogosphere about the allocation of allowances in the new Senate proposal — the American Power Act of 2010 — sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.). As […]
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Leaning forward: Why the American Power Act is worth fighting for
The Kerry-Lieberman climate bill is out now, and with it comes a fateful decision for the political left in the U.S. If the left’s institutions and messaging infrastructure succumb to internal squabbling or simple indifference; if the public is not actively won over and fired up; if President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid […]
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Where is the left?
Glenn Greenwald notes the rapid, bipartisan erosion of basic civil liberties, which didn’t even hit a speed bump with the transition to the Obama administration: A bipartisan group from Congress sponsors legislation to strip Americans of their citizenship based on Terrorism accusations. Barack Obama claims the right to assassinate Americans far from any battlefield and […]
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Now is a very good time to impose a severance tax on oil production in California
California is in the midst of a historic budget crisis threatening public services from Calexico to Yreka. California, alone amongst major oil-producing states, charges no severance tax on oil production. This is fair why? Discuss.
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Obama to establish presidential commission to investigate Gulf oil spill
As hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil continue to gush from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico four weeks after the tragic BP disaster, AP reports that: President Barack Obama will establish the commission by executive order. It will be similar to panels created to investigate the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the […]
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The real trouble from the oil spill is brewing deep under the sea
It’s been almost a month since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and began spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. But it’s not your typical oil spill; because of its depth and distance from shore, it has so far brought no images of fouled beaches or blackened, dead sea birds. Whatever damage is being done by […]
