Across the eastern seaboard of the United States, from South Carolina to Maine, there is an intense and well-ordered preparation underway to brace against and limit the fallout from Hurricane Irene. In North Carolina, 300,000 people have been ordered to evacuate the Outer Banks and low-lying coastal areas. The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has ordered the first ever mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas in all five boroughs.

New York City evacuations are underway—the first mandatory evacuation in the city’s history. This afternoon, mass transit will be entirely shut down. 370,000 New Yorkers are in the evacuation zone. With a substantial amount of the city expected to be subject to severe flooding if the storm makes a direct hit, the Bloomberg administration is taking care to do everything that was not done in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina’s arrival in New Orleans.

The highest winds yet recorded were 110 mph, at Cedar Ferry Terminal, North Carolina. MSNBC is reporting that hurricane-force winds are extending 90 miles out from the eye of the storm, even several hours after landfall.

There have been reports of at least one tornado touching down in Maryland, and a federal tornado wach zone now covers eastern parts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey. The latest satellite modeling suggests the storm’s most intense winds will rake the coasts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, hitting New York City with winds in excess of 70 mph. Delaware’s governor has ordered mandatory evacuations.

The state of New Jersey is under a blanket state of emergency, with some coastal areas under mandatory evacuation. The counties are issuing evacuation updates, including official state-backed shelters for evacuees. The NJ Office of Emergency Management has posted pdf documents with advised coastal evacuation routes. New Jersey storm surge maps have also been made available through the Office of Emergency Management.

New Jersey Transit will be entirely shut down as of noon today. New York’s public transit will be shut down at noon, as well. Five New York area airports will be closed, with thousands of flights canceled.

Hospitals and nursing homes are also being evacuated, a first for many of them. Some of the world’s most powerful financial institutions are in the mandatory evacuation zone, including Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Nomura Securities, RBC Capital Markets and the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Map: Click here for a pdf map of New York City’s mandatory evacuation zones.

Planning: Click here for a pdf guide to hurricane readiness, evacuation and response, for NYC.

This morning, Mayor Bloomberg issued the following statements, with a press release:

“During the storm, please stay off streets and sidewalks to prevent injury, and stay away from the windows if you live on the tenth floor of a high rise or above that. The risk of window damage is greater, so it’d be smart to stay away from the windows or go to a lower floor.

“If the low-lying areas of our city begin to flood, I mentioned the Con Ed may have to shut down their power lines. NYCHA buildings will be shutting down their elevators, as will other buildings. And if you’re using generated power, please do not have a generator inside your house or your apartment. Carbon monoxide fumes kill.

“In terms of our city buildings: All construction has been stopped. Our inspectors are working to make sure that construction sites are locked down.

“Homeowners and residents: If you haven’t done so already, please bring outdoor furniture inside – plywood, trashcans, any loose items that can blow around.

“So in conclusion: If you live in a low-lying Zone A areas or in the Rockaways, you have to leave, and you should start right now. Do not delay. Do not wait for the weather to be bad. It’s starting to rain here in Coney Island right now. This is just the beginning. You say it’s a few drops – this is going to be a very serious storm. No matter what the track is, no matter how much it weakens, this is a life threatening storm to people here.”

The city’s maps and readiness guide are also available in the following ten languages:

An additional 470,000 people live in the mandatory evacuation zones on Long Island, one of the most densely populated areas of the country.

Nassau County: Evacuation notice and resources

Suffolk County: Emergency preparedness resources

Most will likely have to evacuate inland or to official shelters, as New York City’s evacuation procedures and public transit shutdown will make it difficult to get through to the mainland. Some ferries may be able to move people from Long Island’s coastal areas to Connecticut, but these services will shut down when heavy winds and rough seas arrive, if they have not already. Evacuees should check with local authorities and transport services.

Fox 29 Philadelphia is reporting that the 8+ inches of rain expected to hit Philadelphia and New York would be equivalent to more than 60 inches of snow, a measure better understood by residents of the northeast. Some worst-case estimates are for twice that amount of precipitation. The National Hurricane Center is warning that before the storm relents, at least 15 inches of rain are expected to have fallen on North Carolina.

FEMA’s Craig Fugate is warning that tornadoes are expected to accompany the storm, and that anyone outside evacuation zones should remain indoors and keep away from doors and windows. The tornado warnings will last longer than usual, because the risk is tied to the full cyclone.

Storm surges have already been seen in North Carolina, roadways are beginning to see serious flooding, and Fugate also reminded the public that some of the worst floods ever seen came with tropical storms, not hurricanes. Hurricane category ratings are linked to wind-speeds and storm surge projections, not to rain volume.

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Hurricane Emergency Maps for New Jersey:

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New York

Suffolk County links:

• To find a list of open shelters, please click here.
• To find a Red Cross Shelter near you, please click here
• To see the coastal evacuation routes for Suffolk County, click here.
• To see the storm surge zones for Suffolk County, click here.

Nassau County:

• Evacuation notice and list of shelters
• Evacuation routes, maps and instructions
• County evacuation route map

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More links and emergency planning and evacuation resources:

Washington, DC, area

• News releases from the Mayor’s Office
• Follow Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Twitter and Facebook
• Register for Alert DC

• DDOT website information and on Twitter
• DPW website information and on Twitter
• HSEMA and 72hours.dc.gov
• DISB provides flood insurance information and tips on storm recovery
• MPD website information
• DCOA offers tips for preparing
• Evacuation route planning tool

Federal Government

• Ready.gov – hurricane preparedness and response resources
• NOAA Watch – tracking maps for Hurricane Irene
• National Hurricane Center – Hurricane Irene Public Advisory
• NOAA / NHC - Atlantic Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook

List of Legislative Riders on H.R.2584, The Interior & Environment Approps bill for FY12
39 provisions in the bill specifically eliminate environmental protections in service of big polluters and GOP campaign donors

*In order as they appear in the bill, with section numbers cited.

Blocks Endangered Species Act Designations [Language on page 8]: Prohibits funding for Endangered Species Act listings or critical habitat designations.

Blocks NPS Boat Checks on Yukon River [Section 116]: Prohibits the National Park Service from carrying out boat inspection or safety checks on the Yukon River within the Yukon-Charley National Preserve in Alaska.

Blocks Agency Appeal of Grazing on Public Lands [Section 118]: Amends administrative appeal procedures for grazing on public lands to require parties to exhaust all administrative appeals before they may file suit in Federal Court.

Blocks Judicial Review of De-listing Wolves in Wyoming/Great Lakes [Section 119]: Protects from judicial review any decision of the Secretary of the Interior to de-list wolves in Wyoming or the Great Lakes region.

Blocks NEPA Review of Livestock Movement across Public Lands [Section 120]: Provides that for FY 2012 through FY 2014 the movement of livestock across public lands shall not be subject to NEPA review.

Requires BOEMRE Oil & Gas Permit Reporting [Section 121]: Requires Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement to keep detailed records and provide quarterly reports on any oil and gas permit or plan that was not approved by the agency.

Blocks Wild Lands Secretarial Order [Section 124]: Prohibits funding for the Wild Lands Secretarial Order announced by Interior Secretary Salazar last December. Proponents of the Secretarial Order argue that the Order is a reiteration of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 requirements for BLM management of federal lands with wilderness characteristics.

Allows for Export of Alaskan Western Cedar [Section 414]: Allows Alaskan western red cedar and yellow cedar to be sold for export. Current law requires such cedar to be used domestically.

Blocks NEPA Review of Extended Grazing Permits [Section 415]: Allows grazing permits to be extended without the required NEPA review in FY 2012 through FY 2016. In prior year’s appropriations, the extension of grazing permits was only for one year.

Extension of Forest Service Stewardship Program [Section 427]: Allows the Forest Service stewardship contracting program which under current law does not expire until September 30, 2013 to be extended through September 30, 2023.

Blocks Livestock Emissions Regulation [Section 428]: Prohibits funds for the promulgation or implementation of any regulation requiring a permit for emissions resulting from the biological processes of livestock production.

Blocks Greenhouse Gas Rule on Manure Management [Section 429]: Prohibits EPA from implementing a rule requiring reporting of greenhouse gases from manure management systems.

Blocks Greenhouse Gas Rule on Stationary Sources [Section 431]: Severely limits EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases. For a one-year period EPA is prohibited from proposing or promulgating regulations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources. The language also prevents civil tort or common law lawsuits during this one-year period. Furthermore the language states that any permit applied for during the one-year period shall not be federally enforceable.

Blocks Update to Mountaintop Removal Mining Rule [Section 432]: Prohibits the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) from updating the Stream Buffer Rule. This is for the benefit of companies engaged in Mountaintop Removal Mining.

Blocks Mountaintop Removal Mining Policy at Multiple Agencies [Sec. 433]: Prohibits EPA, the Corps of Engineers, and OSM from implementing or enforcing any policy or procedure contained in two specified documents on Mountaintop Removal Mining.

Blocks Coal Ash Regulation [Section 434]: Prohibits EPA from regulating Fossil Fuel Combustion Waste (coal ash) under the Solid Waste Disposal Act.

Blocks Modification of Clean Water Act [Sec. 435]: Prohibits EPA from changing or supplementing guidance or rules related to the scope of the Clean Water Act.

Blocks Clean Water Act Regulations on Cooling Water Intake Structures [Section 436]: Prohibits EPA from developing, finalizing, implementing, or enforcing rules for facilities with cooling water intake structures.

Limiting Public Appeals [Section 437]: Changes the general administrative appeal process for the Forest Service to the less rigorous one contained in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003.

Blocks Storm Water Discharge Regulations [Section 439]: Prohibits regulations or guidance that would expand the storm water discharge program under the Clean Water Act to post-construction commercial or residential properties until after the EPA administrator submits a study to the Appropriations and authorizing Committees. The study must include overall cost as well as a cost-benefit analysis for various options.

Financial Break for Big Mining Companies [Section 440]: Amends the 1993 law establishing the Hardrock Mining Claim Maintenance Fee to provide a financial break for placer claims held by an association of two or more persons.

Allows for Texas’ Cap-and-Trade System [Section 441]: Provides that the EPA shall take no action to disapprove or prevent implementation of any flexible air permitting program. This provision was for the benefit of the State of Texas.

Blocks Grazing Management of Bighorn Sheep [Section 442]: Provides that through FY 2016 no action can be taken to manage Bighorn Sheep if such action would result in a reduction in the number of livestock allowed to graze upon a parcel.

Waives Clean Air Act Requirements for Big Oil Companies [Section 443]: Amends the Clean Air Act to (1) preclude EPA from requiring offshore sources to demonstrate compliance with health-based air quality standards anywhere but in a single onshore area; (2) reduce the length of time during which exploration platforms and drill ships are considered emission sources under the CAA, thereby limiting the time when emissions would be controlled; (3) make it impossible to use the permitting program to set emission control requirements for service vessels associated with offshore sources; and (4) replace a relatively fast, inexpensive process for citizens to challenge government action with a longer, more expensive review process in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. This legislation passed the House on June 22, 2011 by a vote of 253-166.

Blocks Arsenic Cancer Study & Formaldehyde Risk Assessments [Section 444]: New authorization language requiring EPA to improve its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) seeking to draw doubt to the program that highlights health implications from environmental contaminants. The language stops the release of draft or final risk assessments that are not based on improvements in IRIS based on a National Research Council assessment of formaldehyde. Further requires the National Academy of Science to review EPA’s changes to IRIS and review risk assessments undertaken by EPA. The language goes on to limit funds for any action that would lower exposure levels below or within background concentration levels in ambient air, drinking water, soil, or sediment. Report language directs EPA to take no further action to post its draft cancer assessment of inorganic arsenic until the completion of the NAS study.

Removes Protection of Grand Canyon from Uranium Mining Claims [Section 445]: Prohibits the Secretary of the Interior from implementing a land withdrawal to protect the Grand Canyon from new uranium mining claims.

Blocks Forest Service Travel Management: [Section 446]: Prohibits the Forest Service from implementing Travel Management Plans in California until completion of an assessment of unauthorized routes. It further limits the classification of certain forest roads.

Blocks EPA Opinions on Pesticides [Section 447]: Prevents the EPA from using biological opinions related to pesticides and the Endangered Species Act, with a focus on ESA-listed salmon.

Blocks Clean Air Act Regulations of Cement Industry [Section 448]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to implement Clean Air Act regulations on the manufacture of Portland cement.

Blocks EPA Enforcement of Florida Water Quality Standards [Section 452]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to implement or enforce numeric Florida Water Quality Standards even though the state receives millions in federal funds for water projects.

Blocks EPA Greenhouse Gas Standard for Automobiles [Section 453]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to develop or finalize a new greenhouse gas standard for automobiles after model year 2016.

Blocks Clean Air Act Regulations of Fine Particles/Soot [Section 454]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to regulate certain levels of particulate matter in the air under the Clean Air Act.

Blocks EPA Regulation of Hard Rock Mining Operations [Section 455]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to develop additional financial assurance requirements for hard rock mining operations.

Requires BLM Notification of Land Exchanges [Section 458]: Amends the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 to require BLM and the Forest Service to provide written notification of land exchanges to adjacent landowners.

Blocks EPA Funds to Great Lake States due to Ballast Water Requirements [Section 459]: Prohibits certain Great Lakes states from receiving any EPA funding if they have adopted ballast water requirements that are more stringent than Coast Guard requirements. The Coast Guard believes this will block at least four Great Lake States from receiving any EPA funds.

Blocks EPA Guidelines on Misleading Pesticide Labels [Section 460]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to finalize guidelines on misleading information provided on pesticide labels.

Blocks Fictitious EPA Action on Ammonia Emissions[Section 461]: Prohibits funding for the EPA to develop or implement regulations related to ammonia emissions under the secondary standard for NOx and SOx.   EPA has already stated that it has no intention of doing so.

Blocks Clean Air Rules for Power Plants and Requires a Study That Ignores Public Health Benefit of the Clean Air Act [Section 462]: Directs the EPA to do a cumulative assessment of the impacts of EPA regulations, and prohibits funding for the “Utility MACT” and “Transport” rules.

Blocks Permit Requirements for Pesticide Discharge in Waterways [Title V]: Amends the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Clean Water Act to eliminate requirements for chemical companies and agriculture to obtain permits for pesticides entering waterways.

• From the Democratic minority of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations

TheHotSpring.net :: The rupture of a pipeline in Montana has caused at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil to spill into the pristine Yellowstone River, raising concerns about the tar sands pipeline planned to pass through the most important fossil aquifer in North America. The spill is precisely the kind of irreversible and unnecessary environmental disaster conservationists, farmers, energy reformers and local activists across the Great Plains seek to prevent.

The initial reports cited Exxon-Mobil spokespeople explaining that only a few hundred barrels of oil had been released into the river, and that the multinational was bringing in top cleanup experts from across the nation to do the most advanced cleanup work possible. But yesterday the news came that the spill had in fact released at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Yellowstone River, threatening pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, and human health, across several states.

Exxon-Mobil now says its expert cleanup effort is being hampered by Mother Nature. The takeaway seems to be that, more than twenty years after the catastrophic Exxon-Valdez spill, the oil giant has used its routine megaprofits to produce no viable cleanup strategy. It also appears there was insufficient maintenance to an insufficiently constructed pipeline, and a near total disregard for the potential impact on the natural and human environment.

