tagged w/ Coal
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Ash about 20 feet over containment berm, 50 yards from residents’ homes in Riverside Gardens. Picture is taken from 2nd story window of resident’s house. Credit: Thomas Pearce, Sierra Club.
For one weekend each year in early May, Louisville, Kentucky, boasts an abnormally high concentration of horses, jockeys, mint juleps, and elaborate hats. Less than ten miles from Churchill Downs, the neighborhood of Riverside Gardens has been dealing with an abnormal and deadly concentration of toxic chemicals every day for more than 40 years. A low income neighborhood in an area of Louisville known for its concentration of chemical plants, landfills, and power plants, Riverside Gardens may soon be forced to deal with yet another threat: a second coal ash dump in their community.
Monica Burkhead thought she was living the American dream when she bought a house in Riverside Gardens at the age of 17. She was assured that the neighborhood was safe, but has since learned that she is surrounded by growing quantities of all forms of toxic waste. The sources of these toxins include 11 chemical plants, a 2.4 million cubic yard unlined chemical landfill that is one of the state’s oldest superfund sites, and multiple unlined coal ash waste ponds at the Cane Run coal plant owned by Louisville Gas and Electric.
The oldest of these coal ash ponds was built in the 1970s, but there are no records of any monitoring of any pond until 2005. The largest of these ponds is one of 49 nationwide that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated as “high hazard” – meaning that a dam failure like the 2008 disaster in Tennessee would probably result in loss of life. Ash in this pond looms 20 feet over the containment berm, 50 yards from homes and within 350 yards of the Ohio River.
Louisville Gas and Electric is currently seeking permits to “expand” the pond at the Cane Run coal plant by constructing a new 5.7 million cubic yard, 14-story-tall pond some 1,500 feet from the existing one. What little data can be obtained about the existing ponds shows that they have been leaking sulfates into local groundwater. Neither the coal plant nor the state government has made public any tests of the toxic heavy metals found in coal ash, including arsenic, selenium, and mercury.
Monica and her neighbors live in a community ravaged by cancer. EPA has found that people living near coal ash ponds have a risk of cancer greater than that of smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. Community organizers say that behind every door they knock on is someone with either cancer or kidney failure.
When Monica took the community’s concerns to the chemical and coal companies, they told her that it was their lifestyles, and not the toxic contamination, that was making them sick. Monica doesn’t smoke or drink, eats healthily, and gets regular exercise. All of her family members except her husband have battled cancer. The industries evidently consider living in Riverside Gardens a lifestyle choice, even though the neighborhood existed long before plants that are now polluting it.
Resident Terri Humphrey expressed a common sentiment when she told a community meeting, “I believe the companies think that it’s already so bad down there that it doesn’t matter if they dump something else on us.”
Monica, Terri, and other Riverside Gardens residents will testify at the upcoming EPA coal ash hearing in Louisville on September 28th. Monica says that EPA can begin to repair her trust in government’s ability to protect communities by enacting a strong, federally enforceable rule that ends dangerous practices like the ones employed at the Cane Run plant.
Last spring, a group of children at nearby Farnsley Middle School were top 10 finalists in a competition to be “America’s Greenest School.” In the video they produced, students talk about their plans to manage the school’s waste more responsibly. Strong leadership from EPA and Administrator Lisa Jackson can make coal companies live up to the example set by the students in their own community.Ash about 20 feet over containment berm, 50 yards from residents’ homes in... more
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Okay, so this race in WV is crazy.
The Governor of WV, Joe Manchin, is this huge pro-MTR jerkwad, totally in bed with the industry, and he’s just got this megalomaniacal drive to seek even more power. Now, when Robert Byrd died, Manchin had the power to appoint whomever he wanted. He really wanted to appoint himself, but his PR sense wouldn’t let him do that. It would be too obvious of a power grab, plus he’d only serve a partial term, and then likely get voted out for being a power-hungry monster.
So what he did instead was this: he appointed somebody else to fill Byrds spot, but then after appointing them, he wanted to hold a special election so that he could “legitimately” run for office. Now, this is costing WV a lot of money. Elections cost money for governments to hold in terms of manpower, printing ballots, running voting machines, etc, especially when they are held on the whim of the Governor. But there was a catch, he had to change the law in order to hold this special election. So he mucked around in the state congress until he had enough votes to change the law to create a special election so he could run for office. Oh yeah, and he’s a Democrat.
A Democratic Party elder in WV politics, Ken Hechler came forward to run in the primary to challenge Manchin. Ken Hechler is on hell of a dude. He served in WWII, he advised Harry Truman, marched with MLK jr, and served 9 terms as WV Sec of State.
But, Since he didn’t have the coal industry backing him (because he wasn’t a pro-MTR candidate) and Manchin DOES have the coal industry backing him, Manchin flooded the media market with adverts and won handily.
