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  • Not even the Beatles can stop the oil spill [VIDEO]

    When leaking crude threatens cartoon characters in a pineapple under the sea (under the sea!), the Beatles give it a go in this animated short. “We’ve been trying to stop the oil with our music,” they say. “It’s not working.” ——————————————————————————————————————————————– Like what you see? Sign up to receive The Grist List, our email roundup […]

  • Oil found in Gulf food chain, salmon nastiness, Mexico woes, U.N. lauds sustainable ag

    When my info-larder gets too packed, it’s time to serve up some choice nuggets from around the Web. Get’em while they’re hot.BP oil infiltrates the Gulf’s food chain The inevitable has happened. From a McLatchy article: University scientists have spotted the first indications oil is entering the Gulf seafood chain — in crab larvae — […]

  • BP offshore oil board game: Seemed like a fun idea at the time?

    Back in the ’70s, BP decided to market a family board game by the name of “Offshore Oil Strike,” boasting the “thrills of drilling” as well as the “hazards and rewards.” I mean, Monopoly worked out pretty well for the Wall Street tycoons even in the midst of the Great Depression, right? On the other […]

  • The mystery BP Twitterer revealed!

    Leroy Stick is the brains behind a fake BP Twitter account called BPGlobalPR that’s racked up more than 180,000 followers. Need to Know‘s Erin Chapman grabbed an exclusive on-camera interview with him at the TEDxOilSpill conference. Stick (an alias) began feeding his updates to humor-starved news junkies on May 19 and — like the oil […]

  • Good news for deepwater-oil junkies

    We’ve all heard that we’re addicted to oil. But in the wake of the BP spill we might do well to take the oil-as-a-drug metaphor a little more seriously. For starters we need to understand that deepwater oil is the really bad stuff, the petrochemical heroin – high risk, costly, deadly. Sooner or later we […]

  • Will hurricanes rain down oil on the Gulf of Mexico?

    An oily mess on the Gulf coast.Photo: David HelvargBy the end of the summer, it could be raining oil along the Gulf of Mexico.  Hurricane Alex is the first of a series of 14 named storms predicted for the 2010 hurricane season. The Gulf is warmer than it’s been since before 2005 when unusually warm […]

  • Why drilling moratoriums are a ‘morally false choice’ [VIDEO]

    Should offshore drilling be banned? Jon Meacham of PBS’s Need to Know asked Lisa Margonelli, who writes about the global culture and economy of energy, at Monday’s TEDx Oil Spill conference. She explains her view that Americans don’t have a right to drive cars and use gasoline unless we’re willing to drill for it in […]

  • How BP helped destroy democracy in Iran

    This essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. To frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the club. It’s great not to be the only member any more! Does boycotting BP really make sense? Perhaps not. After all, many BP filling stations are actually owned by […]

  • This week, declare your independence from dirty energy

    Pledge your allegiance to clean energy: declare your independence from dirty energyPhoto courtesy of NREL This weekend, we celebrate America’s independence from Britain. Brave people — the fathers and mothers of our country — stood together against the most powerful empire of the time and said, “We will be free.”  But as BP’s disastrous oil […]