The scale of the disaster was revealed when the multinational’s false reports were shown to be false by huge amounts of oil washing up on farmed land and spilling over the banks of the rising river. Critics say Exxon-Mobil’s complaints that rising waters are responsible for hampering the cleanup effort reflect the company’s frustration with how that same phenomenon revealed it had lied to the press and, presumably, to authorities, about the scale of the spill.

The material composition of the nation’s energy markets has a lot to do with this kind of crisis. Unreasoned overreliance on carbon-based combustible fuels continues even now, in the second decade of the 21st century, to incentivize irresponsible practices that threaten other natural resources, as well as animal life, arable land, aquifers and human health.

Hydrocarbon fuels currently comprise such a significant segment of the overall energy landscape, they are clearly built into our energy future, to some extent, but their current dominance does not reflect their viability as resources that produce optimum benefit to our society or our economy. The Yellowstone spill is just the latest in a seemingly unending chain of events that demonstrate the very serious dangers inherent in depending on fossil fuels as the baseload (or “go to”) energy resource.

The combustion-based energy extraction model goes back to the days when fire was first discovered and harnessed. It has served to help human civilization achieve great advances and humanize the planet, both in terms of resource-use and the expression of ideas. But that does not mean it does not bring with it the drawbacks of a primitive technological paradigm.

The amount of waste built into the combustible fuels model of energy extraction is startling. Only 2% of the energy from burning coal reaches the lightbulb in your home. The other 98% is lost, mostly in the form of uncontained heat. But the risk of uncontrolled spills, into pristine wilderness, delicate ecosystems, groundwater and the food production process, is worst with oil.

The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, over several months in 2010, showed that across the entire oil industry, there is still a glaring lack of advanced strategy for doing immediate, effective and total cleanup. The Yellowstone spill appears to show that even on a much smaller scale, that lack of understanding and know-how plagues the industry and threatens the natural and human environment.

We don’t, in fact, have to rely on combustible fuels anymore, as the state of the art in clean renewable resources, like wind and solar, is now sufficient to extract enough energy to power the US economy. All that we are lacking is the state of the art energy infrastructure required to harness clean renewable energy on that scale.

That the nation is undergoing a prolonged job-creation slowdown is just one hint that the time is right for a major investment in new state of the art energy infrastructure. The emerging race with China for the global clean energy future (China is now investing an estimated $600 billion in developing, producing and acquiring advanced clean energy technology) is another.

But it is the massive externalized costs (costs passed on by industry to taxpayers and consumers) that pose an immediate and continuing threat to the economic wellbeing of the nation. The externalized costs of oil include not only the massive costs of even small spills, which are far more frequent and numerous than is widely reported, but also the impact of pollution on human health, the impact of heat-trapping emissions on the stability of climate bands on which all human civilization depends.

Wind and solar energy have no cleanup costs, no hidden human health costs, no climate-band dislocation costs, no long-term costs associated with burning and wasting the resource itself, no world-record military spending costs, and need pose no risk whatsoever to groundwater or the human food supply.

The Yellowstone spill has to be a signal to the American people, the United States Congress and to markets, that the time has come to phase out our reliance on fossil fuels. The way to phase out that reliance is to incentivize a shift to the construction of state of the art smart grid infrastructure and the proliferation of technologies to harness clean, renewable energy from the environment.

As of this writing, Exxon-Mobil now says the scale of the spill could be worse than has so far been reported, but has not yet released new numbers, beyond the latest estimate of 42,000. It appears the pattern of reporting is following the customary pattern for such spills, where the company involved starts with severe underreporting and little by little increases the estimates until an eventual admission of massive, catastrophic levels of contamination of the environment.

TheHotSpring.net :: Citizens Climate Lobby is an international non-partisan, non-profit volunteer organization, working to build political will for a livable world. To do that, they aim to find an ideologically neutral, democratically viable, market-focused way to reduce the amount of carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere and speed the transition to clean, renewable fuels. I am proud to be a member of the organization, and one who is inspired by the passion of its volunteers and fortunate to count so many good friends among its partners.

This past week, the organization took its campaign to Capitol Hill, bringing 85 volunteers to 140 office visits in the United States Congress —both houses, both parties— along with the State Department, the Department of Energy and the World Bank. The project is more than a response to fallout from excess atmospheric carbon dioxide; the CCL project involves connecting citizens with decision-makers on Capitol Hill, to take ideology out of the energy debate, and fashion policy more democratically.

CCL proposes addressing the carbon crisis in a new and different way, which in fact avoids the pitfalls of more complex and unwieldy past attempts at reducing overall emissions: the proposed Carbon Fee and Dividend Act of 2011 would put a fee on carbon-emitting fuels at the source, then deliver 100% of that money directly to American families and households.

The plan avoids the need to create burdensome new regulatory infrastructure, does not deliver any new revenue to the federal government, and turns the power to forge a brighter, more economically efficient energy future back over to the American people, the marketplace. By unmasking the massive externalized costs (not paid by industry) of fossil fuel dependency, but covering consumers so the transition is not traumatic, the fee and dividend proposal allows the virtues of a genuine market to operate.

The CCL mission is guided by the principle that when people remain open to one another, to differences of opinion and to opposing views, they can fashion a dialogue based on common vocabulary and put aside ideological biases. This, then, should allow for intelligent people, working to serve their nation in the most forthright and meaningful way possible, to work together to craft practical solutions to practical problems.

Climate destabilization has been turned into an intensely partisan issue, in which ideological assumptions and partisan strategy trump cooperative civics and negotiated problem solving. This is bad for democracy and bad for the human environment, in which impacts from inaction are mounting, and the economic fallout looks to be accelerating, certainly beyond the current window of opportunity to act.

The challenge of the political moment is to find a way around the intense partisan divide, and that is no small task.

On Capitol Hill, there is frustration on both sides of the aisle with the inability of Congress to work together in a responsible way on practical issues, and much of the gridlock is due to ideological bias interfering with sound policy judgment. But the United States now faces another moment of urgency regarding climate and energy: China is racing ahead with massive investment in clean energy resources, even as it expands at record pace its use of the dirtiest form of fuel, coal.

The Chinese agenda, to take control of the global marketplace for new technologies, not by manufacturing alone, but by developing the newest, most cutting-edge technologies that will build the future economy of the world, means the United States now sees its dominance in technological innovation and research and development threatened. If we, as a nation, do not succeed in building the foundations for the global clean energy economy of the 1st century, our ability to compete internationally, and to thrive domestically, will face constant pressure.

The most advanced intelligence work of Pentagon analysts has found that sustainability and security are now intertwined and cannot be disentangled: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, the sustainability of alliances, of political borders, of nation states, of an economic model that allows us to thrive in relative peace and security, are all linked, and the emerging national strategic narrative [pdf], capable of addressing the complexity of the global environment, needs to rethink the paradigm of threat and risk, and view such challenges as opportunities to shape and influence the landscape of human civilization, for the better.

The great success of this week of CCL lobbying on Capitol Hill was that individual volunteers, the citizen-based movement as a whole, and some of those who sat in meetings with the organization, experienced breakthroughs in terms of openness and interest in dealing with this issue as one of practical problems demanding practical solutions.

It is CCL’s mission to work with members of Congress of all variety of ideological inclinations, many of whom have never been able to share a constructive conversation about climate or energy, with one another, to build a coalition based on citizen interest and a shared vocabulary for building a vibrant and resilient, cutting-edge clean energy economy, through which sustainable American prosperity and quality of life can be secured in this century.

It will be citizens who build, manifest and deliver the political will to achieve these vital goals, and success will mean the strengthening of our democracy and our economic future.

Conservation activist Tim DeChristopher was found guilty this week of disrupting public business and causing “financial harm” to the government and to private interests, for interfering with a public land auction later found to be inappropriately staged.

DeChristopher told the crowd of supporters gathered at the courthouse that “the sharpest rock on the wildest shore can never break that ocean apart, they can never wear that ocean down, because it’s the ocean that shapes the shore.”

The following is a transcript of the speech he gave after hearing that he had been found guilty…

What the world wanted to see was how you would react. And you have reacted with joy and resolve. You’ve shown that your power will not be intimidated by any power that they have, and that’s the most important thing that’s happened here this week.

Because everything that happened inside that building tried to convince me that I was alone and that I was weak. They tried to convince me that I was like a little finger out there on my own that could easily be broken. And all of you out here were the reminder for all of us that I wasn’t just a finger all alone in there, but that I was connected to hand with many fingers that could be united together as one fist, and that that fist could not be broken by the power that they have in there.

That fist is not a symbol of violence. That fist is a symbol that we will not be mislead into thinking that we are alone. We will not be lied to and told that we are weak. We will not be divided and we will not back down. That fist is a symbol that we are connected and that we are powerful. It’s a symbol that we hold true to our vision of a healthy and just world and that we are building the self empowering movement to make it happen. All those authorities in there wanted me to think like a finger but are children are calling to us to think like a fist.

And we know that now I’ll have to go prison, we know that now that is the reality. But that’s just the job that I have to do. That’s the role that I face. Many before me have gone to jail for justice and if we are going to achieve our vision many after me will have to join me as well.

No one ever told us that this battle would be easy. No one ever told us that we wouldn’t have to make sacrifices. We knew that when we started this fight.

Every wave on the ocean that has ever risen up and refused to lay back down has been dashed on the shore, but it is the very purpose of a wave to rise up, because once it rises up above the horizon it finally has the perspective to see that it’s not just a wave, that it’s a part of a mighty ocean. And the sharpest rock on the wildest shore can never break that ocean apart, they can never wear that ocean down, because it’s the ocean that shapes the shore.

That’s what we’re starting to do here today. That’s what we’re starting to do here this week. With wave after wave after wave crashing against that shore, we shape it to our vision. Thank you all for being a part of that.

(End transcript.)

Robert Redford has written about the verdict:

Part of the statement issued this afternoon by U.S. Atty. Carlie Christensen praising the guilty verdict, alluded to DeChristopher’s actions… “disrupting open public processes and causing financial harm to the government and other individuals.” Really?

There’s something wrong with this picture. Major financial institutions in this country brought the nation’s economy to its knees yet not one person associated with the debacle is in jail. The human consequence of their actions is indescribably profound and not one person responsible for any of it went to jail. And yet the federal government prosecuted this young activist’s act of civil disobedience and he now faces jail time.

Every day, oil, gas, mining and other energy and extractive industries are indiscriminately polluting our air, land and water as the new U.S. Congress works diligently to take away the power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate their actions and protect the well-being of the nation’s people. There’s something wrong with this picture.

And when you consider that weeks after DeChristopher bid on his 13 parcels, a federal judge in essence agreed with him and blocked the sale of all the parcels, DeChristopher’s prosecution becomes even more troubling. Add to that the fact that the Obama Administration’s Dept of Interior said the overall sale was improper and pulled all the parcels from auction and DeChristopher’s prosecution borders on absurd.

Redford  is only one of many prominent voices who have expressed support for DeChristopher.

More information about the trial, the legal complications of the auction itself and the protest bid by Mr. DeChristopher, as well as ways to contribute to his defense fund, can be found at www.Bidder70.org.

Oil as a combustible fuel is a 19th-century improvement on the 18th-century paradigm of burning coal to produce steam to run industrial machinery. The efficiency and portability of carbon-based fuels, in terms of the built-in energy they can store and which is released when they are burnt, has long been the driving factor in their popularity as an energy source. But new technologies are now making it possible to produce large amounts of portable energy sustainably, with none of the atmospheric damage resulting from the burning of carbon-based fuels.

In 2008, the five most profitable companies in the world were oil companies, their annual profits ranging from $20 billion to over $45 billion. No commercial entity in the history of humanity had ever made such immense profits. In 2009, two of the top 5 were banks, largely because oil companies’ profits had fallen as prices came back down to earth. In 2010, it again looks like oil companies were the most profitable businesses on the planet. They do not need subsidies to survive.

The United States government provides over $40 billion in subsidies, in the form of direct funding and tax credits, to oil companies. This is money that is designed to make it easier for those companies to provide cheap fuel to the people of the United States, something they are basically failing to do. Prices remain high, even as the companies in question ask for more subsidies and continue to rake in record profits.

FORTY. BILLION. DOLLARS.

Only 38 countries in the world have government budgets larger than $40 billion. Argentina, one of the wealthier countries in the developing world, with a population of 40.7 million people, does not spend that much on running its entire government. In fact, there are 192 nations that spend less on running their country than the United States does in free giveaways to the most profitable companies in the world.

Does this make any sense? Supporters of the oil subsidies say the oil companies are profitable, yes, but that without these subsidies, they could not be. That is, usually, the logic of providing subsidies to businesses: they provide a needed service and so we need to support them. But let’s look more closely at this idea, with respect to oil…

What if the removal of those subsidies would mean the oil industry is not profitable? That would seem to suggest the entire logic of the industry —that it’s the cheapest, best way to produce energy— is a lie. Even if we are not concerned with that, we might argue that we could use just enough in subsidies to make oil profitable, maybe even very profitable, without having to donate tens of billions of dollars to making companies that would not know how to make a profit without getting free taxpayer money the most profitable in history.

In short:

• The $40 billion in subsidies are immensely wasteful
• 192 nations spend less running their countries than the US does funding big oil
• The industry should, by now, be mature enough to make its own money
• If it is not, there is no way to justify the record profits it takes in

If fiscal conservatives in the United States are serious about cutting the federal budget in ways that will be constructive for building long-term prosperity and eliminating fraud, waste and abuse, it seems clear that giving enough money to oil companies to fund the world’s 39th largest government is not something they should be doing.

We could save whole agencies, avoid cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, avoid cuts to home heating fuel cost assistance to underprivileged seniors, avoid depriving the infant children of low-income mothers of baby formula, avoid eliminating funding for public broadcasting (that’s media that belongs to you and me, not to multinational corporations).

We could make sure veterans’ benefits are not cut, as is proposed in the House Republicans’ “cut to grow” budget proposal. We could actually support the hard work of innovation being done by small business start-ups and entrepreneurs, instead of just telling them to fend for themselves. We could assist those entrepreneurs by making sure they have access to the best quality of publicly funded research, so they are not boxed out of the marketplace by ultra-wealthy multinationals with an interest in slowing the pace of progress.

We could expand funding for student loan programs, transportation infrastructure and the development of the much-needed renewable energy sector and smart grid, and we could do all of this without spending the $40 billion handed out to oil companies.

Where is the ideology in opposing these subsidies? What principle of American conservatism says the most profitable multinational corporations in the history of humanity should have the largest subsidies as well, even as the government plans to systematically roll back services and benefits people across the country have worked for and rely on?

Is it conservative to tell senior citizens they don’t need to have medicine, because ExxonMobil wants to add a few billion dollars more to its bloated profit statement? Is it conservative to tell working mothers they need to live in homeless shelters and spend only minutes a day with their kids, because BP wants taxpayers to fund its operations in the Gulf of Mexico?

Is it conservative to tell veterans who have put their lives at risk and possibly suffered serious wounds that they need to give up some of their benefits, or be barred from having sustained treatment for brain injury or PTSD, because the US government needs to ensure that oil companies don’t have to work too hard, diversify or innovate, to meet their quarterly profit projections?

Does any of this make any sense? Will any principled conservative come forward to explain why the United States government needs to devote $40 billion to subsidies for an outdated technology, while the recipients of those subsidies refuse to participate in building a more prosperous, more sustainable future for all Americans?

There’s one thing no one supporting the oil subsidies seems willing to discuss openly, which is that the reduction in those subsidies doesn’t have to deprive Americans of access to affordable energy: the same subsidies can be redirected to alternative energy technologies, and the same companies could participate in that contest for major innovation, and actually earn the subsidies, if they produce the best alternatives.

