oil industry
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Newsweek partners with oil lobby to raise ad cash
In September, I wrote a post “Newsweek gets duped by Big Oil — for real — in worst Big Media story of the year.” The Newsweek piece by Rana Foroohar was titled “Big Oil Goes Green for Real” with greenwashing lines like “So how should we take the spate of new green announcements from […]
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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 […]
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Exploring the extreme frontiers of oil drilling
The “Cajun Express” oil rig, tapping the black gold deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico.The oil field known as “Jack” is located 175 miles off the coast of Louisiana, below 7,200 feet of water and another 30,000 feet of seabed, occupying a geological layer formed in the Cenozoic Era more than 60 million years ago. […]
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Is the global oil tank half-full, is it half-empty … or are we running on fumes?
Cross-posted from Post Carbon Institute. In his article in the New York Times Sept. 24, “Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries,” staff reporter Jad Mouawad cites oil discoveries totaling 10 billion barrels for the first half of 2009. The Tiber field in the Gulf of Mexico alone accounts for four to six […]
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Two new documentaries — ‘Crude’ and ‘Fuel’ — examine two sides of our petroleum problem
Two new documentaries show the damaging effects of the world’s addiction to oil, each film from its own unique angle. Crude, which opened in New York on Sept. 9, traces the story of a lawsuit brought by 30,000 rural Ecuadorians against Chevron, which denies responsibility for turning their traditional rainforest home into a dumping ground […]
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‘Localwashing’ in pictures — bogus marketing at its finest
Local food, local goods, local everything is in, as you’ve no doubt heard. Local is fresher. Local burns less shipping fuel. Local keeps the wealth nearby. Naturally, there’s money to be made off local, so big businesses are muscling into the game. The emerging term is localwashing—a variation on greenwashing wherein businesses claim to be […]
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Sen. Landrieu’s plan to export Louisiana’s coastal destruction to Florida
While Louisiana struggles to restore coastal wetlands ravaged in large part by decades of oil and gas drilling, its senior senator is leading the effort to lift the ban on drilling off Florida’s Panhandle. U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) is the lone co-sponsor of legislation sponsored by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to open up new […]
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This “Energy Citizen” also wants a word
Last week saw the launch of a new initiative in the United States, “Energy Citizens,” which aims to create a significant lobby against the passage of climate change legislation in the USA and most specifically the recent House bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or “Waxman-Markey” as it is more widely […]
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Timothy Wirth, natural-gas advocate, takes gas industry to task
This story was written by ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten. Timothy Wirth.They were tough words for the natural gas industry to hear. In a blunt speech before the Colorado Oil and Gas Association last week, Timothy Wirth, a former Colorado Democratic senator and Under Secretary of State for global affairs in the Clinton administration, warned industry leaders […]