So now, there’s a Republican who is in the back pocket of the Coal Industry, there is a Democrat who is in the other backpocket of the coal industry, but there is only ONE candidate running who is against MTR coal mining-- Jesse Johnson of the Green affiliated party, the Mtn Party. Jesse Johnson makes a cameo appearance in the film “Coal Country” has run for Governor of WV, and is a tireless activist. He has been working on this issue for years.
Ken Hechler ENDORSED Jesse Johnson over Joe Manchin. It’s kind of a huge fucking deal for an institution of the DNC to throw aside party alleigance for an issue like this. It would be like Hillary Clinton endorsing Ralph Nader.Okay, so this race in WV is crazy.
The Governor of WV, Joe Manchin, is this huge... more
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asherp
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2 years ago
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Christine O’Donnell is master of her domain. The deeply conservative Tea Party darling won the Republican senate nomination in Delaware last night with a stunning upset of establishment favorite Rep. Mike Castle.
O’Donnell rose to prominence as an anti-masturbation crusader in the 1990s. Jillian Rayfield of Talking Points Memo has video of O’Donnell’s 1996 appearance on MTV’s series “Sex in the Nineties” in which she and her colleagues from the Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth Ministry. (SALT) O’Donnell warns teens that masturbation is adultery that will undermine their future marital sex lives: “You’re going to be pleasing each other, and if he already knows what pleases him and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?” she asks.
Lest you think the anti-masturbation ministry was a youthful indiscretion, O’Donnell was still listed as the contact person for SALT on a web directory last updated in 2009. Christina Bellantoni of TPMDC reports that O’Donnell remained an outspoken social conservative on the campaign trail.
Blessing in disguise?
Suzi Khimm of Mother Jones sees O’Donnell’s victory as a potential blessing in disguise for Democrats:
Ultimately, though, the biggest benefactor of an O’Donnell victory could be the Democratic Party, as she has a significantly weaker shot against the likely Democratic contender, lawyer and county executive Chris Coons. [...] If the GOP loses Delaware, it could completely blow its chance at getting enough seats for a Senate majority.
Adele Stan of AlterNet reports that, as of 3 o’clock on Wednesday morning, former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte was still locked in a dead heat with Tea Party favorite Ovide Lamontagne for the Republican Senate nomination. Does Ayotte’s name sound familiar? That’s probably because she made a name for herself as the anti-abortion Attorney General behind Ayotte vs. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, Beth Saunders reports for RH Reality Check.
If either of these Republican nominee proves too extreme for the voters of New Hampshire, the Democrats could pick up the senate seat being vacated by Republican Judd Gregg.
Urban coal pollution is deadly
In other health news, Michelle Chen reports in Colorlines that coal pollution will kill 13,000 Americans this year, mostly in urban areas:
According to the study, fine particle pollution linked to the coal industry is “expected to cause over 13,000 premature deaths in 2010, as well as almost 10,000 hospitalizations and more than 20,000 heart attacks per year.” The estimated death toll clusters in certain industrial cities, namely New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., affirming other research showing the racial and economic implications of these urban health impacts.
The bright side is that fewer people are projected to die of coal-related illnesses this year compared to last year. It’s not clear whether we have tougher regulation to thank, or the economic slowdown, or both.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Christine O’Donnell is master... more
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In southwest Virginia, where hollowed and stripped mountains rise abruptly from creek beds, coal is deeply entwined with the Clinch River.
From its headwaters in Tazewell, the Clinch winds south through the coalfields, feeding mines, preparation facilities, and power plants. It drains the region’s most polluted tributaries before meeting the Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi.
One tributary, Dumps Creek, joins the river near this quiet mountain valley town. Most days, the creek runs opaque and brown; some days it runs orange. In 2003, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality drew attention to the acidity, sedimentation, and high concentration of heavy metals in Dumps Creek, but didn’t name the source. Trace the creek to its headwaters, and the source is evident.
Within Dumps Creek’s 20,000-acre watershed there are two active and two abandoned deep mines. There’s also a scraped off mountaintop, fully one-fifth of the watershed, where miners blasted away the topsoil and bedrock to get at the coal. Dumps Creek is critical to these operations—hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are used daily to cool and lubricate mining machinery, wash haul roads and truck wheels to reign in airborne particulates and to suppress underground dust that otherwise could ignite.
The Start of Coal’s Troubled Path
These production practices are only the first stages of an economically essential and ecologically damaging accord between coal and water. Water is critical to every stage of the mining, processing, shipping, and burning of coal. In the era of climate change, swift population growth, and increasing energy demand, the result is a fierce and complex competition between the two resources that has become much more difficult to resolve.