We need a 21st-century energy subsidy model, which considers the need to innovate, to move away from combustible fuels altogether, to achieve alternatives that, like wind and solar, allow us to dramatically increase the productive potential of the technology, as the technology advances, and leave static energy sources like fossil fuels in the past.

This is the common-sense thing to do. And we should not waste any more money trying to buy back an inefficient past from companies that will not cooperate in building the future. We are better than that. The hard working people of the United States deserve better.

IndependentsOfPrinciple.com :: There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting fuel sources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.

Neither is there anything ideological about the allegiance of some to carbon-based fuels. The considerations are entirely practical on all sides, and we need to remember this as we try to find consensus on how to move forward, responsibly, as a civilization, in terms of our relationship to energy and the environment.

For some people in the political arena, it would appear to make more sense to continue to support carbon-based fuels as the primary resource for energy production, for a number of practical reasons, each of which can be refuted on practical grounds: 1) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels donate to one’s campaign; 2) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels “create jobs”; 3) because burning things to release energy is easier to understand than more advanced technologies.

There are real ideologically-rooted reasons why the passions can run so deep on either side: for environmentalists, it is morally unconscionable that we continue burning dirty fuels and eroding the natural systems on which all life depends, no matter the reasons; for the pro-petroleum segment of the political spectrum, there are patriotic roots, hearkening back to two world wars and the Cold War, with oil seen as a guarantor of security.

Oil is no longer that, and passions aside, thinking people have to acknowledge that the root of those passions is really practical and not ideological anyway. It makes practical sense to be good stewards of the environment on which we depend for everything that we have, and it was a practical consideration that linked industrial production and national security to the availability of carbon-based fuels.

But now, national security has become so closely linked to energy supply issues that we can no longer rely —again, in strictly practical terms— on a commodity as volatile, finite and problematic as petroleum. The costs to society are too great, whether we are talking about war-fighting —and war-funding, for that matter—, the loss of freedom in terms of shaping our foreign policy, or our economic choices, costs in terms of human health or the destabilization of major climate systems.

And coal, while abundant in North America, is so dirty a resource that the environmental fallout alone makes it less than reasonable as a foundational resource for long-term future planning. There may come a time when carbon itself is a resource, required for its chemical properties, but not necessarily as useful as we now pretend, as a combustible fuel. Places where the coal industry has its roots may have to change focus or find technologically cutting-edge ways to justify the exploration for coal.

The reasons for this are hard to understand, if one starts from the assumption that there is something traditional or sacredly local or productive about coal. But if we step back and consider the real adaptability of human populations, we find that no community really needs the coal industry, having no chance of survival or prosperity in its absence, in the way the coal industry lobby pretends.

Communities are made up of human beings and are as adaptable as those human beings’ minds, hearts and relationships. The relationship to powerful coal interests is not always a happy one, and this alone can open doors for the development of resources that are more sustainable, more local-friendly, and respectful of future human need in ways that older technologies simply cannot be.

Even the coal industry itself could innovate, diversify, and find ways to turn its operations into major sources of clean renewable energy. At least three renewable resources come to mind: geothermal energy production, wind and solar. Mining companies in many cases own or lease land for which they have not yet devised a marketable use or long ago abandoned, and these can be converted to solar farms, wind farms or geothermal fields.

While international mining companies are outsourcing administrative jobs and moving to more “cost effective” mining sites overseas, some are beginning to use disused mining sites in the US to build part of the new clean-energy infrastructure. Across the southwest, such projects are already in development or being implemented. According to the Arizona Republic:

Both the Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency are studying the potential to put renewable-energy projects on mines, landfills and other disturbed lands.

Mines can help avoid many of the expenses solar plants face on pristine desert, experts said, such as environmental rules that require relocating saguaros and other protected plants.

There is no reason why environmentalists seeking to promote clean energy and communities steeped in a long tradition of coal mining or oil drilling cannot come together, free of ideological constraints, to craft the solutions that will make the US a global leader in efficient, profitable, mass-produced clean energy. The ideology that claims this issue is one of ideology is simply a rhetorical framework that serves the interests of the most stagnant and unimaginative coal and oil interests.

Major oil producers could easily invest billions in renewable R&D and become global pioneers in the rush to achieve a fully self-sustaining clean-energy economy. Their resistance is perhaps more linked to a short-sighted ideological prejudice than to a lack of will to be part of the future, but they do not have any real ideological framework to back up their position, and the logic that favors a transition to renewables does not require one.

From a strictly economic standpoint, it does not make sense to continue being near totally reliant upon a way of doing business that carries the wildly exorbitant potential costs of an Ixtoc, anExxon Valdez, Texaco in Ecuador, or a Deepwater Horizon disaster. If we want to be intelligent about how we achieve “energy independence”, we have to first assess and confront the real costs of doing business the way big oil does business.

It’s not a matter of “a tax on energy” or “a tax on carbon”, it’s a matter of making sure the responsible parties pay their share. Subsidies on an unprecedented scale, have made the oil business look and feel profitable in ways that it actually is not, when the health of the wider economy is considered. Were those wider costs built into the business itself, big oil would not be nearly as attractive an investment as it seemed to be until the Deepwater Horizon well blew out in April.

While an “ideology” that values the natural environment over the right of the oil industry to make profits may rejoice at the opportunity to use such a failure as BP has experienced in the Gulf of Mexico to make the case against oil, that political motive does not make it any less true that BP had no responsible or credible action plan for dealing with an environmental catastrophe of this magnitude, despite deliberately doing everything necessary —reportedly cutting corners and ordering the suppression of good information— to bring about the catastrophe.

That such risks can be avoided with a transition to clean, renewable energy resources that do not require combustion and do not require oil or coal to achieve the efficiency gains they aim to achieve, is just as honestly not a matter of ideology. It’s the way it is. And science is now demonstrating that we can produce more than enough electricity, nationally, to power our entire domestic energy consumption through wind and solar alone, if we build the infrastructure.

At the point where the renewable energy infrastructure is pervasive and functional enough to outpace carbon-based fuels in total power generation capacity, there will be no question, practically speaking, whether or not renewables are a more effective method of promoting long-term economic health and prosperity. Where is the ideology inherent in planning for such a virtuous moment of future achievement?

• Discussions on Zero-combustion Energy Research
• Economic Report: Building a Green Economy
• Futurismo Verde: debate sobre un futuro energético limpio y renovable

TheHotSpring.net :: Climate change means “global warming”, so how can severe winter storms and excessively cold breezes be evidence of a warming climate? The key is in the word “global”: the warming of the overall global average temperature need not manifest in all places at all times as warmer weather. Throughout the history of human civilization, the Earth’s climate has remained relatively stable, due to optimal global average temperatures; as global average temperatures slip outside that optimal range, the warmer air makes the interaction between climate systems more inconsistent and more severe.

So, while monsoons are failing across Africa and southern Asia, and major rivers are starting to run dry for part of the year, failing to reach the sea, in northern climate bands, storms are getting to be more severe and winter weather is hitting harder. This is because climate bands themselves are blurring, becoming less rigid, less reliable, and so in traditionally temperate climate zones, arctic and tropical air are coming together more often than before, both demonstrating and exacerbating the ongoing destabilization of major climate patterns.

On Sunday in New York City, freezing temperatures, dense snowfall and high winds all coincided with thunder, to the surprise of many, who had never observed this phenomenon before. As explained on the local news, such events can happen when the right combination of factors create a storm with some of the characteristics of summer storms. That means thunder can accompany snowfall if the cloud patterns are being fed by the right mix of freezing air and warmer southerly sea air.

The concern climate scientists have about global warming is not warm days as such, or mild winters, but rather the cumulative effect of warmer global average temperatures. That effect is widespread destabilization of vital climate patterns, and the resulting feedback loop, which would turn warmer high-altitude temperatures into melting glaciers, reduced precipitation and rising sea levels.

If the weather you’re seeing in your hometown is colder than usual, it is not evidence that the global average temperature is not warming. It is, however, consistent with a warming global climate to see weather that is more extreme in temperature or precipitation than has historically been the case in a given region.

One blizzard is not itself proof of global climate destabilization, but a mounting pattern over several years, where tornadoes converge on New York City (September 2010), more than 20% of Pakistan’s entire territory is inundated (summer 2010), hurricanes are more frequent, more numerous and more intense on average (2004-2010), and crops are under increased threat from frost in places like Brazil, Florida and India (1998-2010), are evidence of the destabilization of major climate patterns.

The persistent and mounting melt of Antarctic ice shelves, and their calving into the planet’s oceans, is further evidence of a persistent and mounting global increase in annual average temperatures. No system on Earth is entirely closed. Systems interact, which means chemical compositions of regional air and water flows, temperature adjustments, and frequency and precision of ecosystem services all interact and affect one another.

Such processes honor no political borders, recognize no economic zones and respect no observable boundaries. The warming of waters in the Gulf of Mexico means the Gulf Stream carries that warmer water to northwestern Europe, gradually warming the chill arctic waters, which then become less effective at rapidly cooling the Gulf Stream waters. This is important, because that rapid cooling generates the world’s most massive and powerful waterfall, as the cooled water plunges to the bottom, and flows around Europe and Africa into the Indian Ocean.

That Deep Ocean Current relies on the proper balance of warm and cool water at the precise point where falling water can push the right volume of water around the globe, at the right temperature to maintain key surface temperatures and major climate bands. To understand climate destabilization, it’s more instructive to think about the snowflake than the thermometer: cool temperatures don’t always bring snow, because weather is highly variable from moment to moment; but the fragile, tiny snowflake, of itself harmless, can become a paralyzing force across an entire region. Little incremental ticks of climate relevant data can mount to generate catastrophic change.

Today, we are digging out from under 25 inches of snow that fell in less than 24 hours. Digging out from under comprehensively destabilized global climate systems will not be so easy. The smart money tends to flow toward the more rational approach to problem solving. Having no plan but wait-and-see leads to transit collapse, states of emergency and regional collapse. The smart money for future investment wants to support more rational behavior, the kind that honors human need, human rights and the logic whereby democracy is highly capable of coordinated human brilliance.

The Economics of Carbon Pricing & the Transition to Clean, Renewable Fuels

Whenever legislation to price carbon starts to gain traction, the fossil fuel industry trots out this talking point: “It will kill jobs and ruin the economy.” In this paper, however, HotSpring Network founder and Citizens Climate Lobby volunteer Joseph Robertson ties together numerous reports and case studies to present a different picture, one in which the transition to clean energy will produce new jobs and provide a stimulus to the economy.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Putting a price on carbon creates a contextual incentive for diversification and innovation in the energy economy. When Germany shifted its tax-base from income to energy, it spurred a decade of aggressive public and private investment in renewable resources. In just four years, it became the world leader in clean energy export, taking 70% of the world market just eight years after the initial policy shift.

German firms are driving investments of €400 billion in the Desertec solar project in North Africa, part of a plan to connect two continents via multi-gigawatt undersea transmission cables and advanced smart-grid technology. The project will revolutionize the energy sector in Europe and Africa, creating wealth for businesses and communities large and small. Morocco, for instance, plans to use its desert and mountain terrain, as well as its wind-intensive coastal areas, to generate enough renewable energy to become an export leader for the European market. This model can be duplicated in mountainous, desert-rich and coastal states across the U.S.

Concerns that coal country will be adversely affected by a price on carbon are understandable but somewhat unfounded. Communities dependent on coal for employment are not generally more prosperous than the national average, so a transition to clean renewable resources can help to overcome problems of endemic persistent poverty. Studies comparing cost-benefit analysis for mountaintop removal mining and wind energy show wind is more effective at generating prosperity over the long term, for all but a narrow group of interests.

The regional disparity in impact from a carbon tax is projected to be negligible, starting at just two-thirds of one percent and moving to just one-third of one percent over time. If revenue from a carbon fee is returned to all households, any wider regional disparity might be reduced by targeted dividend adjustments. Communities in remote areas, or which rely on coal for cheap energy or for employment, can benefit economically from diversifying into and taking ownership of clean renewable-energy technologies.

Job creation will be the hallmark of the clean energy revolution. Studies show the potential for millions of new jobs in industries ranging from manufacturing to installation and maintenance, as well as administration, marketing, energy efficiency and other related fields. The potential for efficiency gains from clean energy and smart-grid technologies will free up massive amounts of consumer spending over time and relieve dependence on fossil fuels from hostile states.

• Summary + Conclusions
• Download the full report here in PDF form

Former Pres. Bill Clinton told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, in an interview before a live audience this week at the Clinton Global Initiative, in New York City, that a commitment to clean energy is required to drive job growth, cut unemployment and boost the economy. He noted that the four countries who are projected to beat their clean energy targets under the Kyoto Protocol —Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the U.K.— all have lower unemployment, and less economic inequality than the U.S., due to the green tech boom.

The United States has committed more resources than ever before, under Pres. Obama, to promoting clean energy, but there is still significant pressure from powerful corporate interests tied to oil, coal and natural gas, to slow the transition to a clean-energy economy. Those interests might lose out, if subsidies are shifted from carbon-based fuels to clean energy, but only if they refuse to innovate along with the rest of the economy. The cost-effectiveness of subsidizing clean energy, however, far outstrips the cost-effectiveness of subsidizing the burning of carbon-based fuels.

The fact is: there is no single area of near-term economic development with as much potential to heal the economic wounds that afflict our nation or to create new jobs and make for vibrant thriving communities than clean energy innovation. In part, this is because the job is so big. In part, it is owing to the fact that energy is everywhere; there is no corner of the society that can ably do without it in at least some small dose for very long. The interconnectedness and fast pace of 21st century America requires a booming energy sector, and the energy sector has critical weaknesses.

Among these are: the finite nature of carbon-based fuels and the geologic time-scales required to create new reserves; the intense fallout to human and environmental health from pollution; the massive, ongoing and still growing contribution to destabilization of global climate patterns, from the burning of fossil fuels; negative externalities of even local impact: where coal-intensive communities suffer chronic endemic poverty and an over-dependence on one industry; the cost transport will impose on our economic activity if we don’t innovate away from combustible fuels.

Pres. Clinton’s announcement comes at a crucial time, as electoral battles over how to solve the jobs crisis raise not just ideological points of contention but serious confusion over what the cost implications would be for a transition to clean energy. The standard retort, for decades, has been that clean energy “is just too expensive”, that renewable resources like wind and solar energy are “intermittent” and so unreliable, that we cannot afford to stop using oil, despite our mounting dependence on nations whose interests may be in direct conflict with our own.

The fact is, rapid and widespread innovations in energy technology mean solar power is expanding its productive capacity more rapidly than any other resource. Wind is now capable, were the infrastructure already built, to supply more than 100% of the entire energy demand of the United States, and innovations in biofuel planning mean new strains of algae are now potentially 3x more efficient at turning light into energy.

Building the infrastructure for a truly efficient, clean and low-cost renewable energy economy will take time, and resources. The fossil fuel industry continually seeks to paint this fact as a sign that doing so would be prohibitively expensive, but precisely the contrary is true. In fact, not aggressively investing in this infrastructure overhaul, technological innovation and job-training, will render many of our basic economic underpinnings prohibitively expensive, within a generation. The fallout across our economy could be devastating.

