tagged w/ Don Blankenship
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) took Obama administration officials to task for encouraging Americans to believe that the majority of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had dispersed.
“People want to believe that everything is OK and I think this report and the way it is being discussed is giving many people a false sense of confidence regarding the state of the Gulf,” Markey said.
Belief, after all, is powerful force. As coal baron Don Blankenship says, “You have to have your own beliefs, your own core beliefs, your own strengths and do what you think is right. You can’t do what others believe is right, you have to do what you believe is right.”
But what if your beliefs, even those backed up by science, are wrong? If you believed government officials who reported the oil in the Gulf of Mexico had dispersed—wrong. If you believed McDonald’s or Sara Lee really was helping save the planet—wrong. (Does anyone actually believe that one?) And if you believed you were conserving tons of energy by flicking off the light switches when you left the room—wrong again!
Gullible Greens
Wait, what? Yes, it turns out that environmentally friendly folk don’t know how little energy they save by line-drying clothes, recycling bottles, or turning off the lights, Mother Jones‘ Kevin Drum writes. Don’t worry! Those activities still conserve energy. Just not as much as you might have thought.
Drum’s evidence comes from a study that asked people to estimate the amount of energy they were saving by engaging in a given activity. Green-minded people tended to miss the mark on how much energy certain activities conserved. Perhaps they want to believe their conservation activities have a more dramatic impact, the studies’ authors suggested.
There’s a kicker, though. “The most accurate perceptions about energy use, it seems, are held by numerate, conservative homeowners who don’t bother trying to save energy,” Drum writes. Ouch. Apparently, knowing how much energy they’ll save, conservatives decide it’s not worth it to even try.
“A green-tinged fog”
But perhaps energy conservationists aren’t to blame for their own confusion. After all, as Anna Lappé writes at Yes! Magazine, corporations increasingly are using green messaging to sell their products:
McDonald’s recently launched an “Endangered Species” Happy Meal, “to engage kids in a fun and informative way about protecting the environment,” explains project partner Conservation International…. Earlier this year, Sara Lee unleashed with much fanfare a new line of “Earth Grains” bread that promotes “innovative farming practices that promote sustainable land use” as part of what the company calls its “Plot to Save the Earth.”
Lappé calls the confusion created by these campaigns “a green-tinged fog” that consumers can get lost in. And in the same way that green advertising is increasing, tips for green living are proliferating, which could explain the confusion about which ones are actually useful.
Government spin
But for the government, there’s no excuse for spreading misinformation. For instance, earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report showing that most of the oil in the Gulf had either been collected or dispersed. Scientists questioned the report from the very first day of its release, and this week evidence is mounting that the report misrepresented the situation in the Gulf.
At the Washington Independent, Andrew Restuccia writes that a group of scientists in Georgia have released a report countermanding the claims of the government’s study, and that other scientists have found a 21-mile smear of oil still in the Gulf.
Riki Ott reports at Chelsea Green on a more vivid argument against the Obama administration’s claims that the oil in the Gulf is no longer a problem:
Off Long Beach, Mississippi, on August 8, fisherman James “Catfish” Miller tied an oil absorbent pad onto a pole and lowered it 8-12 feet down into deceptively clear ocean water. When he pulled it up, the pad was soaked in oil, much to the startled amazement of his guests, including Dr. Timothy Davis with the Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System. Repeated samples produced the same result.
How’d it happen?
So what is the government’s excuse? Right now, NOAA is standing by its analysis, Restuccia reports. Bill Lehr, a senior scientist with the agency, said yesterday that NOAA will release more documentation supporting its claims in two months.
“I assure you it will bore everybody except those of us that do oil spill science,” he said, according to Restuccia.
But as Ott explains, part of the government’s issue is the standard they’re using to evaluate the fate of the oil to begin with:
The problem is the ‘rigorous safety standards’ are outdated. The protocol relies on visual oil. What of the underwater plumes? The chart produced by NOAA last week shows, in effect, that over 50 percent of the oil (not to mention dispersant) is still in the water column as dispersed or dissolved oil. Scientists have found that the oil-dispersant mixture is getting into the foodweb.
In other words, just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. And in this case, what NOAA believes is less important than the scientific facts on the ground. To deal with the oil spilled in the Gulf, NOAA and its partners might have to admit that they were wrong.