Thirty years ago, high levels of pollution from coal mining and combustion prompted state action and two 1970s national statutes. The Clean Water Act and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act were designed to limit damage to fresh water resources. Though they made a difference, both laws have never been enforced strictly enough to keep the coal industry from polluting.
More recently, the country’s relationship with coal has come under close scrutiny again because of its environmental costs. Coal companies, seeking greater production efficiencies, use mining techniques that level mountaintops and bury the streams below them. Coal combustion, meanwhile, produces the nation’s largest share of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are accelerating global climate change and diminishing the nation’s freshwater reserves.
The U.S. withdraws 410 billion gallons of both fresh and saline water a day from its rivers, lakes as well as aquifers. Roughly 85 percent is fresh water. About half is used to cool thermoelectric power plants, and most of that cools coal-powered plants.
– USGSThe Energy Information Administration, a research unit of the federal Department of Energy, forecasts that by 2050 the demand for energy in the U.S. will be 40 percent higher than it is today. As the nation considers what it will take to cool the planet and serve the country’s steadily increasing energy appetite, federal scientists and policy makers are taking a fresh look at how long the coal era will persist, and by necessity the tumultuous space where water and coal intersect.
Little about what they see is reassuring. Scientists define water use by two basic measurements. One is how much water is “withdrawn” from America’s rivers, lakes, and aquifers for domestic, farm, business, and industrial use, most of which is returned to those same sources. The second is how much water is actually “consumed” in products, by livestock, plants and people, or evaporates in industrial processes. In both measurements of withdrawal and consumption coal is at the top of the charts.
The U.S. withdraws 410 billion gallons of water a day from its rivers, lakes and freshwater aquifers. About half is used to cool thermoelectric power plants, and most of that cools coal-powered plants, according to the most recent assessment by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
Similarly, the U.S. consumes about 100 billion gallons of water a day; nearly 85 percent is used for crop and livestock production. Of the 16.1 billion gallons that remain: industrial, mining and power plants use nearly 8 billion gallons a day, most of that for mining, processing and burning coal, according to the Department of Energy.
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The EPA said it wants to regulate the technique, but it’s still issuing permits to remove mountaintops. Federal and state regulators, and even coal industry executives themselves understand the ropes of ecology, economy and efficiency that are tightening around the nation’s energy sector. Climate change is leading to decreased supplies of rain, snowmelt and fresh water. Energy demand is increasing even as pressure steadily grows to limit greenhouse emissions and reduce water consumption.
To keep coal in the energy mix, industry representatives have readied a fix for climate change—an unproven technology to snare carbon emissions at coal-fired plants and store them deep underground—called “carbon capture and sequestration” or CCS.
But there’s a big problem there, too. Scientists with Sandia National Laboratories who’ve studied carbon capture and storage say CCS will increase water withdrawal and use by 25 percent to 40 percent. In other words, without significant advances in a technology that is only now being tested in a handful of applications, the path to a low-carbon economy that still burns coal will put enormous new pressure on America’s declining supply of fresh water.
“The generation of electricity is inextricably tied to water availability,” said Jeff C. Wright, Director of the Office of Energy Projects at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, during a federal conference on energy and water in April.
“Carbon capture may reduce greenhouse gases going to the air. But it will increase the amount of water needed in thermoelectric plants, coal plants especially.”
continuedIn southwest Virginia, where hollowed and stripped mountains rise abruptly from creek... more
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Massey's strategy is to blame everyone else, and distract you by saying everyone else in the world pollutes more.
The level of Mercury that the US coal industry puts out is way less than in China!
In fact coal is just so darn good for the US that it's kind of like Health care!Massey's strategy is to blame everyone else, and distract you by saying everyone... more
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KOTA KINABALU: Some 400 people comprising villagers and folks from the east coast’s Lahad Datu (Borneo, Malaysia) district have voiced their opposition against a proposed 300MW coal-fired power plant.
In the one-hour gathering at the project site in Kampung Sinakut (Borneo, Malaysia), some 60km from Lahad Datu town, the group held up banners to protest against the plant, which they said would have adverse effects on the environment.
The group included 200 people from Lahad Datu and a similar number from the seaside village of Kampung Sinakut.
“We will be first ones to feel any adverse environmental impact from this plant. That is why we are saying no,” said the group’s spokesman Vincent Ng.
He said Lahad Datu folks had also voiced their objections against the plant when giving their feedback on the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) report.
The demonstration was held even as officials from Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd, Tenaga Nasional Bhd and Lahad Datu Energy Sdn Bhd gave a briefing at a public forum in Kota Kinabalu.
Apart from assuring that the plant’s operations would have minimal impact on the environment, they said the coal would be mined in an area in Kalimantan, Indonesia, that would be replanted with trees.