Compare to that the effect of heavily investing in the clean energy transition: a relatively small but stable (year-after-year) commitment of resources from the federal government would spur over $100 billion in private-sector clean-energy investment, which would in turn create millions of new jobs, reforming local and regional economies, cleaning the air, stabilizing climate patterns around which our entire civilization is organized, and building resilience, knowledge, innovation and economic vibrancy into communities large and small.

Not only is it eminently affordable for the United States to make this transition now, in a committed and robust way, it is in fact an issue of far-reaching implications for national security. The Pentagon views the destabilization of global climate patterns and rival nations’ out-competing us on clean energy as potentially threatening our political and economic security in the coming decades, and so has embarked on a program to transform its use of energy; the nation would be wise to do the same, so we can get on the road to real, prolonged recovery, and build a stable, clean, sustainable energy future.

Well integrity test on new cap for Deepwater Horizon well shows no oil escaping. At 3:25 pm EDT, BP announced there was no more oil leaking from the well. But as BP, local politicians and Pres. Obama all noted, this is just the beginning of the test. They were able to successfully close the well without leakage, but they now need to do more substantive pressure testing inside the well to determine if there might be any oil escaping from the wellb0re beneath the sea floor.

This success does not mean a definitive end to the crisis. There is still need to confirm structural integrity, using pressure measurements to verify that there is no oil escaping elsewhere in the structure of the well. BP has warned it may have to open the valves again this week as part of the testing of the new capping system.

There has been speculation about the political effects of the well finally being closed, with some analysts remarking that Pres. Obama’s approval ratings seemed to be slipping in proportion to the volume of oil leaking from the well. The tentative moment of relief also corresponds with the president winning a heated legislative battle over financial regulatory reform.

The president expressed cautious optimism but said only that it was a positive sign and that further testing would need to be done before anyone could know if the cap is an effective seal.

The well’s temporary closure will stop the flow of oil adding to the worst oil spill in US history, but the environmental catastrophe is ongoing, and emergency clean-up and recovery efforts will persist for years, even if not another drop of oil flows from the well.

Testing continues, as 24 hours have now passed since the valves were successfully closed, and there is talk about how BP can now work with states and communities to help restore economic activity and to deal, with after-effects of the 3 month spill.

TheHotSpring.net :: Scientists in Mississippi say they have discovered microscopic globules of hydrocarbons, i.e. petroleum, inside the outer shells of blue crab living along the Gulf coast. This discovery appears to show that oil has now entered the food chain. This process cannot be reversed, though measures may be taken to limit the spread of the oil deeper into the local and regional ecosystem.

According to Harlan Kirgan, of the Mississippi Press:

Oil droplets have been found beneath the shells of tiny post-larval blue crabs drifting into Mississippi coastal marshes from offshore waters.

The finding represents one of the first examples of how oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is moving into the Gulf of Mexico’s food chain. The larval crabs are eaten by all kinds of fish, from speckled trout to whale sharks, as well as by shore birds.

The finding is of crucial importance, because it means the oil dispersed from the massive, and growing, spill, has penetrated into the biological fabric of the Gulf coast ecosystem, and will now likely migrate further inland and into the wider food web, across the region. There had already been concern that seabirds could carry the pollutants inland after feeding on fish from the spill zone, though this has not yet been detected.

Science magazine is reporting that the contamination of the food chain by way of post-larval crabs could be “widespread”. That contaminated crab larvae were found in Texas only shortly after the first landfall of visible oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill on the Texas coast is a clear sign that the crab larvae were likely landing there before the visible oil, and so such organic contamination can spread beyond the reach of the main spill zone.

Reporting for Science, Erik Stokstad writes:

Two groups of scientists, funded by NSF rapid response grants, have been looking for changes in abundance of tiny crab larvae as they swim to estuaries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. One team, led by population ecologist Caroline Taylor of Tulane University in New Orleans, first found mysterious yellow-orange droplets in May while collecting blue crab larvae off Grand Isle, Louisiana. “We didn’t expect to find anything [like this] inside them,” Taylor says.

Subsequent surveys by Taylor’s team have turned up droplets in larvae in several genera of crabs in sites including Pensacola, Florida, and Galveston, Texas. In some places, up to 100% of larvae contain these droplets. The composition of the droplets is currently being analyzed, and Taylor expects results next week.

Having reached both the Florida panhandle and coastal Texas, the contamination of post-larval crabs signals a regional ecological disaster only beginning to unfold. It is unclear how toxic the droplets found inside the crabs are, but with 100% contamination in some areas, concern about penetration of more complex coastal fauna is warranted.

Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, told the press:

Fish are going to feed on (crab larvae). We have also just started seeing it on the fins of small, larval fish — their fins were encased in oil. That limits their mobility, so that makes them easy prey for other species. The oil’s going to get into the food chain in a lot of ways.

It is expected such a process of contamination will take years to reverse, not months. There are many questions about how best to counter the spread of molecular residue of dispersed oil from the spill. Oil contamination of this kind has never been faced in so pervasive a way, and the National Science Foundation’s emergency response projects, funded by “rapid response grants”, will be studying new methods and best practices, in hopes of preventing the oil’s spread deeper inland.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) this week called for a move toward building consensus for a scaled back version of the climate legislation pending in the United States Senate. Two possible models, given the nature of the Kerry-Lieberman proposal, as written, would be to either establish at the federal level the kind of cooperative emissions reduction strategy already adopted by a coalition of states across the northeast or a limit on total carbon emissions from power plants only.

25 states, plus the District of Columbia, have renewable electricity standards, a requirement that a certain percentage of power generation come from clean renewable resources, by a certain year. 3 more states have voluntary RES goals, and there are incentives both at the state and federal level for power utilities to develop expanded renewable generating capacity. The state of New Jersey has quickly risen to 2nd nationwide in solar power generation, behind California, despite having no sun-scorched deserts and little eligible open space which is not protected.

New Jersey is also rapidly expanding its commitment to solar energy, incentivizing installations on private homes, factory and warehouse roof-space and corporate complexes, as with the new 4.1 MW solar power installation slated to go online early next year at Dow Jones’ South Brunswick site. Technology innovation —including R&D, manufacturing, energy efficiency improvements, and local renewable generation schemes— is driving New Jersey’s response to the carbon emissions question.

This model could be translated into something that allows for an array of public-private partnerships and aggressive incentives for enterprises, small and large, to commit to energy innovation and to clean renewables. If Sen. Snowe’s push for a utility-focused emissions protocol is built around the northeastern efficiency and renewables standards, a new round of Recovery Act funding for R&D could help speed the transition to clean energy.

Coal-heavy states consistently face the problem of how carbon-pricing (whether by tax or by cap and trade) will affect people reliant on the coal industry for their livelihoods and for affordable energy. Accelerating the pace of technological innovation for improved alternative energy performance is key to lessening the impact of a transition away from coal, but whatever emissions-reduction strategy becomes law, something will likely have to be done to insulate consumers and protect jobs in coal-dependent states.

The hope of those pushing for a tech-centered bill is that renewable electricity standards and incentives to assist in the transition from carbon-based to clean energy will allow coal-dependent communities to diversify their energy supply and their job markets in meaningful ways that make for a more vibrant local economy.

An alternative proposal is the fee/dividend model —proposed by Citizens Climate Lobby*, and with the support of leading scientists like NASA’s Dr. James Hansen—, which would place a fee on carbon dioxide at the point of entry into the US economy (well, mine or port) and return 100% of the revenues to every American household. This model puts the reins of the marketplace back in the hands of the consumer, by allowing families to cover any additional costs that filter through from the carbon fee.

Whether by technological innovation and direct incentives for investment and retooling or by contextual incentives like the fee/dividend proposal, one key focus for honest policymakers must be planning for the rapid diversification of energy supplies and labor markets in regions and communities that are currently reliant on coal or oil production for their economic sustenance.

The famously oil-driven state of Texas is another good example —like New Jersey, where oil importation and refinery have long been key players in the energy sector— where a transition to renewables has not only been recognized as necessary and potentially lucrative, but where the pace of the transition has been accelerating at a surprising rate. Texas is now the national leader in wind-based power generation, with 9,000 MW installed and plans to install another 40,000 MW.

With 49,000 MW of wind-based power generation, Texas would be producing enough power from wind to replace 41 coal-fired power plants. Oil money is now shifting into wind as oil becomes harder to find and harder to extract and investors recognize that yields from wind don’t decline over time, because the resource is renewable, or rather: constantly flowing.

Such energy innovations are helping to provide new sources of wealth to rural communities, as 1 acre of corn can yield roughly $800 at harvest, and 1 acre with 1 wind turbine installed can produce $300,000 worth of electricity. The efficiency in such a shift in power generation is enhanced by the new technologies’ ability to subsidize farming communities, potentially reducing the need for overall government spending relating to agriculture and energy as a combined total.

Sen. Snowe’s office has been keeping any definitive aim or strategy under wraps, while the senator seeks to rally wavering senators in both parties to the cause of emissions reduction, by one means or another. Her coalition building effort will win favor, many policy analysts and activists believe, as soon as it is clear that the technological transition will be rapid and effective and will allow carbon-reliant communities to prosper in ways they presently cannot.

* NOTE: This reporter is a group leader and citizen volunteer for Citizens Climate Lobby, a non-partisan, non-profit national organization working to build the political will for a sustainable climate. Read more about CCL’s efforts on Capitol Hill, on The Hot Spring Network

Sen. Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine, is known for being a moderate, a pragmatist, and often the key to determining what gets done in a hotly divided partisan environment. She has consistently sought to take responsible positions on environmental policy, but has supported her party in many key votes. Now, she is pledging to push for a broader coalition of support for a scaled-back climate bill. Her approach is being called “utility-only”, focusing carbon emissions capping on power generation utilities, something supporters say will make the pending legislation more viable economically and administratively.

Her office released the following statement, on 29 June 2010, after a bipartisan Senate meeting with Pres. Obama to discuss pending climate legislation:

“As I have long advocated, working toward energy independence is an imperative for our economic and national security.  Which is why today I urged the President to seize control of our own energy destiny and, for the first time, establish clearly defined national timetables for clean energy production, benchmarks for oil consumption reduction, and goals for game-changing research – which no other president has ever done, to ensure we actually attain that independence.  Central to this is moving forward with an aggressive energy bill that reorients our nation toward renewable and energy efficiency. This cannot be underestimated in literally transforming our energy supply and yielding tremendous environmental and economic benefits.  Just last year, the U.S. was a global leader in wind with 10,000 Megawatts of facilities constructed at 39 percent growth – and yet, we are in danger of losing that competitive and technological edge to China which grew its wind capacity by 100 percent last year.

“And that is why I have co-authored legislation sponsored by Senator Klobuchar that would establish a strong Renewable Energy Standard of 25 percent by 2025 and worked on the Home Star proposal with Senators Bingaman and Warner, which would provide energy efficiency rebates and long-term tax credits to build an entirely new industry in performance-based efficiency.  While there is consensus among us on energy, on the complex and difficult question of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, there is no consensus at this time. From my perspective, I’ve long asserted that placing a price on carbon will send the appropriate signals to entrepreneurs that would unleash the innovation to position America as a global clean energy industry leader.  However, today we are in different and perilous economic times with last week’s new jobless claims actually increasing by 12,000, to a total of 472,000 Americans, and the full impact of the BP spill is yet unknown.  So it’s essential that we carefully weigh the costs of action versus inaction to avoid unintended consequences that cost us jobs, as well as the distributional effects of any policy we apply and how we mitigate and equalize those effects.”

“At the same time simply we cannot afford economy-wide approaches to carbon reduction that could cost consumers another 18 cents per gallon of gasoline in this struggling economy or subject our manufacturing sector to unnecessary regulations when they’ve already reduced their emissions by five percent below 1990 levels.  And yet, we also recognize the threat of blanket and ad hoc EPA regulations that would threaten at least 1,600 major employers should we fail to act. Which is why I believe that one possibility is to more narrowly target a carbon pricing program through a uniform nationwide system solely on the power sector which is the sector with the most to lose from the EPA regulations and it’s also the sector in which businesses actually make decisions today based on prices 20 to 30 years in the future.

“The bottom line is that this should be an era of practicality given our economic situation – and whatever Congress pursues should be viewed through that prism, to develop legislation that is pragmatic, reduces uncertainty, and creates business opportunities for a carbon-free economy of the future, without further harming our economy of today.”

Senator Snowe has been a longtime advocate for advancing policies to combat global warming, with her record beginning as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives when she cosponsored the Global Warming Prevention Act more than 20 years ago.  In 2007, Senators Snowe and Feinstein spearheaded the Ten-in-Ten fuel economy standards, landmark legislation to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which is the single most effective US law that has addressed climate change.  The regulations based on Senator Snowe’s law were finalized this spring and will eliminate a metric Gigaton of CO2 emissions by saving 1.8 billion barrels of oil.  This Congress, Senator Snowe co-hosted the “U.S. Climate Action: A Global Economic Perspective” symposium on Capitol Hill with Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair, as well as the leaders in the business community to discuss the formulation of U.S. policy on climate change.

Snowe clearly seeks a pragmatic approach, and wants to rescue future generations from the potentially grave side-effects of political intransigence and the refusal to accept universally defined scientific findings on carbon-induced climate destabilization. Her task, of course, is complex, because many in her party are sensitive to the concerns of coal-heavy states, where fears about energy prices are closely linked to the sometimes narrow business plan of coal interests.

Technological innovation and efficiency standards could afford a way to persuade skeptics about the economic viability and civilizational imperatives of carbon emissions reduction. A coalition of northeastern states has already begun implementing emissions reduction schemes for power utilities, and this could serve as a model for national policy, without requiring a massive new bureaucracy or complex trading market.

Newt Gingrich is calling for a “green conservatism”: is he trying to save the Republican party from ideological extremists?

Truth-First.com :: With Democrats and Republicans fighting each other from hardened rhetorical gun turrets, taking for granted the other side’s evil and intransigence, Pres. Obama’s first 18 months in office have been characterized by a near total lack of cooperation from moderates in the opposition.Republicans are talking like radicals and insurgents, but claiming to be traditional conservatives, and Democrats are struggling to remain populist while tasked with actually governing.

Part of the problem is that the Republicans are fighting to be the conservative party in a system not of their own making. The Democratic party fashioned, in large part, the existing system of public services and national government, through the New Deal and the 60 years of Congressional dominance, from 1932 through 1994.

To defend the existing norms would be the Democratic thing to do. So, ironically, it was Republican “conservative” propaganda that allowed Barack Obama to be the “change candidate” the entire globe was able to see as distinct and revolutionary. Obama’s message is new, and he has been aggressive about reform, but his politics is Democratic, and seeks mainly to continue pursuing the aims of the Democratic party historically, in an updated, more dynamic fashion.

Contrary to the popular media bent, Pres. Obama’s first 18 months in office have been stunningly successful, as he’s achieved more major legislative reforms than any president in memory, and with the stiffest opposition ever seen. (The use of the filibuster in the Senate is at an all-time high, essentially altering the Constitutional process of legislation, and requiring the president to get 60 vots for almost any bill.)

What Republicans need to worry about is triangulation. They have been fighting a pitched battle against Democratic “liberalism”, while offering no coherent platform of public services or government accountability that is strictly “conservative” yet able to operate in the system that already exists. This makes them first of all a reluctant party of radical change, and second, a party at risk of being boxed out ideologically by more policy-oriented parties.