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
Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) took... 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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The death toll from Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion last week has reached a total of 29 miners, the worst coal disaster in 40 years. When the disaster occurred, Massey was contesting millions of dollars in major safety violations levied against the mine. At his Labor Day anti-union rally last year, Massey CEO Don Blankenship attacked the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), claiming it “seeks power over coal miners.” He mocked both “Washington politicians” and local elected officials who attempt to ensure miner safety, calling their efforts “as silly as global warming”:
"We also endure a Mine Safety and Health Administration that seeks power over coal miners versus improving their safety and their health. As someone who has overseen the mining of more coal than anyone else in the history of central Appalachia, I know that the safety and health of coal miners is my most important job. I don’t need Washington politicians to tell me that, and neither do you. But I also know — I also know Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety. The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming."
Don Blankenship — who uses his position on the boards of the National Mining Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to promote his conspiracy theories about global warming — said he spent one million dollars to put together the “Friends of America” right-wing rally and rock concert in Holden, WV on September 7, 2009, which starred Ted Nugent, Hank Williams, Jr., and Fox News host Sean Hannity. In 2009, Blankenship also complained that “politicians get emotional” about disasters and establish “nonsensical” safety rules.The death toll from Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion last week... more
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A coalition of NGOs who say they are fighting against the influence of the US Chamber of Commerce has called for the arrest of Don Blankenship, the CEO responsible for the West Virginia mine where 29 workers lost their lives last week.
In a press release on Monday, StopTheChamber.com said Blankenship was "as criminally culpable as any mass murderer" for the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, because he had systematically worked to avoid safety regulations.
“This was not an accident, but rather the result of deliberate and intentional decisions and actions of Don Blankenship, a director of the United States Chamber of Commerce," said Kevin Zeese, a founder of the liberal-oriented Velvet Revolution, which runs the StopTheChamber.com site.
"Blankenship, with the lobbying army of the Chamber to back him up, has thumbed his nose at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, ignoring or appealing every violation, including the scores that resulted in coal mine evacuations and the hundreds of other serious violations," Zeese said in a statement.
Zeese added, "As the Washington Post pointed out in a Saturday editorial, these 29 deaths would not have occurred absent this intentional conduct of Blankenship. He is just as criminally culpable as any mass murderer.”
more at link...A coalition of NGOs who say they are fighting against the influence of the US Chamber... more
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After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is facing long-overdue scrutiny for his record of putting coal profits over fundamental safety and health concerns. Blankenship, a right-wing activist millionaire who sits on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, used his company’s ties to the industry-dominated Bush administration to paper over Massey’s egregious environmental and health violations.
Massey rewarded Republicans with massive donations after the company avoided paying billions in fines for a 2000 coal slurry disaster in Martin County, three times bigger than the Exxon Valdez. After both mine inspectors and Massey employees got the same message that it was more important to “run coal” than to follow safety rules, a deadly fire broke out in the Aracoma Alma mine in 2006, burning two men alive. Brad Johnson has the full story of Blankenship’s reckless pursuit of profits over human safety in this TP repost.
Blankenship was abetted by former employees placed at the highest levels of the federal mine safety system. Massey COO Stanley Suboleski was named a commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and was nominated in December 2007 to run the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy. Suboleski is now back on the Massey board. After being rejected twice by the Senate, one-time Massey executive Dick Stickler was put in charge of the MSHA in a recess appointment in October 2006. In the 1990s, Stickler oversaw Massey subsidiary Performance Coal, the operator of the deadly Upper Big Branch Mine, after managing Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.” Bush named Stickler acting secretary when the recess appointment expired in January 2008.