“The coal for this power plant will not be from any Tom, Dick or Harry,” said TNB Fuel Services Sdn Bhd general manager for operations Zainal Abidin Shah Mahmood.
To a question, Zainal Abidin declined to say who was the owner of the coal mine in question, adding that this was a business issue.
Green Surf, a coalition of concerned groups including WWF Malaysia and the Sabah Environmental Protection Association, has objected to the plant.
Environmental groups also pointed out that the plant could have an adverse impact on the environmentally-sensitive Tabin Wildlife Reserve and the Coral Triangle, which Malaysia has pledged to protect.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/7/18/nation/6688209&sec=nationKOTA KINABALU: Some 400 people comprising villagers and folks from the east... more
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By Rob Perks
Posted July 6, 2010 in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming
NRDC recently released a report -- Reclamation FAIL -- that debunked the coal industry's propaganda that mountaintop removal mining is beneficial because (1) Appalachia needs more flat land and (2) flattened mine sites are routinely converted for economic development. Such claims are nothing more than a big, flat lie.
Specifically, NRDC’s analysis used aerial imagery to show that nearly 90% of mountaintop removal sites have not been converted to economic uses. Of the 500 mountaintop removal sites we examined, we excluded 90 from our survey due to active, ongoing mining activity. That left 410 supposedly reclaimed mine sites, for which we found that:
* Overall, economic activity occurs on just 6% to 11% of all reclaimed mountaintop removal sites on sites we surveyed
* 366 (89.3%) had no form of verifiable post-mining economic reclamation excluding forestry and pasture
* 26 (6.3% of total) yield some form of verifiable post-mining economic development
In terms of actual economic development on post-mined lands, one of those 26 "beneficial" projects is a federal prison on what used to be Belcher Mountain in McDowell County, West Virginia. You can actually take a look at the site using GoogleEarth by clicking here.
(more)http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rperks/mountaintop_prison_a_bust.html
New art Image: "Appalachian Coal Disaster" available at the following URL
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=326061&l=d1ba865db2&id=100000489340556
CoalWar.comBy Rob Perks
Posted July 6, 2010 in Health and the Environment, Saving Wildlife and... more
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Coal has become the official rock of West Virginia.
Last week. Gov. Joe Manchin signed a resolution (text) giving the rock its new status, and declaring that the bituminous coal industry “remains essential to economic growth and progress in West Virginia and the United States.”
The resolution, which passed the state’s house of delegates 96-0 and was approved by the State Senate in a voice vote, also traces the noble history of the rock, from the time George Washington noted a “coal hill of fire” in what became West Virginia.
The Mountain State joins Kentucky and Utah, both of which have had coal as their state mineral and state rock, respectively, for more than a decade.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/west-virginias-new-state-rock-coal/
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This is ridiculous... 29 miners just died in a coal mine explosion in April 2010 and these people elevate coal to the status of "state rock"? Our use of coal has been, at best, a mixed blessing. At its worst, coal industry operations have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people and continues to pollute our planet at a disturbing, and inexcusable, rate. We must move beyond coal!
Coal is the most polluting of all fossil fuels and the largest single source of global warming pollution in the world. Currently one-third of all CO2 emissions comes from burning coal. To curb global warming pollution to the levels needed to minimize the risk of catastrophic global warming, we must end our use of coal in the U.S. within the next 30-40 years.
Unfortunately, governments around the world are allowing, and in some cases subsidizing, the construction of hundreds of new coal-fired power plants. If these plants are built, CO2 emissions from coal are expected to rise 60 percent by 2030, severely undermining efforts to tackle climate change. Here in the U.S., according to a Coal Moratorium NOW! survey, nearly 100 coal plants are currently under construction or in the planning process.
Bottom-line: King Coal must be dethroned!Coal has become the official rock of West Virginia.
Last week. Gov. Joe Manchin... more
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Watch a live Video feed of the Estimate 2.5 Million Gallons/Day of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Gulf of Mexico floor, 5000 feet below the surface of the water.
It's really gut-wrenching.
Tell Pres. Obama & Congress to stop offshore drilling, cut subsidies for oil and coal, & start subsidizing clean energy technologies!
We need to bring people-powered politics to bear on government decision-making. We can't trust anyone else, not politicians, not corporations, to do it but ourselves -- sign the petition:
http://j.mp/a0lS4aWatch a live Video feed of the Estimate 2.5 Million Gallons/Day of oil gushing into... more
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Lockheed Martin has been developing technology to save the world from fossil fuels since the 1970s, and are getting really close to finishing their work on Hydrogen. Yes, hydrogen, the stuff everyone associates with a burning Hindenburg mental image. For those who are in the know, Hydrogen will become our end-all-be-all energy source (see www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/ for more info on the details about it). The video above is just a sample of what will be coming our way. I'm excited, and if you just watched that video, you're excited too. Water = energy!