Democrats have to worry about this as well, but energy in favor or against the Democrats is trending largely along traditional lines, in line with “likely voter” tendencies for presidential and midterm elections. That’s a bad sign, if one considers that Pres. Obama’s 2008 campaign was a watershed in terms of turnout, winning him more than 17 million more votes than either Bush or Gore won in 2000. But it is not an historic threat to the Democratic party.

The Republican party, on the other hand, is seeing increasingly entrenched passions take over: a hard core of extreme conservatism is laboring deliberately to “purge” the party of ideologically “impure” moderates, and outside the party, rancor over the corruption and policy failures of the Bush years still runs deep. Meanwhile, major demographic trends could shift popular support to Democrats, possibly giving them an unexpected stronghold even in Texas, if the Republicans botch their approach to immigration reform.

A possible threat to both parties’ dominance, but especially to the Republican party’s standing as the lead mainstream party in opposition could be a kind of Green-Libertarian coalition. I first wrote about this idea for Cafe Sentido in November 2008, a week after the election of Barack Obama and the Republicans’ second consecutive major loss in Congress, then again in September 2009, after the Sotomayor hearings.

Now, the idea of a Green-Libertarian coalition has again resurfaced as Newt Gingrich has declared his intention to push for a strong “green conservatism — a new pathway to environmental stewardship“. There is much that is disingenuous about Gingrich’s argument, including his attacks on the “secular socialist machine” of Obama’s pragmatist reform agenda —as if the separation of church and state were not a Constitutional mandate and as if keeping in mind of the liberty and wellbeing of actual citizens were some kind of authoritarian takeover—, but Gingrich appears serious about his declaration.

There is significant overlap between the policy goals of the Green party and those of the Libertarian party, despite deep philosophical differences on the role of government. A multi-state coalition among representatives of these two parties could forge a path for viable opposition to the two-party stranglehold on power. The effects would likely see one of the two major parties pushed into third place.

As the numbers stand now, a Green-Lib coalition might be able to shave as much as 10% off Democratic support nationwide, assuming Democrats or liberal independents —still wary of repeating the 2000 election, where a Green candidate effectively denied the Democratic candidate the White House— believed the coalition was big enough to keep the Republicans at bay. Republicans might lose anywhere from 20% to 35% of their support, as they struggle against Green-Lib claims that they are not rights-oriented and not green enough.

This may be a little bit like fantasy baseball, but there’s something to the idea: Bill Maher, a staunch libertarian and a committed liberal, clearly sides with Green party politics on a number of issues. His audience sees the world through a very complex, but real and palpable, Green-Lib prism of political choices. Voters are looking for something more “their own” nowadays, something different from and more personally relevant and attuned than the old prevailing norms.

The question of why or how a Green-Lib coalition might play out —and that is really just one example— will have a lot to do with what party is bleeding votes in what way, and why? Right now, the Republican party is bleeding votes because 1) Bush’s politics failed on a grand scale; 2) the party has acquired an air of radical intolerance; 3) the party appears to be “out of touch” with the average voter; and 4) because Obama’s 21st century message of dynamic vision, inclusiveness, public service and sustainability, is prevailing.

Those four factors all suggest a Green-Lib coalition would more easily capture would-be Republican votes —perhaps all of them independents— than Democratic votes, as the Democrats are now more united and more determined than at any time in nearly 50 years. Pres. Obama needs to make sure he keeps his own message, his own revolutionary pragmatist framework at the center of the Democratic discourse, because that is what brought over 65 million voters to his cause in 2008.

The Republicans do not have that luxury. They don’t have a nuanced, complex, adaptable message that fits so many competing interests. If the Democrats can hold onto that momentum, analysts now suggest, they have a much better chance to expand their electoral base and build reliable votes into every election for coming decades, in part due to demographics, in part due to changing attitudes on a range of social issues.

The Republican party wants to carry the conservative banner, but has had a difficult time explaining what conservatism means in modern America. As such, the party has opted for an explanation whereby modern America is the problem and conservatism is about stripping away layers of change, making social structures more rigid and shifting power back toward the top of the socio-economic pyramid.

In 2006 and 2008, this approach was roundly rejected by American voters, which is why Barack Obama won 16 million more votes than George W. Bush did in 2000 (69,456,897 [PDF] to 50,456,002). It was by far the most votes any presidential candidate has ever received, and well more than doubled his opponent’s Electoral College tally (365 to 173).

The Republican party’s shift toward corporate interests is not really a conservative political ideology at all, but a matter of fact for a party which is struggling to inspire small donors in large numbers. Money became key to political stature in the United States when the Supreme Court found that “money is free speech”, effectively allowing political parties to organize their philosophical platforms around fundraising.

Barack Obama, however, demonstrated that big-donor fundraising doesn’t necessarily equal political might. He won more support from a larger number of small donors (individuals giving under $200) than any presidential candidate in history, and in some months actually tripled previous records for fundraising. There is a new model for how to do political outreach, and the Republican party may not have the rhetorical or philosophical reach to do it well.

This is increasingly apparent as the 2010 electoral process moves forward, and the Republican party has been saddled with some less than well-thought-through platforms coming from ideological radicals and political neophytes, symbolic of the party’s confused and grudging inside-out political and contextual rethinking. The temptations of dogmatism are taking root, even as “tea party” activists seek to decentralize control of the party.

Gingrich could be recognizing that somehow there’s an opportunity to capture the “act locally” aspect of the environmental movement and use this energy to bring the tea party under control. He may be trying to copycat James Cameron, whose campaign of many years to green the Conservative party has finally landed him the prime ministership. But his strategy is clearly the beginning of something: whether it will affect the 2010 polls is unclear, but he will lose considerable green credibility if he does not back climate legislation this year.

TheHotSpring.net :: There is nothing ideological about the issue of renewable energy resources. Proponents tend to care about the health of the natural environment, which motivates their wish to see renewables replace high-polluting resources like oil and coal, but the technologies, the fact of their economic viability and their usefulness for society at large, are not in any way a matter of ideology.

Neither is there anything ideological about the allegiance of some to carbon-based fuels. The considerations are entirely practical on all sides, and we need to remember this as we try to find consensus on how to move forward, responsibly, as a civilization, in terms of our relationship to energy.

For some people in the political arena, it would appear to make more sense to continue to support carbon-based fuels as the primary resource for energy production, for a number of practical reasons, each of which can be refuted on practical grounds: 1) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels donate to one’s campaign; 2) because those entities that profit from carbon-based fuels “create jobs”; 3) because burning things to release energy is easier to understand than more advanced technologies.

There are real ideologically-rooted reasons why the passions can run so deep on either side: for environmentalists, it is morally unconscionable that we continue burning dirty fuels and eroding the natural systems on which all life depends, no matter the reasons; for the pro-petroleum segment of the political spectrum, there are patriotic roots, hearkening back to two world wars and the Cold War, with oil seen as a guarantor of security.

Oil is no longer that, and passions aside, thinking people have to acknowledge that the root of those passions is really practical and not ideological anyway. It makes practical sense to be good stewards of the environment on which we depend for everything that we have, and it was a practical consideration that linked industrial production and national security to the availability of carbon-based fuels.

But now, national security has become so closely linked to energy supply issues that we can no longer rely —again, in strictly practical terms— on a commodity as volatile, finite and problematic as petroleum. The costs to society are too great, whether we are talking about war-fighting —and war-funding, for that matter—, the loss of freedom in terms of shaping our foreign policy, costs in terms of human health or the destabilization of major climate systems.

And coal, while abundant in North America, is so dirty a resource that the environmental fallout alone makes it less than reasonable as a foundational resource for long-term future planning. There may come a time when carbon itself is a resource, required for its chemical properties, but not necessarily as useful as we now pretend, as a combustible fuel. Places where the coal industry has its roots may have to change focus or find technologically cutting-edge ways to justify the exploration for coal.

The reasons for this are hard to understand, if one starts from the assumption that there is something traditional or sacredly local or productive about coal. But if we step back and consider the real adaptability of human populations, we find that no community really needs the coal industry, having no chance of survival or prosperity in absence, in the way the coal industry lobby pretends.

Communities are made up of human beings and are as adaptable as those human beings’ minds, hearts and relationships. The relationship to powerful coal interests is not always a happy one, and this alone can open doors for the development of resources that are more sustainable, more local-friendly, and respectful of future human need in ways that older technologies simply cannot be.

Even the coal industry itself could innovate, diversify, and find ways to turn its operations into major sources of clean renewable energy. At least three renewable resources come to mind: geothermal energy production, wind and solar. Mining companies in many cases own or lease land for which they have not yet devised a marketable use or long ago abandoned, and these can be converted to solar farms, wind farms or geothermal fields.

While international mining companies are outsourcing administrative jobs and moving to more “cost effective” mining sites overseas, some are beginning to use disused mining sites in the US to build part of the new clean-energy infrastructure. Across the southwest, such projects are already in development or being implemented. According to the Arizona Republic:

Both the Bureau of Land Management and Environmental Protection Agency are studying the potential to put renewable-energy projects on mines, landfills and other disturbed lands.

Mines can help avoid many of the expenses solar plants face on pristine desert, experts said, such as environmental rules that require relocating saguaros and other protected plants.

There is no reason why environmentalists seeking to promote clean energy and communities steeped in a long tradition of coal mining or oil drilling cannot come together, free of ideological constraints, to craft the solutions that will make the US a global leader in efficient, profitable, mass-produced clean energy. The ideology that claims this issue is one of ideology is simply a rhetorical framework that serves the interests of the most stagnant and unimaginative coal and oil interests.

Major oil producers could easily invest billions in renewable R&D and become global pioneers in the rush to achieve a fully self-sustaining clean-energy economy. Their resistance is perhaps more linked to a short-sighted ideological prejudice than to a lack of will to be part of the future, but they do not have any real ideological framework to back up their position, and the logic that favors a transition to renewables does not require one.

From a strictly economic standpoint, it does not make sense to continue being near totally reliant upon a way of doing business that carries the wildly exorbitant potential costs of an Ixtoc, an Exxon Valdez, Texaco in Ecuador, or a Deepwater Horizon disaster. If we want to be intelligent about how we achieve “energy independence”, we have to first assess and confront the real costs of doing business the way big oil does business.

It’s not a matter of “a tax on energy” or “a tax on carbon”, it’s a matter of making sure the responsible parties pay their share. Subsidies on an unprecedented scale, have made the oil business look and feel profitable in ways that it actually is not, when the health of the wider economy is considered. Were those wider costs built into the business itself, big oil would not be nearly as attractive an investment as it seemed to be until the Deepwater Horizon well blew out in April.

While an “ideology” that values the natural environment over the right of the oil industry to make profits may rejoice at the opportunity to use such a failure as BP has experienced in the Gulf of Mexico to make the case against oil, that does not make it any less true that BP had no responsible or credible action plan for dealing with an environmental catastrophe of this magnitude, despite deliberately doing everything necessary to bring about the catastrophe.

That such risks can be avoided with a transition to clean, renewable energy resources that do not require combustion and do not require oil or coal to achieve the efficiency gains they aim to achieve, is just as honestly not a matter of ideology. It’s the way it is. And science is now demonstrating that we can produce more than enough electricity, nationally, to power our entire domestic energy consumption through wind and solar alone, if we build the infrastructure.

At the point where the renewable energy infrastructure is pervasive and functional enough to outpace carbon-based fuels in total power generation capacity, there will be no question, practically speaking, whether or not renewables are a more effective method of promoting long-term economic health and prosperity. Where is the ideology inherent in planning for such a virtuous moment of future achievement?

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In a meeting with Pres. Barack Obama, BP’s directors have agreed to open a dedicated escrow fund, to be operated by a third party, through which billions of dollars will flow to compensate victims of the environmental and economic fallout of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, across the Gulf of Mexico. As of 12:15 EDT, with the news breaking across US media, the specifics of how much will be paid, how quickly and to whom, have not yet been released.

There is speculation, however, the sum will be in the vicinity of $20 billion, which may be a preliminary figure set to guarantee that payments up to that amount will be guaranteed to be available. Estimates of total economic fallout, including the costs of environmental degradation, clean-up and recovery, in recent days, suggest the total cost to BP could be far higher than $20 billion. Two Republican officials from Florida yesterday told MSNBC they believed BP’s liability will be indefinite and ongoing, possibly in perpetuity.

TheHotSpring.net :: There is mounting concern the ongoing flow of oil from the damaged BP Deepwater Horizon well in the Macondo field may be the result of one or more serious structural breaches in the cement well casing below the sea bed. Statements made on 7 June by Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, to MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, suggest the well casing has ruptured, there are multiple points of seepage across the surrounding sea bed, and the well can likely only be closed from below, if or when the two relief wells connect with the damaged well.

The news is gravely important, because it would mean that 1) efforts to seal or cap the well from above will not work and 2) the cement lining of the well itself may have been structurally flawed from the outset. Firedoglake has been reporting on this issue, in an effort to bring to light information that has apparently been included in private briefings to members of Congress but never disclosed to the public. A breach in the well casing means the leak will be far more technologically challenging to close than what was thought until now.

While it is premature to talk of the “death of the Gulf of Mexico”, it does now look likely this will be the most cataclysmic environmental disaster experienced in or around North America in recorded history, with no clear solution in sight. A breach of the well casing would also mean any future attempts to close the well from above could be even more disastrous and could ultimately prevent the safe, secure closing of the well.

It is also of serious concern that BP’s stock value dropped again by 9% in one day, even as the directors contemplate freezing dividend payments in order to meet their obligations in paying for containment and clean-up across the Gulf region. The rapid deterioration of BP’s stick value has raised concerns the company will be taken over by a rival or forced into bankruptcy, so the US government is reported to be exploring ways to legally bar either of those from happening.

According to Firedoglake’s reporting, Sen. Nelson sent the following letter to BP earlier this month:

June 2, 2010

Mr. Lamar McKay
Chairman and president, BP America, Inc.
501 Westlake Park Boulevard
Houston, Texas 77079

Dear Mr. McKay:

I understand the priority of your company right now is capping the Deepwater Horizon well. But new information about the accident has come to light in two recently published accounts that raise serious questions I hope you can promptly address.

Specifically, a recent Wall Street Journal account indicates that BP altered the design of the Deepwater Horizon well even up to five or six days before the rig exploded. And one of these design decisions, according to drilling experts cited in the Journal, could have left the well more vulnerable to the blowout that occurred April 20.

Also, a Washington Post report cites sources including a BP official saying that sometime during or after the recent abortive top kill operation, new damage was discovered inside the underground well. Some of the drilling mud that was forced into the well was moving sidewise into rock formations, sources told the newspaper.

If the sourced information is accurate and mud leaked out the side of the well casing, oil and gas likely are leaking beneath the seafloor as well, according to Professor Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanography expert at Florida State University who advised my staff.

Both of the published accounts, then, raise serious questions. Please address these accounts and provide my staff with any and all information and documents regarding the following:

· The discovery of breaks or leaks in the well casing beneath the seafloor;
· Records of any monitoring BP is undertaking of the Deepwater Horizon wellbore for structural integrity;
· Records of any monitoring of the seafloor surrounding the Deepwater Horizon well, including any geological or geophysical information showing changes in the formations within the proximity of the Deepwater Horizon well;
· Records reflecting whether any oil, natural gas, or residual drilling mud might be migrating to the seafloor beyond the boundaries of the casing, including any analysis of how this might impact the drilling of two relief wells or other methods to mitigate the flow of oil;
· All documents related to BP’s casing strategies for wells in the Macondo prospect.

Thank you in advance for your prompt response.

