It’s a great headline. But it’s not related to BP’s Gulf Oil disaster – nobody involved in the biggest single pollution incident in US history has even come close to being arrested, never mind going to jail. Nope, this headline is from Hungary, where a factory’s storage facility failed last week, sending a wave of […]
Two days ago, New Jersey’s Republican Governor, Chris Christie, cancelled the largest mass transit project in the US – a tunnel under the Hudson River into Manhattan that would double the region’s commuter rail capacity. He said there wasn’t enough money – despite billions of dollars in Federal aid that were already committed. Quite aside […]
Writing at Salon, Andrew Leonard ponders the imponderable: Is the White House’s new acceptance of solar panels (nearly two years after the Election of Hope!) “…a welcome change of tone, prefiguring a new push on climate change and renewable energy, or yet another example of how a too-cautious administration keeps stepping on its feet”? Bill […]
(From our sister-blog, Ecolocalizer) …Wyoming has just become the first state in the nation to enact regulations which now force petroleum companies to disclose all of the toxic compounds that they have been utilizing in a dangerous drilling technique called “fracking“, or hydraulic fracturing. Fracking is now threatening to pollute the collective water supply of […]
(From Bill McKibbon and 350.org) Dear Friends, When we first announced the Global Work Party scheduled for this weekend, I had three worries: 1) Since so many of you had done such a good job last year–5200 events in 181 countries, what CNN called “the most widespread day of political action in the planet’s history”–I […]
Beth Buczynski reports over at Care2 that despite last month’s strange snubbing of solar, the Obama White House will go solar after all. “By the end of this spring, there will be solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity and a solar hot water heater on the roof of the White House,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu […]
This just in from Bill McKibben: Dear friends, I just walked out of a disappointing meeting with the White House: they refused to accept the Carter solar panel we came to Washington to deliver and said that they would continue their “deliberative process” to discuss putting solar panels back on the White House roof. Well, […]
Remember the $20 billion compensation fund that President Obama got BP to agree to? The money would be held in escrow to assure that the thousands of people hurt – both economically and physically – by the Gulf oil disaster would be compensated. Well, it turns out BP has been dragging its feet. And hasn’t […]
Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy, has a new book out: Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. The founder of climate activist group 350.org, McKibben is one of the leading voices in the fight to change the way people do business in order to turn around the […]
(From FailDrill.com) A group of coast scientists – experts who teach at universities from Maine to Hawaii – have drafted a letter to Incident Commander Thad Allen, calling on him to cancel the sand berms and other “massive re-engineering” projects. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had championed the sand berms as a way of keeping oil […]
(From DrillFail.com) Late Sunday, Incident Commander Thad Allen notified BP that seepage had been detected in the ocean floor near the well. It could be a leak from the sub-surface portion of the Deepwater Horizon/Macondo well, which would mean the cap – currently in a testing phase – would not be able to keep holding pressure. […]
BP concluded 48 hours of testing on the new cap over their busted well, and the results are good. The oil flow has stopped, pressure is stable, and there’s no evidence – so far – that the cap has blown a new leak in the underground well. “As we continue to see success in the […]
(From RGB’s sister blog, FailDrill.com) Despite the glowing headlines proclaiming “Gulf Oil Stops Flowing”, we’re not out of the woods yet. In a conference call this afternoon, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen announced that pressure levels have NOT risen high enough in the recently-capped well. This could mean one of two things: The oil […]
After a day of waiting, the word came from the Gulf late Tuesday – BP will NOT be testing the new cap on the Deepwater Horizon well today. This comes as a major disappointment, and feeds fears that the well is in such bad shape that the capping process won’t work. “We decided that the […]
Fail update… Remember Bobby Jindal’s brilliant plan to bulldoze sand out into the Gufl? To form berms to keep the oil from getting ashore? Robert S. Young, an authority on shoreline geology at Western Carolina University. His take: The White House has announced that this project is now moving forward, despite serious concerns among coastal scientists, […]