The way it works is by exploiting the temperature difference in Tropical Oceans (top layer of water is warm, deeper waters are cold, got it?). The system uses a "working fluid"...which is a fluid that is gas in warm water temperatures and liquid at lower temperatures. The fluid is pumped between the two temperature levels, boils, turns a generator, then repeats. The generator LM is building/testing now is 10MW.
No big...BUT the technology is scalable to 100MW, which is enough to power small cities. Two or three (or a hella lot, since the things are pollution free and the ocean is big enough) and you've got inexhaustible energy on the majority of coastlines worldwide.
Boom, goodnight oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear.
Suck it BP, Big Oil, Mountain Killing Coal, Terrorists, Nuclear, 'cause you all just lost your bets to Hydrogen.
Check out this website, they're smart and thorough:
www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/
Go Hydrogen.
CTJLockheed Martin has been developing technology to save the world from fossil fuels... more
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“The number of errors Chris Monckton makes is so enormous it would take a thesis to go through every single one of them.”
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) is a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see links below).
Nonetheless, you rarely sees such a thorough debunking of an anti-science disinformer as this astonishing point-by-point evisceration put together by John Abraham, an engineering professor at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, MN.
One of the two reasons you rarely see this is because few people are willing to put in the time and effort that Prof. Abraham has — not merely looking up just about every reference TVMOB uses but actually e-mailing the authors of those scientific papers and asking them if TVMOB has accurately represented their work.
The second reason you rarely see this kind of thorough dismantlement is that few people make stuff up with the relentlessness of TVMOB or push the kind of hate speech that make people want to debunk them entirely:
•Lord Monckton meltdown: “I’m not going to shake the hands of Hitler youth.”
•TVMOB hate speech shocker: Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists.
•TVMOB shocker: Activists decried as “Hitler Youth” for crashing Americans For Prosperity’s global warming event in Copenhagen
•How to diss-a-peer: Real Climate Scientists take on TVMOB
•Deltoid at ScienceBlogs: Monckton’s triple counting and here.
•Irony-gate 2: Modern day Tea Partiers outsource denial to Lord Monckton — a British peer!
•Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton aka TVMOB
•Climate Crock takes on Lord Monckton, Part 2
Kudos to Abraham for this masterful debunking.
http://www.stthomas.edu/engineering/jpabraham/“The number of errors Chris Monckton makes is so enormous it would take a thesis... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user Deepwater Horizon Response, via Creative Commons LicensePresident Barack Obama is in Louisiana today, and BP is saying it will know in 48 hours if its attempt to “top kill” the leaking oil well in the Gulf Coast by pouring mud and cement over it has worked.
If the scramble to stop the leak has ended, the slog to clean up is just beginning. Thousands of fisherman are still out of work, as ColorLines notes. But there are new jobs in Louisiana. This week Mother Jones’ Mac McClelland visited workers raking oil off a beach in Louisiana. One man, she writes, “can’t count how many times he’s raked this same spot in the 33 hours he’s worked it since Thursday, but one thing he’s sure of, he says, is that he’ll be standing right here tomorrow and the next day, too.”
Next moves
Although the regulatory infrastructure that was supposed to oversee companies like BP failed in this case, the administration is stepping up to ensure that the spill is stopped and the clean-up begun. “I take responsibility,” the president told reporters yesterday. “It is my job to make sure everything is done to shut this down.”
Kevin Drum calls this performance and the media affirmation that came after it “the kabuki of our times”—a show that only pretends that the government has the wherewithal to stop the leak without the resources of private industry.
“The president has to be In Charge whether he can actually do anything or not,” Drum writes. “What everyone should be asking is not what the feds are going to do about capping the leak, but what they’re going to do to make sure all the oil is cleaned up afterward.”
Going forward, the government needs to make sure that BP fulfills its clean-up promises. Without strong oversight, the company could slip out of paying its debts. That’s what happened last time an energy company left a lake of oil in American waters, as Riki Ott’s Not One Drop documents. The book “describes firsthand the impacts of oil companies’ broken promises when the Exxon Valdez spills most of its cargo and despoils thousands of miles of shore,” according to Chelsea Green.
BP’s behavior
BP has little incentive to clean up its operations or to take responsibility for the damage it has already incurred. As Care2 reports, another BP rig had to shut down this week when a power outage caused crude oil to spill from its storage tank to “secondary containment.” And on the Hill, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) charged that the company was deliberately low-balling its estimates of the Gulf spill’s size to avoid additional fines.