Sincerely,
Bill Nelson

There are now serious doubts about the real scale of the disaster, with news from BP suggesting the most severe official estimates to date of how much oil is gushing from the blown-out Macondo well may be a gross underestimate. BP has announced it intends to be able to collect as much as 80,000 barrels per day from the gushing well within a few weeks, despite the most severe official estimate, only just released, setting the worst case at 40,000 barrels per day.

At 80,000 barrels per day, which is 3.2 million gallons, of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, just four days would equal the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Exxon Valdez was 11 million gallons spilled into the pristine waters of the Sound, devastating the marine and coastal environments, killing wildlife and imposing chronic harm on local communities. Today is day 57 of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

TheHotSpring.net :: Pres. Obama addressed the nation last night from the Oval Office, on the tragedy unfolding across the Gulf of Mexico, and issued an impassioned call for the entire nation to rally to the cause of breaking its “addiction to fossil fuels”. The president’s vision goes beyond the question of “energy independence”, which tends to favor expanded offshore drilling, to a push for a comprehensive transition to clean, renewable sources of energy and the phasing out of carbon-based fuels.

For more than a decade, ecological economists have been arguing that the United States needs to make a nationwide effort, “at wartime speed” to innovate and commit to clean, renewable power-generation methods. Last night, Pres. Obama became the first US president to echo this vision, reminding skeptics that no one believed the US could build its military capacity as rapidly or completely as it did to fight World War II on two opposite sides of the globe.

Obama said “The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most clean and painful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now”. He also noted that a nationwide transition to clean energy is an integral part of the nation’s long-term economic recovery, saying “The transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of new jobs, but only if we accelerate that transition.”

There are some in Congress who oppose this message, but this appears to be mostly from allegiance to the carbon fuels industry and the outdated view that clean energy solutions are not cost-effective. For many politicians from the Gulf coast region, the prospect of a comprehensive shift away from fossil fuels is not only terrifying, but taboo. There is such a deep fear that jobs tied to the oil industry cannot be replaced by any other means and that no other industry can be so effective at “creating wealth” that it is virtually forbidden for anyone in politics to speak of moving away from oil production.

The generating capacity, however, of wind, solar and wave power, has advanced to a level of efficiency where it is feasible to replace the energy production capacity of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil industry with renewables. What is needed is infrastructure, and building it will create jobs as soon as the first project is launched.

Obstruction from pro-petroleum politicians in Washington and across the Gulf region is linked to the 18th-19th century idea that burning carbon-based fuel is the most efficient way to produce energy. But refusal to pour major investment into the transition to clean, renewable resources and the infrastructure needed to make that system a reality is a direct impediment to immediate, widespread job growth in the very areas under siege from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The BP spill is in fact, no matter one’s perspective on clean energy, a watershed moment in thinking about energy and environmental policy: it is now clear the incalculable potential costs to every sector of society from the failed strategy of a devotion to carbon-based fuels far outstrip our ability to easily respond to a disaster of this kind, and the logic of using clean energy has suddenly come into stark relief as an obvious and necessary next step.

The call to arms, part of what the president called his “battle plan” for addressing the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, comes none too soon, as China and India have joined Europe in pushing the envelope of clean energy innovation. China has made the world’s largest investments in clean energy startup incentives and the EU has poured tens of billions of dollars in solar investment into projects in Africa and elsewhere.

But India has also joined the trend, as reported by Shravya Reddy, for the Natural Resources Defense Council:

On May 24, India unveiled the draft of its National Green Mission, one of the eight missions under its National Action Plan on Climate Change.   This is exciting news, especially for NRDC’s India team which is currently in New Delhi discussing climate change with Indian officials and civil society.   NRDC welcomes the draft and is encouraged to see India’s commitment to addressing the challenge of climate change and managing its greenhouse gas emissions.

India’s national green mission is just the latest major national policy proposal designed to not only build toward a new era of responsible environmental stewardship and reduced carbon emissions, but to transition a major national economy toward the use of clean, renewable resources for power-generation, industry and transport.

A dramatically expanded commitment to clean energy resources is no longer just a matter of environmental responsibility, it is now a very urgent matter of direct international economic competition. Denmark and Japan have become the world leaders in the production of advanced wind turbine technologies, while China is now pushing investment in both innovation and production of cutting edge solar and wind power technologies, for export.

President Obama’s address to the nation on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, as delivered from the Oval Office, 15 June 2010

8:01 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  Good evening.  As we speak, our nation faces a multitude of challenges.  At home, our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American.  Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al Qaeda wherever it exists.  And tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.

On April 20th, an explosion ripped through BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana.  Eleven workers lost their lives.  Seventeen others were injured.  And soon, nearly a mile beneath the surface of the ocean, oil began spewing into the water.

Because there has never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology.  That’s why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge — a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy.  Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.

As a result of these efforts, we’ve directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology.  And in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well.  This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that’s expected to stop the leak completely.

Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.  And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it’s not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days.  The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.

But make no mistake:  We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes.  We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused.  And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.

Tonight I’d like to lay out for you what our battle plan is going forward:  what we’re doing to clean up the oil, what we’re doing to help our neighbors in the Gulf, and what we’re doing to make sure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.

First, the cleanup.  From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation’s history — an effort led by Admiral Thad Allen, who has almost 40 years of experience responding to disasters.  We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and clean up the oil.  Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding in the Gulf.  And I’ve authorized the deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members along the coast.  These servicemen and women are ready to help stop the oil from coming ashore, they’re ready to help clean the beaches, train response workers, or even help with processing claims — and I urge the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible.

Because of our efforts, millions of gallons of oil have already been removed from the water through burning, skimming and other collection methods.  Over five and a half million feet of boom has been laid across the water to block and absorb the approaching oil.  We’ve approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try to stop the oil before it reaches the shore, and we’re working with Alabama, Mississippi and Florida to implement creative approaches to their unique coastlines.

As the cleanup continues, we will offer whatever additional resources and assistance our coastal states may need.  Now, a mobilization of this speed and magnitude will never be perfect, and new challenges will always arise.  I saw and heard evidence of that during this trip.  So if something isn’t working, we want to hear about it.  If there are problems in the operation, we will fix them.

But we have to recognize that despite our best efforts, oil has already caused damage to our coastline and its wildlife.  And sadly, no matter how effective our response is, there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done.  That’s why the second thing we’re focused on is the recovery and restoration of the Gulf Coast.

You know, for generations, men and women who call this region home have made their living from the water.  That living is now in jeopardy.  I’ve talked to shrimpers and fishermen who don’t know how they’re going to support their families this year.  I’ve seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers -– even in areas where the beaches are not yet affected.  I’ve talked to owners of shops and hotels who wonder when the tourists might start coming back.  The sadness and the anger they feel is not just about the money they’ve lost.  It’s about a wrenching anxiety that their way of life may be lost.

I refuse to let that happen.  Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness.  And this fund will not be controlled by BP.  In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent third party.

Beyond compensating the people of the Gulf in the short term, it’s also clear we need a long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region.  The oil spill represents just the latest blow to a place that’s already suffered multiple economic disasters and decades of environmental degradation that has led to disappearing wetlands and habitats.  And the region still hasn’t recovered from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.  That’s why we must make a commitment to the Gulf Coast that goes beyond responding to the crisis of the moment.

I make that commitment tonight.  Earlier, I asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, who is also a former governor of Mississippi and a son of the Gulf Coast, to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan as soon as possible.  The plan will be designed by states, local communities, tribes, fishermen, businesses, conservationists and other Gulf residents.  And BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region.

The third part of our response plan is the steps we’re taking to ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again.  A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe –- that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken.

That obviously was not the case in the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why.  The American people deserve to know why.  The families I met with last week who lost their loved ones in the explosion — these families deserve to know why.  And so I’ve established a National Commission to understand the causes of this disaster and offer recommendations on what additional safety and environmental standards we need to put in place.  Already, I’ve issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.  I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue.  And while I urge the Commission to complete its work as quickly as possible, I expect them to do that work thoroughly and impartially.

One place we’ve already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service.  Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility — a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves.  At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight.  Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.

When Ken Salazar became my Secretary of the Interior, one of his very first acts was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency.  But it’s now clear that the problem there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow.  And so Secretary Salazar and I are bringing in new leadership at the agency — Michael Bromwich, who was a tough federal prosecutor and Inspector General.  And his charge over the next few months is to build an organization that acts as the oil industry’s watchdog — not its partner.

So one of the lessons we’ve learned from this spill is that we need better regulations, better safety standards, and better enforcement when it comes to offshore drilling.  But a larger lesson is that no matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk.  After all, oil is a finite resource.  We consume more than 20 percent of the world’s oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves.  And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean — because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.

For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered.  For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.  And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires.  Time and again, the path forward has been blocked — not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight.  Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America.  Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil.  And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.

We cannot consign our children to this future.  The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now.  Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own destiny.

This is not some distant vision for America.  The transition away from fossil fuels is going to take some time, but over the last year and a half, we’ve already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry.  As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels.  Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient.  Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that someday will lead to entire new industries.

Each of us has a part to play in a new future that will benefit all of us.  As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of jobs -– but only if we accelerate that transition.  Only if we seize the moment.  And only if we rally together and act as one nation –- workers and entrepreneurs; scientists and citizens; the public and private sectors.
When I was a candidate for this office, I laid out a set of principles that would move our country towards energy independence.  Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.

Now, there are costs associated with this transition.  And there are some who believe that we can’t afford those costs right now.  I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy -– because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.

So I’m happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party -– as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels.  Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks.  Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power.  Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development -– and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.

All of these approaches have merit, and deserve a fair hearing in the months ahead.  But the one approach I will not accept is inaction.  The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is somehow too big and too difficult to meet.  You know, the same thing was said about our ability to produce enough planes and tanks in World War II.  The same thing was said about our ability to harness the science and technology to land a man safely on the surface of the moon.  And yet, time and again, we have refused to settle for the paltry limits of conventional wisdom.  Instead, what has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny -– our determination to fight for the America we want for our children.  Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like.  Even if we don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there.  We know we’ll get there.

It’s a faith in the future that sustains us as a people.  It is that same faith that sustains our neighbors in the Gulf right now.

Each year, at the beginning of shrimping season, the region’s fishermen take part in a tradition that was brought to America long ago by fishing immigrants from Europe.  It’s called “The Blessing of the Fleet,” and today it’s a celebration where clergy from different religions gather to say a prayer for the safety and success of the men and women who will soon head out to sea -– some for weeks at a time.
The ceremony goes on in good times and in bad.  It took place after Katrina, and it took place a few weeks ago –- at the beginning of the most difficult season these fishermen have ever faced.

And still, they came and they prayed.  For as a priest and former fisherman once said of the tradition, “The blessing is not that God has promised to remove all obstacles and dangers.  The blessing is that He is with us always,” a blessing that’s granted “even in the midst of the storm.”

The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face.  This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again.  What sees us through -– what has always seen us through –- is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it.

Tonight, we pray for that courage.  We pray for the people of the Gulf.  And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day.  Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

END
8:18 P.M. EDT

Small-government conservatives across the country are up in arms demanding an overwhelming show of government power in the Gulf of Mexico. They demand that the president of the United States establish “command and control” over the activities of private industry and “get this clean up now”. They are shouting from the rooftops and massing in the streets, or so they would like us to believe, at the outrage that government is not able to establish absolute control of the worst ecological disaster in US history.

This morning, as she called for a more powerful response from government, Carly Fiorina then said her campaign is about “out of control government” trying to control people’s lives. There is a fundamental intellectual disconnect between what small-government conservatives say they believe in and what they say they want from government, and that disconnect is matched by the distance between what they say should be true and what is possible in the realm of the physical, finite and real.

Anti-tax, small-government Republicans on Main Street are demanding that Pres. Obama “fix this!” without delay, but will not look at the real problem in the Gulf of Mexico, which is that the oil industry does not clean up its spills, does not have the technology needed to prevent them and does not know what to do in the case of a massive blow-out like Deepwater Horizon. There are tens of thousands of federal employees and National Guard and Coast Guard reserves, local fishermen, volunteers and environmentalists working to clean up the spill, but no one on Earth knows how to stop the oil, because it’s never been done.

The fact is: something went wrong in the construction of the well, and the popular conception (inside industry, with the public and in government) that the oil industry is powerful, rational and capable of an overwhelming technical response, has blinded our entire civilization to the real perils of an industry of the kind that we use to extract petroleum from underground. The entire practice from start to finish is intensely destructive to the environment, and there are no technologies that can “get it cleaned up now”; there are only half measures and incremental approaches.

What we are now seeing is the nature of a crisis which cannot be resolved without a massive, collaborative effort to achieve innovations on the scale of a paradigm shift in thinking about an entire sector of our economy. BP is being forced to face not only the loss of half of its stock value, but also the suspension of its normal corporate dividend payouts and the reorganization of its internal financing, to plan for a black swan event…

Only, there is nothing truly black swan about the rig collapse and the spill; it simply wasn’t planned for. It happens, it has happened in the past, and the industry generally gets away without having to be held truly responsible. The Deepwater Horizon is just the biggest of these blowouts this year, but there was one off the coast of Australia and another offshore well reportedly leaking in the Gulf of Mexico as well, while various oil wells have been leaking persistently since 2004, the result of damage from Hurricane Ivan.

The cry from conservatives for an “emergency response” is part of a lust for authoritarian action, the faith in which gives certain people a confidence that we have control over events. There is comfort in believing that the only reason for a disaster threatening our environment is a failure of powerful people to act powerfully enough. But powerful as humanity may be, among species, it is ultimately not possible in the most extreme cases to seize control over natural processes.

That authoritarian urge is precisely what makes it such an easy sell for conservative politicians and propagandists to persuade like-minded voters that progressive politicians are in fact conspiring to establish some sort of permanent authoritarian rule, because it’s part of their own conceptualization of what power is and how it should be used. What is often not understood, however, is how pro-business politicians match this psychological urge with the philosophy of “limited government”.

The fiercest proponents of “limited government” in the Congress or in local or presidential politics are almost without fail fiercely pro-business. The connection is not what is normally thought: that they simply have so much faith in the good will of good people that they want those people to have more “freedom to innovate”. It is, rather, and very deliberately, a political program designed to give cover to businesses that behave like BP, to limit government in critical ways so that industry can set its own policy, monitor its own ethical standards and conduct business unconstrained by the interests of the rest of humanity.

Then, the limited-government ideologues complain, government is catastrophically limited, and that proves their point. Government cannot be trusted, because it does not have absolute power and is not as authoritative (read authoritarian) as private industry. (Just to be clear, we are not saying private industry cannot have a different attitude or that it is by nature authoritarian and no socially responsible, just that for some ideologues, it feels good to assume that it does constantly aspire to a level of absolute control of which ordinary people can only dream, and this distorts our politics in meaningful ways.)

We don’t need new regulations, we hear, from good-faith businesspeople of the kind that follow the rules and behave ethically. We just need to enforce the regulations we have. These same people say it’s “bad timing” to launch a criminal investigation into BP’s refusal to follow those regulations, despite the fairly obvious appearance that individuals at BP actively lied about what the company was doing to follow existing regulations, or what it could do in response to a system failure.

The question is: how can we impose on BP a requirement that it never violate any regulations? Some argue, absurdly, for more lax regulations, so they’re easier to follow. Others demand “action”, meaning they want their programmatically limited government to act with sweeping, near absolute expressions of raw power, whatever that is. Others say industry can “police itself” and that BP’s competitors will simply punish BP by way of competition… presumably proving they are better at following regulations than BP?

