'Sustain' Archive
Weekly Mulch: Fighting the Joe Millers of the World
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Joe Miller, Sarah Palin’s choice candidate for one of Alaska’s Senate seats, does not believe in climate change. That didn’t bother Alaska voters: this week, Miller bested Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the state’s Republican primary.
If that weren’t worrisome enough, it also emerged that the fossil fuel industry spent eight times more than environmental groups on lobbying in 2009, the year the House passed the climate change bill. It’s been a bad year already for environmental causes, and as the November election edges closer, progressives might want to start working overtime to regain momentum on climate and energy issues.
Murkowski was solidly against the idea of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulating carbon. But she was willing to talk about cap-and-trade programs, and at the very least, she was willing to admit climate change was happening. Depending on how November’s election shakes out, the shift towards climate-denial in Congress may only worsen. A slew of Republican candidates are convinced that, as one put it, “only God knows where our climate is going,” as Care2 reports. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Green Daydreams? A Clean Gulf, Energy Efficiency, and More
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) took Obama administration officials to task for encouraging Americans to believe that the majority of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had dispersed.
“People want to believe that everything is OK and I think this report and the way it is being discussed is giving many people a false sense of confidence regarding the state of the Gulf,” Markey said.
Belief, after all, is powerful force. As coal baron Don Blankenship says, “You have to have your own beliefs, your own core beliefs, your own strengths and do what you think is right. You can’t do what others believe is right, you have to do what you believe is right.”
But what if your beliefs, even those backed up by science, are wrong? If you believed government officials who reported the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had dispersed—wrong. If you believed McDonald’s or Sara Lee really was helping save the planet—wrong. (Does anyone actually believe that one?) And if you believed you were conserving tons of energy by flicking off the light switches when you left the room—wrong again! (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Dispersants Harm Gulf Spill Workers
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
BP’s relief wells are just short of sealing off the Macondo well, the epicenter of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For the Gulf community, this milestone might herald a sigh of mental relief. But clean-up workers are feeling the after-effects of working with oil and the chemical dispersants used to dispel it, and physical relief is still a ways off.
Symptoms include…
There are plenty of reports about the toll relief work is taking on Gulf Coast residents who stepped in to clean the oil off sea waters and beaches. Many of these workers, idled from their regular gigs by the BP spill, had little choice about taking on these jobs. Inter Press Service has a particularly wrenching description:
“I was with my friend Albert, and we were both slammed with exposure,” Donny Mastler, a commercial fisherman told IPS. Mastler inhaled toxic chemicals he identified as dispersants, bubbling up white on the water’s surface.
Mastler’s symptoms began with watery eyes and a burning in his throat, he told IPS, but they worsened from there and included vomiting, discolored urine, sweating, and diarrhea. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: BP Spill Plugged, But What About Michigan?
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
BP is on the verge of escaping headlines, and if you’re ready to forget about the oil spill, fine. But disasters just like the Gulf spill are playing out across the country.
Yesterday, BP cemented the well that has been spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico shut. The Obama administration is saying that the majority of the oil released is no longer a problem. The spill was supposed to drive the Senate to finally pass a bill touching on energy issues and taking the oil industry to task, but this week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pushed back work on his minimalist energy bill until the fall.
But in states like Michigan and New York, similar stories are developing on smaller scales. For-profit companies, unburdened by strong regulations, are taking what they want, regardless of the consequences for the environment or for communities that depend on having clean soil, air, and water. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Despite Senate Inaction, Clean Energy Economy Thriving
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) released an energy and oil spill bill this week that has no carbon cap, no renewable energy standard, and no chance of changing the course of America’s energy future. And yet, despite Senate setbacks, the clean energy economy is growing.
A new report, funded in part by the State Department, says that renewable energy use worldwide is at a “clear tipping point,”as Yes! Magazine’s Brooke Jarvis writes. That growth comes despite inaction in Washington. Around the world, electric companies are drawing power from sources like wind and solar, entrepreneurs are building new renewable energy generators, and governments are pushing for renewable energy use.