At The American Prospect, Monica Potts delves into the logic behind BP’s operations. Even when using one of the highest estimates of the spill’s volume—70,000 barrels a day, or more than 2 million barrels overall—she writes, “Americans burn about 10 times that, 21 million barrels, each day. It would only take us a couple of hours to use up everything in the Gulf. This is despite everything we know about how bad burning oil is. Given that, it’s not surprising that an oil company might rank our desire for oil more highly than our undemonstrated desire to avoid ecological disaster.”
Environmental obscenities
In Texas, activists tried this week to demonstrate to BP that consumers do desire to avoid such disasters, AlterNet reports. A group of women traveled to the company’s headquarters and, wearing little more than sandwich boards, tried to expose “the naked truth about drill, baby, drill.”
AlterNet reports that Diane Wilson, who organized the protest “doesn’t take nudity lightly.” Growing up in rural Texas, “I was taught that flesh is sinful, it’s the devil,” she said. “So for me, using nudity to expose the truth about BP was WAY outside my comfort zone. But I realized that it’s the destruction of our ecosystem by corporate greed that’s obscene, not a woman’s body.”
Real responsibility
It’s important to realize that such destruction is not limited to this one catastrophe in the Gulf. As David Roberts writes at Grist:
“We don’t get back the land we destroy by mining. We don’t get back the species lost from deforestation and development. We don’t get back islands lost to rising seas. We don’t get back the coral lost to bleaching or the marine food chains lost to nitrogen runoff. Once we lose the climatic conditions in which our species evolved, we won’t get them back either.”
Fixing the system
If Obama is ready to take responsibility for the oil spill, he might want to focus on strengthening the government regulators who oversee these dangerous industry. The lack of oversight from the Minerals Management Service—which was rotting from the inside-out long before Obama came into office, TPM reports—played a huge role in this spill. Across the country, the government bodies that are supposed to be guarding the environment have stepped away from that responsibility.
Consider, for instance, Forrest Whittaker’s report in The Texas Observer about his state’s environmental oversight agency. “In decision after decision, the Texas agency that’s supposed to protect the public and the environment has sided with polluters,” Whittaker writes.
President Obama may not be able to fix Texas’ problems, but he can provide leadership by correctly regulating corporations that pollute. In that way, the president can take responsibility not just for cleaning up this spill, but for preventing the next one.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user Deepwater... more
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Ditching its past cautious tone, the nation's top scientists urged the government Wednesday to take drastic action to raise the cost of using coal and oil to slow global warming.
link:http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2010/05/19/us_top_scientists_urge_coal_oil_use_penalties/Ditching its past cautious tone, the nation's top scientists urged the government... more
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We interrupt this meeting of Massey Energy’s Shareholders in order to spotlight and oppose Massey’s terrible safety, environmental and human rights violations. It is our responsibility to stand in firm opposition to Massey’s corporate behavior. We are willing to face the legal consequences of our non-violent action, for we know we are not alone; millions in Appalachia and across the nation are coming to see Massey for what it is. Whether it is the mountains of Appalachia, the lives of underground miners deep inside them, or the wellbeing of communities living below, Massey continually puts profits over people. It is time for the people of Appalachia and America to reject Massey and work together to create something better in its place.
“Violations are, unfortunately, a normal part of the mining process,” Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey, has stated. In 2008, Massey made a $20 million settlement with the EPA for 4,500 Clean Water Act violations filed between the year 2000 and 2006. Now, in 2010, they are back in court for polluting America’s waterways again; this time for 971 Clean Water Act violations in 2008 and 2009. A 2006 fire at Massey’s Aracoma mine killed two workers. Massey settled wrongful death lawsuits for an undisclosed sum and paid civil and criminal penalties of $4.2 million. It is clear that neither the EPA, criminal, nor civil fines, can sufficiently motivate Massey, or Blankenship, to adopt a culture of responsibility in their business practices.
When it comes to mountaintop removal and coal sludge, there is no responsible course but to ban them entirely. Mountaintop removal is the practice of demolishing Appalachian peaks, in order to scrape out their coal seams. It fills neighboring valleys and streams with the resultant rubble, and damages the health of nearby communities. Coal sludge is the liquid byproduct of washing coal in a carcinogenic chemical bath to remove impurities, such as heavy metals including arsenic, mercury, lead, and others. We call for the abolition of both.
These two practices meet at Massey’s Brushy Fork sludge impoundment on Coal River Mountain.
The Brushy Fork Coal Sludge Impoundment is the tallest earthen dam in the Western Hemisphere, permitted to hold 9 billion gallons of sludge. Massey’s “sunny day” casualty estimation is that if the dam were to break, the flood would kill 998 Coal River Valley residents.