This is the problem with our political discourse: it has veered into the surreal. There is no specific action the government is legally empowered to take that would “get this cleaned up now!” Short of seizing BP’s assets in North America, there is no way to guarantee BP will fund the entire scope of the emergency response or to bar BP from interfering with the most advanced clean-up and containment operations available, as they are alleged to have done.

What has conservatives up in arms are three problems, none of which is the spill itself: first, they are outraged that their vision of power that is limited enough to not interfere with one’s personal life but absolute enough to be capable of a push-button solution to complex problems is not real; second, they are outraged that a progressive is in charge; third, they are distressed at the numerous ways in which the BP crisis illustrates the pervasive moral failings of their own ideology.

The constant drumbeat of blame against Pres. Obama, probably the most ferociously demanding of presidents in US history, in terms of demanding better behavior and cleaner innovation from the entire energy and transport sector, is rooted in this self-aware dismay about how a political program that despises and defunds government actually did lead to one after another calamity in the 2000s relating to government being incapable of taking adequate responsibility, due to its limited mission.

Whether Pres. Obama is committed enough to resolving this disaster is absolutely not in question: he has mounted, from day one, the most comprehensive environmental emergency response effort in the nation’s history; he was alerting the public to the potential scale of the disaster, when BP was still saying the impact would be “very, very modest” and politicians across the Gulf region were demanding kid-glove treatment for BP.

What is in question is who, if anyone, knows how to solve this problem and how did we let things go this far, as a civilization? The answer to the first is that while there are some good ideas out there, there is the very real problem of pressure inside the well and the fact that the well was apparently not built to withstand the kind of pressures rushing through it. The answer to the second is that we have been disastrously naïve and short-sighted; we have refused to recognize the inherent shortcomings of dependence on carbon-based combustible fuels, and we have never planned for anything like this.

BP has reportedly been reporting a far lower number for the amount of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. The newly revised numbers suggest there may be as much as 40,000 barrels of oil per day, which would be roughly 1.68 million gallons per day. This upwardly revised figure is still not as high as some expert observers estimate, with the higher end near 2 million gallons per day. Media reports suggest the real figure may still be far worse, as BP has not done a direct sample of density and pressure to determine exactly how much oil is flowing from the well.

If BP is recognizing 40,000 barrels per day, it is now being suggested the real figure could be much higher. There is a direct practical impact from what appears to be BP’s systematic underreporting of the spill, which is that the response may not be adequate to address the real scale of the spill. There are, we now know, not enough skimming vessels on the surface to deal with a spill of this scale. The news has also revived calls for the federal government to seize BP’s American operations and direct the emergency response without needing to deal with BP executives as a go-between.

There is no precedent for an environmental disaster on this scale in the United States, so it is difficult to find a legal precedent for what actions the government could take to control the emergency response and clean-up. The emergency response has technically been conducted through what is called the Unified Command, including government agencies, BP and Transocean, but BP is responsible for the bulk of the spending and the bulk of the technical response.

The spill has now spread far enough that its total area is estimated to extend to more than one-half the entire land area of the state of Louisiana. The rapidly spreading slick is also now estimated to reach land somewhere between Mobile Bay, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida, as soon as today.

If the new figures are correct, the Deepwater Horizon disaster will have spilled fully two-thirds as much oil as the worst oil disaster in the history of the Gulf of Mexico, the Ixtoc disaster in 1979. That spill, however, was the result of 10 months of continuous gushing, while the Deepwater Horizon disaster is now only at day 53. With estimates by outside observers far higher, there are very real fears Deepwater Horizon has already eclipsed Ixtoc and may continue gushing beyond even the August relief well date.

The blow-out (explosion and collapse) of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the well 5,000 feet below has brought into high contrast a serious problem inherent in the way we produce energy: we have long refused to calculate the real costs of extracting fossil fuels. Ecological economics is founded on this point: we should calculate the value of the natural ecosystem services disrupted by the after-effects of carbon emissions.

But we now have a clear view of another deficiency in the market economics of oil production: BP did not adequately plan for the eventuality of a catastrophic blow-out and region-wide spill. By not adequately calculating that risk, BP was not able to take as seriously the absolute obligation to ensure the safety and security of its drilling rig at the Deepwater Horizon site. Even now, there is speculation BP still views the potential oil wealth of the failed well to be more valuable to the firm than curbing the catastrophic economic and environmental fallout from the spill.

As David Leonhardt wrote in last week’s New York Times magazine, “The people running BP did a dreadful job of estimating the true chances of events that seemed unlikely — and may even have been unlikely — but that would bring enormous costs.” Leonhardt also points out that this is a generally human quality, the inability to adequately measure the costs of low-probability high-cost events before they occur.

This is why they seem like the rare “black swan”, which changes our thinking about probability and expectation in fundamental ways. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is one of these low-probability high-cost events that was not unforeseeable but whose remoteness made it easy to avoid thinking about, until it happened. Now that we have met the black swan, we can evaluate its true cost and we can plan better.

We need to assess what the real long-term planning costs are, given the obviously inadequate state of the technology needed to address a catastrophic well failure like the Deepwater Horizon blow-out, and how can any enterprise plan to finance such risk? (BP, it must be remembered, lost $17 billion in stock value yesterday alone, and is now reported to be contemplating bankruptcy.)

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With tens of thousands of ideas for how to plug the leaking well or clean up the oil pouring into the official emergency response unified command, sifting through them all in a timely fashion must be a tall order —especially with only 40 people sorting through them—, but one entrepreneur, who has a method using naturally occurring microbes to break down the spreading oil slick, says he has been denied access to beaches where oil can be found for testing. The allegation raises the question as to whether BP is blocking ideas that could help clean up the spill or close the well but which would not allow BP to recover the oil for later sale.

The question must be asked for a number of reasons:

1. BP’s initial attempt to “cap” the well was really not an attempt to close it, but rather to funnel oil to the surface;
2. BP’s second attempt to cap the well was also an attempt to establish a funneling mechanism, so BP could recapture the oil from its damaged well;
3. Both the “top kill” and the “junk shot”, intended to permanently seal the well, were abandoned before even the first full attempt had been made;
4. Top kill and junk shot were the only two plans BP tried in not just quick succession but effectively as part of the same operation, mysteriously rushing them, while not rushing to any other proposed solution;
5. BP will not send supertankers to the spill to collect the oil from the surface and has reportedly sought to stop other firms from doing so;
6. BP has lied to regulators and to Congress about its ability to address such a spill;
7. BP has lied to the public and to the government about the scale of the spill;
8. BP has lied about the scale of its clean-up operations, leaving many coastal areas with no effective emergency response;
9. BP’s CEO has stated his intention to defend first and foremost shareholder interest;
10. Having lost $17 billion in stock value yesterday alone, BP may naturally be calculating that the potential future value of the well, if it can be re-established, outweighs the bad press of failing to close it…

These are all purely speculative reasons for asking the question, but there have been glaring anomalies in BP’s dealing with the oil disaster: the apparently total lack of planning for such an eventuality, the false claim that no such spill has happened before (Ixtoc, off the coast of Mexico, in 1979, is one case; there was a blow-out off the coast of California decades ago which still leaks tar bubbles onto beaches; there is another well, under the name Diamond Offshore, in the Gulf of Mexico also presently leaking, though dwarfed in scale by the BP blow-out).

Now comes the news that while BP has reportedly spent nearly $1.5 billion so far on its response, BP representatives are deliberately blocking access to beaches where clean-up methods can be tested or implemented. If true, that particular piece of news suggests there is a concerted strategy on the part of BP to avoid using techniques that would deprive it of exclusive, long-term access to the oil emanating from the blown-out well.

This also raises the question as to what sort of progress the federal criminal investigation into the causes of the spill has made to date. Is the federal government looking into whether BP has deliberately blocked or opted against using the best methods for closing the well and/or clean-up?

Today, MSNBC reports that BP’s Gulf of Mexico offshore oil disaster response plan improperly cited an expert who died in 2005 and declared it would protect walruses, which live in the arctic, with not one of them living in the Gulf region. The main slick is now reported to be moving close to shore near Mobile, Alabama.

It now clearly appears BP did not have a serious plan for dealing with a blow-out in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, that it has systematically lied and obfuscated in this regard, that it has sought to implement well-plugging or clean-up strategies it has not adequately tested and which it does not have the know-how to implement. We have to start asking more seriously whether or not BP is obstructing the emergency response, if so why, and who is directing BP’s response.

The Gulf of Mexico coastline of the southeastern United States has been hard hit by the ongoing BP oil disaster, with catastrophic environmental damage, the collapse of the local fishing and shrimping industry, and tourism bottoming out in some places near zero, just as summer gets going. There is a moratorium on deepwater exploration and drilling, which is putting a strain on the job market across several states. A serious investment in renewable energy resources would build a more vibrant, more reliable jobs market into the regional economy and help prevent the environmental fallout of offshore drilling.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of early 2009, what many refer to as “the stimulus”, which it was not designed to be, is actually a long-term economic reform and investment program, designed to help steer major sectors of the US economy away from abusive practices which impose long-term costs (‘negative externalities’, in economic jargon) on society. So subsidies for destructive practices are rolled back while subsidies for sustainable practices and innovation-oriented enterprise are expanded. It includes the single largest investment in clean energy in US history, as well as a major investment in infrastructure.

What’s more, the ARRA is phased in over several years, meaning there is still money to be invested. The coastal region of the Gulf of Mexico could develop a highly lucrative, highly productive, clean energy infrastructure, designed to harvest wind, solar and wave power, without any need for incurring the environmental risks of deepwater drilling. With the rapid acceleration of the efficiency of clean energy technologies, the Gulf region could, like California or certain states of the Great Plains, become a net exporter of clean energy.

Why is this not being proposed as an immediate, aggressive, well-thought government response to the crisis involving BP’s blown-out oil well? For one, Republican governors have staked their political fortunes on refusing to cooperate with Pres. Obama’s economic recovery and reinvestment plans, so they have either rejected or sought to impede the spending of the federal money they could otherwise get through the Recovery Act. But there is also the pervasive influence of the drilling industry, from rig operators to oil services companies to the big oil firms like BP, who invest heavily in political campaigns.

Gov. Haley Barbour, of Mississippi, a Republican who has bet his political future on the notion that offshore drilling is the best, or perhaps only, way to go economically, has just about called on the media to stop reporting on the spill, alleging that reporting on the impact of the BP disaster has hurt his state economically. Barbour does not have a clean energy plan; he has opposed the spending of Recovery Act money in his state, yet he has requested federal help in dealing with the oil spill, even as he alleges there is no problem in Mississippi and seeks to blame the media and not the oil industry.

Barbour wants offshore drilling expanded and has put himself forward as something of a mouthpiece for big oil’s interests in the Gulf of Mexico, citing his state’s economic interest in attracting “investment” from the big oil firms. What Barbour has not been able to articulate is: why is he not in favor, then, of an economic recovery strategy, already available to his state prior to the spill, which would help Mississippi diversify its energy economy, produce clean energy, reduce the environmental threat from energy production, and create lasting new jobs?

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal, also a Republican who has opposed his state spending any money from Pres. Obama’s Recovery Act, a flagrant act of political grandstanding that was specifically calculated to deprive the people of his state of the investment they needed in hard times, in order to make it appear that Pres. Obama was not addressing the economic crisis, has been playing the populist. But even as he attacks the federal government and demands more assistance, he blames the government for the actions of interests he has supported and whose support he has enjoyed.

The truth, it turns out, is not Gov. Jindal’s friend: he has been a staunch ally of big oil and even now is calling for more drilling off the Louisiana coast. He has no serious plan for energy innovation and no willingness to cooperate with the federal government’s most significant investment in clean energy in history, despite the many ways it could benefit the people of his state. In fact, Jindal has been one of the most persistent champions of BP and other drilling interests, both in Washington and in Louisiana.

As reported by Mother Jones:

[The] media’s panegyrics have ignored Jindal’s own weak response to the oil spill and his outsized role in promoting the kind of regulatory cutbacks and dangerous offshore drilling policies that are now wrecking Louisiana’s economy.

In February, 2006, while serving as a member of the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives, Jindal introduced the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Passed by the House a few months later, the bill would have opened up the entire US coast to offshore oil drilling. States could override the law and ban rigs in their territorial waters, yet the law would let them share lease royalties with the federal government–a strong incentive to drill. Adjacent states would have little say in the matter (clearly a problem, given that BP’s spill has marred several states’ coastlines).

In fact, it is astonishing how closely Jindal’s efforts mirror the history of lax oversight and cozy relations with the oil industry that led to the specific situation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Using language that is first of all not very legislative in nature and secondly either extremely naive or cynically aligned with big oil, the bill actually asserted that: “(4) it is not reasonably foreseeable that . . . development and production of an oil discovery located more than 50 miles seaward of the coastline will adversely affect resources near the coastline.”

The Deepwater Horizon well is located roughly 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, and Mr. Jindal is now reframing his entire political persona around the notion that this well poses and apocalyptic threat to coastal communities, to local ecosystems, the fishing and tourism industries, the habitability of certain areas and the economic wellbeing of the entire region. What’s more, some observers believe a spill further out would only have resulted in a wider swath of coastline being directly impacted.

Mother Jones goes on to observe that:

As Jindal was pushing to radically increase offshore oil drilling (while accepting more than $100,000 from oil and gas companies), there’s no indication that he saw the slightest need to increase government oversight. His stated governing philosophy is deeply anti-regulatory. In March, 2009, he said: “There has never been a challenge that the American people, with as little interference as possible by the federal government, cannot handle.”

The Jindal saga is common in Gulf coast politics: even now, Gov. Jindal continues to push for expanded offshore drilling, even as he pretends to be a fierce defender of the environmental and quality-of-life interests of the people living along the coast. He wants to have it both ways, to promote the unsupervised abuses of an industry that does not know how to protect the marine or coastal environment, while taking no responsibility for his role in bringing about this catastrophe.

It is this kind of political representation, one could argue, that has left the people of the Gulf coast region without an alternate economic plan to offshore drilling. Jindal, Barbour and many others have long seen oil money as easy money, ignoring the risks and downplaying the very real costs to society at large. But now, the people of the Gulf coast region are faced with a serious challenge to that way of thinking: there is nothing easy or reliable about the offshore drilling economic growth strategy.

What is needed is something new: state of the art offshore windfarms could be built in place of deepwater rigs. New advances in solar-voltaic power-generation technology make it as much as 100 times as efficient as the advanced state of the art over the last decade. The Gulf of Mexico’s strong undersea currents also make it a strong candidate for high-capacity wave-power generation. A combination of the three could make the region into a clean energy powerhouse, if only the political leadership could grasp the nature of the problem and the wisdom of such a solution.

The environmental catastrophe resulting from BP’s blown-out deepwater oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is the worst seen in the US, but Ecuador’s ongoing battle with pervasive, persistent toxic contamination relating to Texaco’s operations in the remote Amazon is the worst oil-related environmental disaster the world has ever seen. In a once-pristine corner of the Ecuadoran Amazon rainforest, Texaco dumped billions of gallons of petroleum waste byproduct, contaminating groundwater and ruining the local environment irreparably.

According to a brief filed by plaintiffs:

It deliberately dumped many billions of gallons of waste byproduct from oil drilling directly into the rivers and streams of the rainforest covering an area the size of Rhode Island. It gouged more than 900 unlined waste pits out of the jungle floor — pits which to this day leach toxic waste into soils and groundwater. It burned hundreds of millions of cubic feet of gas and waste oil into the atmosphere, poisoning the air and creating ‘black rain’ which inundated the area during tropical thunderstorms.