Congressional inaction
Over the course of 2010, the Senate’s ambitions for climate legislation have dwindled to almost nothing. A session that began with the Kerry-Boxer bill—a close-enough approximation of the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act—ended with Reid’s energy bill, which drops all efforts to cap carbon. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: How Reid’s Energy Bill Undermines Senate Climate Efforts
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) introduced a limited energy bill that responds to the oil spill and promotes energy efficiency. Reid’s action is a signal that the Senate will not pass climate legislation before November, although Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said that a climate bill could come up in the lame-duck session following the election.
“The Senate’s climate bill is officially dead,” Kate Sheppard writes at Mother Jones. “And given that Democrats will almost certainly hold fewer seats in Congress next year, major action on the climate is unlikely to be revived anytime soon.”
Since 2009, expectations for a bill regulating carbon emissions have steadily declined. After this latest failure in the Senate, the best near-term hope for addressing climate change comes from the Environmental Protection Agency, which still has the power to regulate carbon emissions.
At the Washington Independent, Andrew Restuccia reports that Sen. Reid’s bill will likely hold oil companies more financially accountable for spills by lifting the cap on their liability for economic damages and will nudge homeowners towards energy efficiency. (more…)
Weekly Mulch: Politics, Power, and the Environment Beyond BP
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Washington has a blind spot when it comes to the environment. BP and the oil spill brought the government’s failures into the spotlight, but the same problems crop up across industries: Corporations pollute water, blast through mountains, and pour carbon into the atmosphere with insufficient oversight. But no one—Congress, the environmental community, or the president—seems to have the power to address these issues.
The Senate says it will take up energy legislation soon, but staffers are saying the body won’t pass a strong climate bill without more public pressure. Energy companies are ripping resources from the land and leaving destruction in their wake, while clean energy technology, though popular, has yet to form a new platform to fill the country’s needs.
And where’s presidential leadership on this issue? “The president had a good meeting a couple days ago with senators from both parties that have led on this issue,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told the press this week, according to Mother Jones. “We have not made any final determinations about the size and scope of the legislation except to say that the president believes, and continues to believe, that putting a price on carbon has to be part of our comprehensive energy reform.” (more…)
Weekly Mulch: When will America be free from BP?
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom—the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts it at AlterNet:
“We’re in an abusive relationship and unable to leave our abuser. The plight of the people in Louisiana proves the point. Louisianans have been punched in the face by the hand that feeds them, and yet their biggest worry is that the oil and gas industry is going to walk out the door and leave them.”
Where’s the love?
It’s clear that BP, for instance, isn’t playing carefully with our country or its resources. At Mother Jones, David Corn relates the latest example of the company’s callousness. Its recovery plan had no stipulations about handling even a small storm like the one that stopped clean-up this week. It did, however, include plans to save sea life that hasn’t lived in the Gulf for millions of years. As Corn put it, the company was “prepared for walruses, not prepared for hurricanes.”
The biggest problem, of course, is that BP wasn’t prepared to handle a blow-out to begin with. The leak has gone on for so long that governmental officials are now taking unprecedented measures to protect the wildlife most vulnerable to its effects. Beth Buczynski reports at Care2 that official are going to dig up about 700 sea turtle nests on Alabama and Florida beaches that are at risk from the oil.
“Once the eggs have hatched, the young turtles will be released in darkness on Florida’s Atlantic beaches into oil-free water,” she writes. “Translocation of nests on this scale has never been attempted before.”
Halliburton
No matter how badly these companies treat us, it seems we can’t get rid of them. Take Halliburton. The company has latched its talons into the country and will not let go. It is second only to BP in shouldering responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon spill. As Jason Mark reports for the Earth Island Journal, just before the oil spill, Halliburton took over Boots & Coots, a company that deals with oil-well blowouts; that company now has a contract with BP to help with the relief well.
“Halliburton is essentially making money from causing the accident and then helping to repair it,” Mark writes. “Halliburton’s many-fingered tentacles is just the latest illustration of how powerful the company is.”
