BP
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Oil gusher forces State Dept. into awkward diplomacy with Cuba
Add this to every other sort of headache the Gulf of Mexico spill has caused: It’s now an international relations problem too. As Brendan DeMelle reports, the State Department has sent diplomatic notice about the spreading oil threat to Mexico, the Bahamas, the Marshall Islands, and even Cuba, a nation with which we do not […]
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BP: The gulf between image and reality
The devastating and escalating events in the Gulf of Mexico underscore an amazing collection of problems: reliance on polluting energy, absence of a coherent national energy plan, the problems with lax government oversight, and dozens of others. Perhaps most clearly, it shows the gulf we should have seen years ago between the image of BP […]
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Where are the oil protests? In New Orleans, they’ve finally begun
A few days ago, Dave asked a question that seemed to strike a chord with readers. In the face of coal miner deaths, the Gulf oil leak, the corrupt regulators that enabled it, and freak weather such as the Nashville flood, he asked: And yet where are the protests? Where are the people in the […]
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BP cover-up begins to unravel
UPDATE: BP finally admits its 5,000 barrels per day estimate lowballs the spill. If BP America’s president can’t say for sure the BP oil spill isn’t gushing 70,000 barrels per day, how can we trust BP’s official estimate that it’s actually spilling 5,000 barrels per day? After testifying before the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee […]
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BP disaster investigation must be free, clear, and complete
President Obama is likely to sign an executive order sometime during the next several days that would create an independent commission to investigate the causes behind the tragic BP oil disaster. A thorough independent investigation is essential to understand what caused the explosion that cost 11 workers their lives, and what led to the failure […]
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Robert Redford and green groups tell Obama to step up on Gulf oil leak
Whither Obama? There’s a growing chorus calling for the president to show leadership on the BP oil disaster by connecting it to America’s fossil-fuel dependence and the potential of clean-energy investment. “The silence from the White House is deafening,” a Clinton-era White House aide told ClimateWire. “Clearly without a White House push there does not […]
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Big Oil’s friends on Capitol Hill block spill liability increase
These are tough times for buddies of Big Oil on Capitol Hill. How do you stand by your men amid photos of thick pools of oil lapping into the marshes of southern Louisiana and more video of BP pipes gushing oil? But love, as always, finds a way. In the Senate, fossil-fuel fans James Inhofe […]
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A new oil rush endangers the Gulf of Mexico and the planet
The oil spill viewed from NASA’s Terra satellite on May 17.Photo: NASA’s Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team Cross-posted from TomDispatch. Yes, the oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in staggering quantities could prove one of the great ecological disasters of human history. Think of it, though, as just the […]
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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 […]
