Climate Files 67/ Corporate Oil Terrorism
Gulf Stream Currents -- from NOAA
The Gulf Oil spill is nothing short of catastrophic. It will take months to clean up the oil and that’s only possible if the oil stops gushing from the 3 mile-deep oil well leaks! There is a lot of blame to go around — first of all BP and the operators of the oil rig who tried to save money and not install adequate safety equipment. Also blame the Bush administration and Dick Cheney and their anti-environmental energy policy. Finally, blame Halliburton because they did not install the safety checks that could have possibly prevented this horrendous leak. This is corporatist greed, forming our energy policy, taking what they want of our natural resources and leaving the environment decimated. It’s a form of terrorism. But even these entities are not the real culprit. The final blame should lie on the American people and our insatiable, endless taste for oil.
This episode of Climate Files contains some news on the spill, some background on past BP spills, an interview with one of the survivors of the oil rig explosion last month, and a clip of Mike Papantonio from the Mike Malloy radio show.
Skytruth is an activist blog that lobbies against offshore drilling. Their website is blog.skytruth.org
Just five months ago, SkyTruth’s President testified to Congress about the risks posed by offshore drilling. SkyTruth testified at a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on November 19. You can read the entire testimony by John Amos here (pdf download). The general subject of the hearing was Federal stewardship of offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. waters.
If anyone has any doubt who is determining our energy policy, watch this video from the Energy and Natural Resources hearing last November 2009. It’s clear that the American people are not the people Congress is representing on energy policy. There was a similar blowout in Australia that was a bit smaller and still took 10 weeks to control.
Ring of Fire’s website is here.
Two additional ProPublica.com stories about further leaks and more chemical spills is here.
BP Ready to Pay “Legitimate” Oil Spill Claims, says their ‘generous’ CEO. “BP is ready to pay all legitimate claims tied to the oil spill caused by the accident at its Gulf of Mexico undersea well, Chief Executive Tony Hayward told National Public Radio on Monday.” This is after they tried to get away with limiting all claims to $5,000!
The interview with the oil rig worker is from Drillingahead.com, a site that is not environmentally aware or sympathetic.
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Climate Files 61 / Question the EPA
I attended the EPA Townhall Meeting and asked a good question. Everyone should question the EPA. Mine was about that nasty Canadian tar sands oil and the pipeline that is spilling oil into the beautiful northern part of one of the Great Lakes states. The EPA must not care very much about that, because they wouldn’t answer a simple question: how does a dirty oil pipeline fit in with the new green economy being promoted in the Great Lakes states? I like this EPA so much better than the last one, but it’s hard to believe it’s so easy to stump the EPA.
Also in this episode, what U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders said about climate change deniers, and what President Obama said about energy and climate in his speech to the business roundtable in Washington DC. Some headlines were covered too, including the exciting news about Bloom Energy, a new company making a revolutionary new type of stand-alone power station. It sounds almost too good to be true — fuel cells that run on oxygen and biomass? Yes, and it’s already being used by companies in Silicon Valley. Here is what I wrote about it on Futurism Now.
The Delta Institute website is here.
The EPA video page where you can watch the entire Townhall meeting from February 23rd is here.
News covered:
- Poor Nations Could Be Paid to Preserve Marine CO2: UN (Reuters)
- Curbing Smokestack Emissions Tops EPA’s 2011-2013 Enforcement Goals (Greenwire)
- Groups ID Toxic Coal Ash Sites in 14 States, Demand Regulations (ENN)
- Tackling Climate Change ‘Urgent,’ President Hu Jintao Says (China Daily)
- Italy Delays New Solar Plan Again, Industry Worried
- World’s Temperature Record To Be Re-analyzed (The Independent)
- Check out the Enbridge Pipeline in my Backyard blog.
- Waste could fuel part of Spain – read here.
- Did you hear about the 126,000 gallon oil spill in northern MN, the 2nd in months?
You can download this episode here, or subscribe on Climate Files Radio.
Final song is by Galactic, “Heart of Steel feat. Irma Thomas” from the MPR song of the day podcast.
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