Wimpy Washington
Washington isn’t strong enough to fight back against that sort of corporate power. Over the past year, energy interests have whittled down the climate change legislation to a tepid half-step. Right now it looks most likely that a bill that passes will regulate only the utilities sector.
“We believe we have compromised significantly, and we’re prepared to compromise further,” Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told Politico this week after a White House meeting on the bill.
“If you’re looking for the sorry state of American energy politics distilled into one line, there it is,” writes Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. “Kerry fights harder for clean energy than just about any national politician.”
Still, if anything passes the Senate, Washington will celebrate. As Aaron Wiener explains at the Washington Independent, “For all the disappointment among environmentalists over the repeated compromises Democrats have made on climate legislation to win over moderates, some argue that a utilities-only cap would achieve most of the goals of an economy-wide carbon pricing scheme. The question now is whether Democratic leaders in the Senate can muster 60 votes for even a weakened bill to overcome a Republican filibuster.”
Our friends abroad
On an international level, our governing bodies might be doing a better job, but not by much. Inter Press Service reports that the countries at the meeting promised to scale back taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuels. Even that promise is limited, however. “Countries agree to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” but each country decides what those are,” IPS reports. “Some countries like Japan, Australia, Italy and others have already said they don’t have any.”
And at Earth Island Journal, Ron Johnson heard a different story.
Johnson spoke to Kim Carstensen, who leads the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate Initiative, who compared this meeting’s report to that of the last G20 summit and found that climate issues had dropped off the radar. “There were eight references to clean energy in the final report from Pittsburgh (the last G20 Summit) and they have been completely vacuum cleaned,” he said. “That is kind of scary.”
Fight back
In situations like this, it takes massive pressure from outside to move the political apparatus forward. At AlterNet, Heetan Kalan has some ideas about how to progress—reach beyond the environmental community; enlist “doctors, nurses, public health officials and patients speaking out about the connection between consumers of coal energy and their immediate health concerns.” Kalan writes:
“After all, climate change is not solely an environmental problem — it is a human/planetary problem. If we are going to rely on a small base of environmentalists to carry us through this crisis, we are in trouble. Our spokespeople on this issue have to come from a wide spectrum of citizens and leaders.”
Certainly, they have to come from somewhere, and as Steve Benen writes at The Washington Monthly, whoever is speaking on this issue now, they’re not speaking loud enough.
“Lawmakers aren’t facing much in the way of public pressure,” he writes. “The polls look encouraging, suggesting the public is inclined to back the Democratic proposals, but that support hasn’t translated into aggressive advocacy — phone calls to lawmakers’ offices, letter-writing campaigns, district meetings, sizable rallies, etc….If engaged constituents want more, Congress will have to feel considerably more heat than they are now.”
In other words, if America wants to be free of coal, oil, gas, and the energy industry, we’re going to have to fight for it.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Mulch: As risks for oil and gas grow, USSF offers change
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.
“So many people were quick to respond to our requests to be interviewed about fracking that I could tell instantly that this was a national problem—and nobody had really talked enough about it,” Fox told The Nation this week.
Natural gas
In Washington, even green groups like the Sierra Club have been pushing natural gas as a clean alternative to fuels like coal; reports like Fox’s suggest that the environmental costs of obtaining that gas are not yet clear. Besides water contamination, natural gas opponents are also documenting environmental damage to air quality. Like the problems with deepwater oil drilling, which became apparent after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the dangers of hydrofracking could go unchecked until disaster strikes.
Weekly Mulch: Can Washington Stand Up to the Energy Industry?
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders spent this week trying to stand up to the oil industry. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama pushed BP to siphon $20 billion into a escrow fund that will cover liability claims, and Congress grilled BP CEO Tony Hayward and other oil bigwigs as to how they were protecting the country’s coastal waters.
While these developments are promising, mopping up the current crisis and guarding against future incidents will take more momentum than a speech, a meeting, or a few hearings can deliver. (more…)