Red, Green, and Blue

On Wednesday, the oil behemoth ExxonMobil agreed to pay for failing to cut down pollution in refineries scattered across the country.

ExxonMobil, which has been hit before with environmental charges, will pay a $6.1 million penalty for failing to comply with pollution regulations in refineries in California, Louisiana and Texas. The company had agreed to reduce pollution in four refineries in those states, but came up short. Read the rest of this entry »

No longer do we need to look to history books and grandparents to know what the darkest days of the Great Depression were like:  we are there if consumer prices are any indication.

In November 2008, consumer prices fell to their lowest in 76 years. Will the Bush Depression be worse than the Great Depression?

1932 is considered the bottom point of the Great Depression:

Though the U.S. economy had gone into depression six months earlier, the Great Depression may be said to have begun with a catastrophic collapse of stock-market prices on the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929. During the next three years stock prices in the United States continued to fall, until by late 1932 they had dropped to only about 20 percent of their value in 1929…The failure of so many banks, combined with a general and nationwide loss of confidence in the economy, led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand and hence of production, thus aggravating the downward spiral. The result was drastically falling output and drastically rising unemployment; by 1932, U.S. manufacturing output had fallen to 54 percent of its 1929 level, and unemployment had risen to between 12 and 15 million workers, or 25-30 percent of the work force.

Have we reached the bottom of this economic depression or is the worse still to come?  Mike Schenk, an economist for Credit Union National Association, expressed his economic concerns, “This is scary stuff.  We are teetering on the brink of a massive downward spiral. Deflation is a threat.” Read the rest of this entry »

Haven’t had enough of the 2008 presidential election? Well, you’re in luck. The folks over at Talking Points Memo have compiled the highs and the lows, the soundbites, and, of course, the Joe the Plumber references and condensed them into one six-minute video.

When news broke Monday that president-elect Barack Obama would tap U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) as his choice for Secretary of the Interior, Colorado Democrats tempered their enthusiasm with a concerned eye turned toward the future and the 2010 elections, when the seat would be up for election.

Despite the recent bluing trend in Colorado, the Republican Party still has a strong base in Colorado. Salazar is a centrist, and in a senate seat that is by no means a lock for Democrats, it could be argued that no matter who Gov. Ritter choses to replace Salazar, they will have their work cut out for them defending it. CQ Politics writes:

Salazar would have been decisively favored to win in a state that has trended Democratic in recent elections.

But the seat will be little tougher for the Democrats to hold with Salazar not on the ballot. Whereas Salazar would have run for re-election as a six-year incumbent, the person that Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter appoints will have served less than two years by the time of the 2010 election, when he or she presumably will seek a full six-year term.

That being said, as an environmentalist, I’m far more concerned about losing Salazar as a protector of Colorado’s rivers and streams, its mineral resources, and its public lands, than I am about the job the Senator will do protecting those things as the next Secretary of the Interior.



Image: Hurst

Who better to know the real story of the future sustainability and cost of oil than the leaders of oil companies? In a recent study sponsored by the consulting firm Deloitte only 17% of 50 senior oil and gas company executives believe that fossil fuels will be the most sustainable fuel source in 25 years’ time; 23% think it will be the cheapest. In 25 years most oilmen place their bets on renewable energy as the cheapest and most sustainable fuel.

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A cartoon by Mark Fiore satirically extolling the benefits of ramping up oil production. Fiore makes the not-so-subtle allusion to drug addiction by sprinkling drug dealing/using metaphors liberally throughout.

In a press conference today, Obama will announce the appointment of Lisa Jackson as Head of the EPA and Stephen Chu as Energy Secretary.

After 8 years of cronyism–that lead to the neglect and dismantling of a myriad of environmental protections–it’s going to seem weird to Mother Earth to actually feel protected.

I grew up in Massachusetts where the Kennedys—for all intents and purposes—are treated like royalty. I do hold Senator Ted Kennedy in very high regard for all the excellent work he has done in his 46 years in the U.S. Senate.  That is why I am especially troubled by the senator’s long-standing opposition to the proposed offshore wind farm in Massachusetts. As news broke late last week that there might be yet another delay in the eight year battle to get Cape Wind approved, I had to wonder if Kennedy’s hand was somehow behind it. And according to reports, that is at least plausible.

As I reported yesterday**, Minnesota Rep. Jim Oberstar sent a letter to Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen asking for a delay in the Guard’s final recommendations on Cape Wind. Acting as Chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Oberstar’s letter demanded a delay for public comment on the project’s potential impact on marine radar.

Well, apparently it worked.

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While the biggest news out of the energy and environmental world this week may have been a competition between the UN conference in Poznan, or perhaps the planned appointments of President-elect Obama’s environmental team or any other relevant news, the funniest news had a hands-down winner. That was, most certainly, the strange and sudden appearance of the ‘Clean Coal Carolers’ - an industry sponsored Flash animation of pieces of coal, dressed in warm hats and scarves, singing adaptations of traditional Christmas tunes. Only these songs were remixed to tout the brilliance and necessity of coal in American life.

On Friday, however, the Clean Coal Carolers ceased to exist. Thanks to an overwhelming voice of discontent with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s (ACCCE) marketing ploy, the cute little lumps of coal were retired just about as fast as they popped up. The page once reserved for the carolers (http://www.americaspower.org/carolers) now redirects to a post on the ACCCE blog, lamenting that it was “time for them to head home for the holidays.” From the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC to the pages of environmental blogs across the net, the Clean Coal Carolers were ridiculed into nonexistence.



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In what must have triggered a collective moan of ‘are you kidding me?’ from environmentalists and renewable energy advocates across the country and the world, Minnesota Representative Jim Oberstar, a Democrat, has asked the United States Coast Guard to delay its final recommendations on the proposed Cape Wind project. If built, the project would be the first offshore wind farm in the United States.

Oberstar, Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee sent a letter to Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen this week requesting an extension of at least 60 days to conduct a public comment period to gauge opinion on the wind farm’s potential impact on marine radar and safety.


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