Coal sludge impoundments have failed in the past. A Massey-operated sludge impoundment in Martin County, KY broke in 2000, spilling 306 million gallons of toxic sludge into the tributaries of the Tug Fork, Big Sandy, and Ohio Rivers, killing wildlife, and contaminating 27,000 people’s drinking water. Brushy Fork sits above a honeycomb of abandoned underground room and pillar mines in which 31 pillars are of insufficient strength to reliably support the mine roof, let alone the mass of 9 billion gallons of sludge. Brushy Fork could also break through bottom failure, causing sludge to gush from abandoned mine entrances into the surrounding, populated valleys.
The peril of Brushy Fork is compounded by Massey’s mountaintop removal operations on the Bee Tree Permit, which surrounds the impoundment. Each day, Massey blasts within hundreds of yards of the impoundment. Every mine blast sends high and low frequency vibrations into the mountain. High frequency vibrations are the visible blast, launching fly rock and dust, and dissipate over a short distance. Low frequency vibrations, however, cause structural damages, often foundation cracks, miles from the blast site. Brushy Fork’s earthen dam structure is within hundreds of yards of blasting operations. Thousands of lives are at risk.
Massey must be stopped—that is why we are putting ourselves on the line today.
Shareholders – you have the power to intervene. Use your institutional power to demand Massey cease its mountaintop removal operations and production of coal slurry. Responsibly decommission the Brushy Fork Impoundment. Also, we ask that you join with the coalition of nine public institutional investors that are asking Massey to withhold support from Don Blankenship and Board of Directors Baxter F. Philips, Richard M. Gabrys, and Dan R. Moore “because they have failed to carry out their duties on the Safety, Environmental, and Public Policy Committee.”
Americans – coal from the mountains of Appalachia is burned all over the United States. It heats our homes, powers our factories, and illuminates our schools and offices. It is sometimes difficult connect one’s energy consumption to a struggle hundreds of miles away, but we urge you to take responsibility for that power and stand in solidarity with the people of Appalachia. We know that not everyone is able to put themselves at risk, but we firmly believe that all Americans can–and must– stand up and say: Massey Energy, Stop Putting Profits Before People!
Signed,
People of the Earth and Appalachia
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/05/18/2-arrested-disrupting-massey-shareholders-meeting/We interrupt this meeting of Massey Energy’s Shareholders in order to spotlight... more
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We teach our children to care for the earth. We teach them to defend their home and we say that the flag of these United States of America unifies us as a nation, that our country is their home. We teach them to take responsibility and speak out boldly against the tyranny of injustice and evil men. And them we jail them and label them as terrorists. It's just as likely that Bill Massey is a mass murderer. It is just as likely that the deaths of 29 miners in West Virginia were acts of murder funded by JPMorgan Chase in an effort to silence a growing internal resistance to Mountain Top Removal Mining or a group of miners intent on speaking out against repeated Massey Energy safety violations, the modern equivalent of burning them in a church, a longstanding tradition of West Virginia coal mine operators.
A $100,000 suggests collaboration between Massey Energy and the West Virginia judicial system. It represents a war crime, an atrocity committed by felons against the children on the front lines of the Coal War. Who are we in America to stand in collusion by allowing evil men to prosper while our sons and daughters face brutal attacks for peaceful acts of courage? Who are we to sit in silent witness to the brutal murder of 29 miners and the weeping of their sons and daughters and wives and mothers?
EmmaKate Martin and Benjamin Bryant are to be commended not condemned for their actions. They defended our mountains against the true eco-terrorists. They acted bravely just like we taught them to in school, to defend American soil against all enemies, foreign and domestic and we made it a crime of the highest order at a time when they should be decorated as heroes.
http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2010/05/17/two-activist-receive-100000-bail-for-non-violent-protest/We teach our children to care for the earth. We teach them to defend their home and we... more
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A new testing method by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reveals that pollutants such as arsenic, antimony, chromium and selenium can leach from coal ash at levels dozens and sometimes hundreds of times greater than the federal drinking water standard. According to the EPA’s new data, pollution from coal ash can shatter the "hazardous waste" threshold.A new testing method by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reveals that... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user -Snugg-, via Creative Commons licenseSen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), though down one man, finally released their stab at climate legislation this week. One of the most crucial sections in the bill covers off-shore oil drilling, an issue that was supposed to help solve the tricky math of reaching 60 votes. But since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling has become a wedge issue.
Just a few weeks ago, off-shore drilling could have been a point of compromise around which Senators could rally votes to pass the climate bill; now the bill had to strike a new balance to mollify both potential allies who oppose drilling, like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and those who support drilling, like Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA). The draft that Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman released this week allows for expanded drilling but gives states veto power over new projects.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who worked on the bill, said that he had not seen the changes his two colleagues had made since he dropped out of the drafting process—but he looked forward to reviewing their work. Although Sen. Kerry says he thinks the bill can pass, without support from Sen. Graham or another Republican, chances are slim.
