Mississippi

Trouble mounts for Entergy following radioactive leaks at Vermont nuclear plant

New Orleans-based power giant Entergy is in hot water following revelations that its Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has leaked radioactive contamination to the environment — and its trouble isn’t limited to Vermont. The Mississippi State Attorney General is also taking aim at the company, questioning Entergy’s recent transfer of more than $1 billion from its […]

Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)

Roger Wicker Sen. Roger Wicker plans to oppose the Kerry-Boxer climate bill.  In this letter to a constituent, he writes, “I am opposed to any sort of system to cap carbon emissions permits because it would have no effect on climate change and is an unwarranted tax increase on the American people.” Wicker calls for […]

A victory for Katrina victims; a defeat for Alaskan villagers

Cross-posted from Warming Law. A federal appeals court has reversed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by victims of Hurricane Katrina seeking damages related to global warming, while a federal district court in California has dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by an Alaskan village allegedly disappearing beneath rising sea levels. These rulings come weeks after […]

White House announces Gulf restoration task force amid criticism of Army Corps

In response to criticism that the Army Corps of Engineers has failed to take needed action, President Obama is creating a federal task force to overhaul management of coastal restoration efforts in Louisiana and Mississippi. White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley made the announcement this week in an interview with Bloomberg News. […]

Mississippi governor illustrates how the resource curse works in America

If you think of U.S. energy policy in Freudian terms, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour represents the pure, unbridled id. His energy strategy for the state? "More energy."

If you're wondering what that means, he spells it out:

Mississippi has large deposits of lignite coal, and the Mississippi Power Co. has announced that it will build a coal-fired electrical generation facility that will have carbon capture and sequestration. As I understand it, this coal-fired plant will have the emissions of a power plant powered by natural gas because the captured carbon will be compressed and then injected into older oil wells to boost production.

Rentech has announced that it's building a coal-to-liquids fuels plant near Natchez. In Greenville we've got a biodiesel plant going in. And Entergy has already applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a second nuclear reactor near St. Francisville.

The response of his interlocutor T. Boone Pickens? "The rest of the country might want to take a look at your state."

Yeah, take a look at what the resource curse looks like in America: Among U.S. states Mississippi ranks 50th in infant mortality, first in children living in poverty, second in teen pregnancies, 48th in bachelor degrees, 50th in per-capita income, first in obesity, 49th in overall health, second in unemployment, and first in poverty.

Despite the grinding poverty, Mississippi ranks 14th in per-capita energy consumption, perhaps because it ranks 47th in energy efficiency.

Yes, the rest of the country might want to take a look at what a supply-obsessed "more energy" strategy yields.

Mississippi Senate race goes negative as Dems attack incumbent over Big Oil

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is targeting Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) for supporting Big Oil. A new ad highlights the fact that he voted to give oil companies tax breaks and voted against legislation to curb speculation in the oil market. “While oil companies make record profits, Roger Wicker votes to give them $28 billion […]

Mississippi town not enthusiastic about storing strategic petroleum

Richton, Miss., is the lucky town picked as the fifth storage site for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. To create space to store strategic petroleum, the Department of Energy will drain 50 million gallons of water a day for five years from the Pascagoula River to dissolve underground salt caverns, pumping the resulting brine through […]

A post-Katrina homebuilding project gives hope for weathering severe storms

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Mississippi on August 29, 2005, the storm’s 125-mile-an-hour winds and 25-foot wall of seawater ground homes, boats, and businesses into matchsticks across the state’s three coastal counties: Jackson, Hancock, and Harrison. The cities of Waveland and Bay St. Louis, roughly 20 miles east of the Mississippi-Louisiana state line, were […]

Obamamississippi

Barack Obama won the Mississippi primary today by a huge margin: 60-37. Blacks composed more than half the turnout and 90% of them voted for Obama. Only a third of whites did, marking one of the most racially divided contests yet. This is the beginning of a six-week lacuna between primaries — next up is […]