In Ecuador, lax oversight allowed Texaco to operate with near total impunity, misleading public officials and using the rainforest as its private dumping ground. The environmental effects have, however, such pervasive and lasting consequences that the very idea of a comprehensive clean-up is virtually out of the question.

The Ecuador spill was actually thousands, if not tens of thousands of spills, deliberately released into the natural environment, with total impunity, over several decades. But the crisis there holds many lessons for the prevention and clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico. Delicate marshland ecosystems and networks of narrow waterways can be particularly vulnerable to seepage, and it is urgently necessary to stop the slick from penetrating those ecosystems.

Bob Herbert’s Op-Ed in the New York times puts the problem in sharp, clear terms:

President Obama has suspended Shell’s Arctic drilling permits and has temporarily halted the so-called Arctic oil rush. What we’ve learned from the BP debacle in the gulf, and from the rainforest, and so many other places, is just how reckless and inept the oil companies can be when it comes to safeguarding life, limb and the environment.

They’re dangerous. They need the most stringent kind of oversight, and swift and severe sanctions for serious wrongdoing. At the same time, we need to be searching with a much, much greater sense of urgency for viable energy alternatives. Treating the Amazon and the gulf and the Arctic as if they were nothing more than toxic waste sites is an affront to the planet and all life-forms that inhabit it.

The fact is we do not know how to get oil to market without putting the natural environment in grave danger: the search for oil is inherently destructive; the technology to guarantee a drilling site is safe and sealed and secure against seepage simply does not exist; by their very nature, oil companies routinely explore in new terrain in which the most advanced techniques have never been tested; as we push the envelope, we put the environment at risk.

Oil companies find this risk more than worth their while, as they rarely pay the costs, their operations are heavily subsidized, and they can reap profits running into the billions of dollars. People, wildlife, natural systems, and the human livable environment, are routinely put in harm’s way, in service of those profits.

The Texaco disaster in Ecuador was part of a planned strategy of toxic-waste dumping, which disregarded any risk to the local environment and relied on the assumption that the business to be done there was simply of more value than the human lives and the natural systems being systematically destroyed by Texaco’s activity. What happened in Ecuador might ultimately include 100 times more contamination than the BP spill, but world attention has not focused enough attention there to drive a substantial clean-up effort or to learn the important lessons.

It’s not just the intense vibration, noise pollution and toxic contaminants associated with trucking that we need to address, but the broader environmental fallout from depending so heavily on a petroleum-based combustion-centric mode of transport. Heavy overland transport vehicles demand a massive amount of power to move them from place to place; advanced battery technologies may soon allow us to power them using electricity, but we need to build the infrastructure to produce, store and transport all that green energy.

The vehicles could “switch-out” their batteries at “filling stations” of the kind conceived by Shai Agassi’s electric vehicle infrastructure company Better Place, but a business model needs to be applied nationally, and almost universally, in order to enable this new paradigm to fit the trucking industry. We need to look at and hash out the technical and organizational challenges, and try to push for this better, cleaner trucking paradigm, for the health and wellbeing of the truckers themselves, as well as our communities, our environment and our future.

How close are we to something better, quieter, cleaner, which will allow us to improve our quality of life without degrading the environment or our children’s future?

• Join the discussion now on the Hot Spring Network

Reports from around the Gulf of Mexico region of the southern US suggest the spreading oil slick from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well is now washing ashore not only in Louisiana, but also in neighboring states. CNN reports sporadic accounts of oil washing ashore on the “sandy beaches”, popular with tourists, in western Florida. The well has now been gushing oil uncontrolled for 44 days, and BP has lost 1/3 of its total share value since the drilling rig explosion on 20 April.

There are concerns that ocean currents could drag the slick around the Florida peninsula and up the Atlantic coast of the United States. Florida’s Gov. Charlie Crist says his administration is expecting to see substantial amounts of BP oil washing ashore within two days and thousands of meters of oil containment booms are being deployed to prevent landfall. Oil is washing ashore on Alabama’s pristine Dauphin island, the first sign the slick will hit the Alabama coastline in what looks to be a progressively more severe impact.

Mississippi has now also been impacted, as state governments scramble to act on their declared states of emergency and prepare for the most extensive oil clean-up and prevention operation they have ever faced. The Gulf coast states are all requesting new resources and new environmental response permissions from the federal government, testing the regulatory apparatus and the dynamism of the federal environmental and emergency response.

Sify is reporting:

Admiral Thad Allen, who is coordinating the US government’s response, said ‘first oil contact’ had been made on the coastline of Mississippi, while some tar balls and oil sheen had washed up in Alabama.

The moving oil slick has forced responders to rush more people and containment boom to those states to help block the heavy crude from reaching the ever-fragile coastline.

Louisiana has already seen its coastal areas and fragile wetlands affected, with wildlife falling ill and dying and reports of the fumes reaching New Orleans. Fisherman from along the Gulf coast have reported that BP has not deployed adequate containment defenses close to the coastline to prevent landfall and they see the slick spreading closer to shore even in areas where it had not previously been seen.

The severity of the disaster will depend on whether BP is able to cap the well in the next few days or in the coming weeks, or whether nothing will slow the gusher until the projected August date of the relief wells becoming active. The latest attempt by BP to cap the well and stop the majority of the flow has stalled, when the diamond saw cutting through two key pieces of pipe became stuck while cutting the second pipe.

Remote controlled robots are now trying to free the saw, but the glitch could put the “Lower Marine Riser Package Cap” operation at risk. There are fears among BP executives and investors that another failed attempt to close the well could lead to a massive drop in BP’s share prices, the possibility of a takeover, and a chaotic financial ripple effect that could endanger BP’s investment in communities and projects around the world.

The US is said to be exploring ways to prevent BP’s assets from declining or disappearing from the US market before the bills are paid for the disaster, the cleanup and the legal consequences, though Pres. Obama has tried to walk the rhetorical tightrope between expressing outrage over BP’s behavior and getting tough with regulation on the one hand, yet talking down a national takeover of BP’s assets on the other, not wanting to appear an enemy to corporate enterprise.

BP has spent $1 billion so far on the emergency response, capping and cleanup effort, and says it may be able to set aside $2 billion to $3 billion more for the coming months, without too severe an impact on its cash flow. The firm reported $14 billion in profits for last year and record profits for the first quarter of 2010.

With a criminal probe now underway, BP will likely have to expand its reporting and cleanup operations substantially, to avoid providing false information or falling short of its regulatory obligations. There may also be questions about whether foreign regulators, in Britain for instance, or executives working abroad, may have colluded with BP in any way in covering up inadequate planning or attempts to circumvent US regulatory scrutiny.

The US Attorney General Eric Holder has announced a criminal investigation into the events leading up to, surrounding and following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig, and BP’s response. The investigation will look into the possibility of criminal wrongdoing or fraud in BP’s dealings with regulators and in connection with the information it gave the government to help craft a response to the disaster.

According to Reuters:

“We have begun both a criminal as well as a civil investigation as is our obligation under the law,” Holder told reporters after meeting with state and federal prosecutors in New Orleans. “Our environmental laws are very clear.”

Federal agencies, including the FBI, are participating in the probe and “if we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be forceful in our response,” he said, adding that prosecutors had a “sufficient basis” to start a criminal probe.

The Justice Dept. has also ordered BP, Transocean and Halliburton, the three firms directly linked to the operation of the rig and its failure, to preserve all records relating to the project and the disaster. Reports throughout the ongoing disaster have repeatedly suggested a deliberate effort was made to issue misleading reports about the extent of the environmental fallout.

The investigation will look for potential violations of federal law relating to interactions with regulators, statements to Congress and cooperation with federal investigators, as well as possible violations of the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

Holder was firm in asserting that “We will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, anyone who has violated the law”. There have been allegations there may have been friendly treatment of the project during the planning phases due to corporate ties to members of the Bush administration, though no such links have been mentioned as yet in discussions about the investigation.

Pres. Obama had requested the criminal investigation, and has vowed to make sure safeguards are put in place to prevent any such catastrophic accidents in the future. Obama has promised forceful reform to the regulatory mechanisms that afford the federal government oversight of such projects, including the breakup of the agency whose inaction and/or cozy relationship with industry many believe led to deep flaws in the Deepwater Horizon project being ignored.

In a statement from its Executive Director, the Sierra Club has said:

BP needs to be held fully accountable for the disaster in the Gulf. The company pursued drilling without having adequate response plans, putting lives and livelihoods at risk. The company should be fully prosecuted for its negligence and for any attempts to mislead the government about its disaster response plans or the seriousness of the oil spill.

This disaster did not have to happen. In its aggressive pursuit of profit, BP, one of the richest companies in the world, has robbed thousands of Gulf Coast residents of their livelihoods and has robbed all of us of irreplaceable resources like sea turtles, dolphins, birds, clean beaches, and fresh bountiful seafood.

BP may be in much worse trouble than simply facing huge fines or the criminal prosecution of individual executives or managers. There have been calls from both ends of the political spectrum for the US government to take control of BP’s American operations, at least temporarily, if the gushing well cannot be capped.

The UK’s Telegraph newspaper is reporting that, in addition to the newly announced criminal probe, “This weekend there were calls for the US to seize BP’s assets or place the company in temporary receivership if the leak cannot be stopped soon.” It now appears like the “best minds” working on the problem do not believe the well can be sealed before August.

BP’s CEO Tony Hayward has made matters worse, greatly reducing public sympathy for the oil giant by making callous and arrogant statements: first claiming that the worst oil disaster in history, threatening the entire coastal and inland ecology of five states, was “very, very modest” and now saying he would “like my life back”, that sick clean-up workers are likely only suffering from “food poisoning” and that “There aren’t any plumes” of free-floating undersea crude that has not yet reached the surface.

It appears the Justice Department investigation will have the broadest possible scope under federal law, as the Attorney General reiterated that any crime discovered would be prosecuted and anyone who violated the law would face prosecution. That leaves any act of fraud, regulatory evasion or obstruction of federal investigative action, from the planning phase through the day of the explosion and up through the entire clean-up, as a possible starting point for what could become a far-reaching prosecution across multiple firms and dealing with activities on multiple continents.

The US Justice Dept. will likely request the cooperation of foreign governments in connection with investigating internal communications involving key BP, Transocean and Halliburton, departments where there is purported to have been knowledge about specific structural flaws in the Deepwater Horizon drill rig. Lax regulators might also face prosecution, if it is shown they acted in a deliberately criminal way to collude with industry in cutting corners or misleading the government.

The following is an official transcript of the remarks delivered by Pres. Obama, on a visit to Venice, Louisiana, on 2 May 2010, beginning at 3:25 P.M. CDT…

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. First let me say a few words about the incident in New York City. I want to commend the work of the NYPD, the New York Fire Department, and the FBI, which responded swiftly and aggressively to a dangerous situation. And I also want to commend the vigilant citizens who noticed this suspicious activity and reported it to the authorities.

I just got off the phone on the way down here with Mayor Bloomberg to make sure that state and federal officials are coordinating effectively. Since last night my national security team has been taking every step necessary to ensure that our state and local partners have the full support and cooperation of the federal government. We’re going to do what’s necessary to protect the American people, to determine who is behind this potentially deadly act, and to see that justice is done. And I’m going to continue to monitor the situation closely and do what it takes at home and abroad to safeguard the security of the American people.

Now, we just finished a meeting with Admiral Thad Allen, our National Incident Commander for this spill, as well as Coast Guard personnel who are leading the response to this crisis. And they gave me an update on our efforts to stop the BP oil spill and mitigate the damage.

By the way, I just want to point out, I was told there was drizzling out here — (laughter) — is this Louisiana drizzle right here? (Laughter.)

They gave me a sense of how this spill is moving. It is now about nine miles off the coast of southeastern Louisiana. And by the way, we had the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, as well as parish presidents who were taking part in this meeting, because we want to emphasize the importance of coordinating between local, state, and federal officials throughout this process.

Now, I think the American people are now aware, certainly the folks down in the Gulf are aware, that we’re dealing with a massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster. The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our Gulf states and it could extend for a long time. It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.

And that’s why the federal government has launched and coordinated an all-hands-on-deck, relentless response to this crisis from day one. After the explosion on the drilling rig, it began with an aggressive search-and-rescue effort to evacuate 115 people, including three badly injured. And my thoughts and prayers go out to the family of the 11 workers who have not yet — who have not been found.

When the drill unit sank on Thursday, we immediately and intensely investigated by remotely operated vehicles the entire 5,000 feet of pipe that’s on the floor of the ocean. In that process, three leaks were identified, the most recent coming just last Wednesday evening. As Admiral Allen and Secretary Napolitano have made clear, we’ve made preparations from day one to stage equipment for a worse-case scenario. We immediately set up command center operations here in the Gulf and coordinated with all state and local governments. And the third breach was discovered on Wednesday.

We already had by that time in position more than 70 vessels and hundreds of thousands of feet of boom. And I dispatched the Secretaries of the Interior and Homeland Security; the Administrator of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, who is here; my Assistant for Energy and Climate Change Policy; and the Administrator of NOAA to the Gulf Coast to ensure that we are doing whatever is required to respond to this event.

So I want to emphasize, from day one we have prepared and planned for the worst, even as we hoped for the best. And while we have prepared and reacted aggressively, I’m not going to rest — and none of the gentlemen and women who are here are going to rest — or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil on the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people of this region are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods.

Currently, the most advanced technology available is being used to try and stop a leak that is more than 5,000 feet under the surface. Because this leak is unique and unprecedented, it could take many days to stop. That’s why we’re also using every resource available to stop the oil from coming ashore and mitigating the damage it could cause. And much of the discussion here at the center was focused on if we, and when we have to deal with these mitigation efforts.

Thus far, as you can tell, the weather has not been as cooperative as we’d like on this front. But we’re going to continue to push forward.

I also want to stress that we are working closely with the Gulf states and local communities to help every American affected by this crisis. Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill. But as President of the United States, I’m going to spare no effort to respond to this crisis for as long as it continues. And we will spare no resource to clean up whatever damage is caused. And while there will be time to fully investigate what happened on that rig and hold responsible parties accountable, our focus now is on a fully coordinated, relentless response effort to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the Gulf.

I want to thank the thousands of Americans who’ve been working around the clock to stop this crisis — whether it’s the brave men and women of our military, or the local officials who call the Gulf home. They are doing everything in their power to mitigate this disaster, prevent damage to our environment, and help our fellow citizens.

During this visit, I am hoping to have the opportunity to speak with some of the individuals who are directly affected by the disaster. I’ve heard already that people are, understandably, frustrated and frightened, especially because the people of this region have been through worse disasters than anybody should have to bear.

But every American affected by this spill should know this: Your government will do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to stop this crisis.

This is one of the richest and most beautiful ecosystems on the planet, and for centuries its residents have enjoyed and made a living off the fish that swim in these waters and the wildlife that inhabit these shores. This is also the heartbeat of the region’s economic life. And we’re going to do everything in our power to protect our natural resources, compensate those who have been harmed, rebuild what has been damaged, and help this region persevere like it has done so many times before.

That’s a commitment I’m making as President of the United States, and I know that everybody who works for the federal government feels the exact same way.

Thank you very much, everybody. (Applause.)

END 3:33 P.M. CDT