Next steps
Now that the two Senators have released the bill, the only work that remains is to pass it.
“I think climate change legislation is dead,” writes Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. His explanation:
“There’s not enough time for a bill to go through the committee process, get passed by the Senate, sent to conference, amended, and then passed by the full Congress before the midterms, and after the midterms Democrats will probably be reduced to 53 or 54 members in the Senate.”
Not everyone agrees that the bill’s chance are so dire, though.
“I think the chances are roughly as good as they’ve ever been in the Senate: low but non-trivial,” says Grist’s David Roberts.
Kerry’s argument
But should green-minded politicos root for the bill’s passage at all? Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman worked closely with energy companies while drafting the bill, and the resulting legislation balances the need to reduce carbon emissions with the interests of prime polluters. The bill includes incentives for old energy industries like coal and natural gas, for instance, and exempts farmers from carbon caps.
On Wednesday, Sen. Kerry made his case to left-leaning environmentalists. “A comprehensive climate bill written purely for you and me — true believers — can’t pass the Senate no matter how hard or passionate I fight on it,” he wrote for Grist. The bill they have, he wrote, can pass, and that victory outweighs the compromises in the legislation.
Responses from the left
On Democracy Now!, Phil Radford, the executive director of GreenPeace USA, said that most environmental groups have given the bill little more than a “tepid endorsement.” Radford squared off on the show with Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress, who supports the bill.
“This will be the first bill ever passed by the Senate, if it were to pass, that would put us on a path to get off of fossil fuels,” Romm said.
The two men were also divided over issues like the impact the climate bill could have on international negotiations.
They agreed, though, there is room for improvement; the only question is whether the politics of climate change will allow for the passage of a stronger bill any times soon. As Kevin Drum wrote, “If you think this year’s bills are watered down, just wait until you see what a Congress with a hair-thin Democratic majority produces.”
Coal and natural gas
Tripping up environmentalists now, though, are the hand-outs to dirty energy industries. The coal and natural gas industry could both benefit from the provisions of the Senate bill, for instance.
On GritTV, Jeff Biggers, a writer and educator who covers the coal industry, explained his frustration:
“The climate bill is a nice first step and a very well meaning effort for someone like Sen. Kerry who’s been working on this issue for 20 years. But at the same time, because of the massive big coal lobby that has poured millions of dollars into lobbying congress on this climate legislation…there are all sorts of little panders and loopholes and exemptions.”
“What we see in this bill is that Sen. Kerry and Lieberman want to ensure coal’s future,” he said.
The booming natural gas industry also had a hand in shaping the bill and benefited from it. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club favor natural gas as an energy source over coal, and as Kari Lydersen reports in Working In These Times, the industry is driving job growth at a time when the economy needs a boost.
But as Alex Halperin reported last month for The American Prospect, in the places where drilling is occurring, like Ithaca, NY, activists are arguing that the environmental risks could outweigh those economic benefits.
Drill or be drilled
That devil’s bargain—risking natural resources for jobs in the energy industry—went the wrong way for the Gulf Coast, and states like Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida are paying the price even before the oil hits shore.
As I report in AlterNet, the Gulf’s economy could lose billions of dollars and is suffering already from the misconception that its beaches are tarred with oil. With this catastrophe still fresh in voters’ minds, the Senate climate bill proposes pushing new drilling initiatives 75 miles offshore and giving affected states veto power over these projects.
Depending on how long the memory of the Deepwater Horizon spill lasts, politicians could have a good reason to veto drilling. Public News Service reports that 55% of Floridians now oppose off-shore drilling, “almost a complete reversal from one year ago.”
Blame game
Certainly no one is stepping up to take responsibility for the explosion off the coast of Louisiana, as the Washington Independent reports. At a hearing this week, officials from British Petroleum, which was operating the well, Transocean, which owns it, and Halliburton, which was doing contract work that may have caused the problem, all denied wrongdoing and pressed the blame on each other.
It’s starting to look Halliburton played a key part. “The focus is increasingly shifting to the role of Halliburton, which poured the cement for the rig, as well as for another operation that spilled oil off the coast of Australia last August,” writes Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. The company apparently did not place a cement plug that would have kept gas in the well before emptying it of the mud that was holding in the flammable gas.
Anyone living in a state that could have new drilling off their coast should keep this catastrophe in mind if their politicians are given the option of vetoing new projects.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Image courtesy of Flickr user -Snugg-,... more
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Only diamond is harder than sapphire.That's why sapphire is being tested as a sensor that could relay critical information about extreme conditions present during gasification, the process of heating coal until it becomes a gas.
link :http://news.discovery.com/tech/sapphire-sensor.htmlOnly diamond is harder than sapphire.That's why sapphire is being tested as a... more
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