I am here today because I have a responsibility to the American people to do my best to explain what BP has done, is doing, and will do in the future to respond to this terrible incident. . . . —BP CEO Tony Hayward, opening statement to House Energy and Commerce...
Natural Resources
From the Oval Office, Promises for Gulf Coast Restoration, MMS Rehab
We’ll look at the energy aspects of President Obama’s Tuesday Oval Office address “in the coming days” (as he might say). Meanwhile, we want to focus on two of the most promising elements of the president’s remarks (text here). First, about three minutes in, he...
Fake President Rachel Maddow’s Oval-Office-in-Her-Own-Head Address
Getting Real with a Fake President Superb, every word of it, except maybe the part at the very end about the White Sox and the Red Sox. Click here for the full text, and click the photo above or here for the video. Read it and share it. Watch it and weep for joy....
Notes for Tonight’s Oval Office Script
Very briefly, what we’re hoping to hear in the president’s address is a strong commitment to progressive energy legislation—the best of the Kerry-Lieberman and Waxman-Markey bills currently in Congress. (Here are some good, sensible specifics proposed by the Center...
BP Oil Flood Brought to You by U.S. Supreme Court?
[cross-posted at Daily Kos] Let’s play what-if: Would the BP Oil Flood have happened if the Rehnquist Supreme Court in its Bush v. Gore ruling had not stopped the state of Florida’s vote-counting? We think maybe not. We think it’s not too far a stretch to say that the...
Welcome Back, Mr. President, to Louisiana, the Dark Underside of the Nation’s Guilty Conscience
* [ cross-posted at Daily Kos ] Take a good look around. Our state bird, only recently removed from the Endangered Species list, now so soaked with crude oil it can’t lift its wings or even breathe. Our hearts are breaking for the dying pelicans and all that they...
Rachel Maddow Reporting from Jean Lafitte National Park
When Rachel Maddow broadcast from the French Quarter the Friday night before the Super Bowl (how long ago that feels!), she surely did not imagine she would be back a few months later covering the hugest godawful environmental catastrophe this nation has ever seen....
After “Epic Foolishness,” Time to Wake a Sleeping (Green) Giant
Columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times, a stalwart advocate for reinforced infrastructure and an eloquent defender of the unemployed, of over-stressed and under-supplied soldiers, and other victims of neglect, is usually moderate in temperament as he shows...
“Our Kinship Will Not Be Washed Away”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxWHabgk34w&feature=player_embedded We always hate to miss a good protest, so we really wish we could have been in Jackson Square yesterday for the big SAVE THE GULF rally (organized, at least in part, by Murdered Gulf). In her...
“This Small Planet”
* At a loss for words while Louisiana’s at a loss for land, life Like many bloggers we’re sometimes at a loss for words in the face of the widening catastrophe in the Gulf—the one that began with a bang on April 20, Earth Day. We want to say something, to do something...
BP Oilpocalypse Threatens New Orleans’s Very Existence
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlPPFcy-3Vo&feature=player_embedded Steve Wereley [of] . . . Purdue University, told NPR the actual spill rate of the BP oil disaster is about 3 million gallons a day—15 times the official guess of BP and the federal government. . ....
“Oil-Spotted Dick”: Cheney’s Oily Fingerprints in the BP Disaster
It’s Not “Obama’s Katrina”—But It’s Cheney’s Second [ cross-posted at Daily Kos ] “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” —Vice President Dick Cheney, quoted in New York Times, May 1,...
“Held Up Without a Gun”
I was out driving just taking it slow / Looked at my tank, it was reading low / Pulled in a [BP] station out on Highway 1 / Held up without a gun / Held up without a gun . . . —Bruce Springsteen (1980) * BP’s 2010 first quarter profits were $5.6 billion, a 135 percent...
BP Celebrates Earth Day with Bonfire, Oil Spill:
Well Leaks 210,000 Gallons a Day into Gulf of Mexico
But Seriously, Tragically, 11 Missing Workers Are Presumed Dead On Saturday, April 24, Coast Guard officials reported that the damaged Deepwater Horizon well on the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico was leaking oil at a rate of about 42,000 gallons (or 1,000 barrels) per...
Copenhagen Climate Accord Better Than Nothing
(Sound Familiar?)
First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. At the end it was no longer about saving the biosphere: it was just a matter of saving face. As the talks melted down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile was...
Coastal Conservation Corps:
A New CCC for Coastal Restoration—and Jobs
Levees Not War is pleased to direct your attention to LaCoastPost, where you can read a guest post titled “Why Not Institute a ‘Green’ Corps for the Coast?”, or, “Reinventing the CCC and WPA.” In collaboration with LaCoastPost editor Len Bahr, a coastal science and...
“The Brown Pelican Is Back”
An Environmental Protection Success Story The brown pelican, a species that was driven nearly to extinction by use of the pesticide D.D.T., has grown back in strong enough numbers that the admirable bird has been removed from the endangered species list. The decision...
Celebrate! Good News for Water Works! (A One-Two Punch for The Decider)
Within two days, the two chambers of the U.S. Congress have voted to override the president’s veto of the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA)—the first water projects bill in seven years (normally passed every two years), and the first override of a presidential veto since 1998. Today the Senate voted 79 to 14—an overwhelming margin similar to that of the House’s 361 to 54—to authorize spending levels for about 900 projects nationwide, including about $7 billion for Louisiana coastal restoration and flood protection. Bruce Alpert of the Times-Picayune notes, “Congress still must approve individual appropriations to get the work done.”
Swiftly Melting Planet 2007
The Arctic ice cap normally melts to some extent every summer, but it’s been melting at alarming rates in recent years. The sea ice extends only about half as far as it did 50 years ago, and the Arctic has lost about one-third of its area since satellite measurements began about the mid-1970s.