Below are further details of these two past incidents that foretold Blankenship’s latest disaster:
~THE FATAL ARACOMA MINE FIRE
Blankenship Branded Deadly Fire At Dangerous Aracoma Mine “Statistically Insignificant.” In the most egregious case of preventable death before the Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey’s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to “plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines” after two workers died in a fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, West Virginia. Massey also paid $1.7 million in civil fines. The mine “had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws” before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as “statistically insignificant.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06; Charleston Gazette, 12/24/08]
Federal Mine Inspector Who Wanted To Shut Down Mine Told To “Back Off.” Days before fire broke out in the Aracoma mine, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but “was told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal.” Massey failed to notify authorities of the fire until two hours after the disaster. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/23/06]
Blankenship Memo: “Coal Pays the Bills.” Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Massey CEO Don Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal . . . you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06]
~THE MARTIN COUNTY COAL-SLURRY DISASTER
Martin County Slurry DisasterThree Times the Volume of the Exxon Valdez Spill. Massey Energy is the parent of Martin County Coal, responsible for the “nation’s largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi” until the 2008 Tennesee coal-ash spill In October 2000, a coal slurry impoundment broke through an underground mine shaft and spilled over 300 million gallons of black, toxic sludge into the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek,” in Martin County, KY. [Lost Mountain, p. 128]
Site Denied Superfund Status. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency “determined that the slurry spill was not a release of a hazardous substance” and thus ineligible for Superfund status. [KY EQC]
Sen. McConnell and Wife Stopped MSHA Investigation. U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Chao “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 10/2/06, OpenSecrets]
$2.4 Billion Becomes $20 Million. In May 2007 the EPA filed suit for $2.4 billion against Massey for violating “Clean Water Act more than 4,500 times from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2006″ in West Virginia and Kentucky, including the Martin County spill. In January 2008 Massey agreed to pay $20 million to settle the case. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 1/18/08]
The New York Times reports that the families of coal miners have been registering their displeasure with Blankenship:
Some of these tensions boiled over around 2 a.m. Tuesday when Mr. Blankenship arrived at the mine to announce the death toll to families who were gathered at the site. Escorted by at least a dozen state and other police officers, according to several witnesses, Mr. Blankenship prepared to address the crowd, but people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners’ lives.
Crooks & Liars recalls that Blankenship “spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year’s” right-wing Friends of America” rally in West Virginia.
Lorelei Scarbro, an activist who fights on behalf of miners’ rights, tells CNN: “Massey Energy’s record speaks for itself. With an enormous amount of violations and previous deaths at this mine, I will leave it to you to decide if this company puts profits before the safety of its workers or views its employees as a disposable commodity.” Scarbro’s husband was a coal miner who died of black lung.After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don... more
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"Coal subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices," said a White House Office of Management and Budget analysis released Monday.
By Halimah Abdullah - habdullah@mcclatchydc.com
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's fiscal 2011 budget would cut roughly $2.3 billion in coal subsidies during the next decade, a move Kentucky lawmakers worry will mean heavy job losses in economically poor but coal-rich regions of Appalachia.
"Coal subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices," said a White House Office of Management and Budget analysis released Monday.
"Removing these subsidies would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and generate $2.3 billion of additional revenue over the next 10 years, an amount that represents only a small percentage of annual domestic coal revenues — about 1 percent over the coming decade."
The cuts, along with the repeal of roughly $36 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry, is part of the Obama administration's efforts to uphold an agreement struck last year during the G-20 summit in which member nations committed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent.
Lawmakers from Kentucky, which relies heavily on the coal industry for jobs and cheap electric rates, have vowed to block the proposed cuts.
"Senator McConnell opposes both the president's proposed new national energy tax and the tax on coal included in his budget outline unveiled today," said Robert Steurer, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "Both would hurt Kentucky families who are dependent on coal for their livelihood."
Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Versailles, who voted last year for a measure that would cap carbon emissions and fine companies that go over set limits, expressed concern about the Obama administration's proposed budget cuts. (more)
http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/story/1120882.html
“The Energy Avenger meets with Judicial Disconsent, and sighs…”
quilt patch from The Great American Energy Quilt Project 2010
Dedicated to Dr. James Hansen, Coal War Hero, arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience against Massey Energy 2009
http://coalwar.tumblr.com/post/367069362/the-energy-avenger-meets-with-judicial"Coal subsidies are costly to the American taxpayer and do little to incentivize... more
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Some of which have approved torture and lack of knowledge about the actual principles on which the country was founded to pamper-hungry sales reps.
The following characters have made the US less than proud.Some of which have approved torture and lack of knowledge about the actual principles... more
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr delivers his opening statement during the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming hearing, "Approaching Midnight: Oversight of the Bush Administration's Last-Minute Rulemakings" on December 11, 2008.
While this intervention is crucial; his speach at LIVE EARTH 2008 was the most explicit & aggressive as for the responsibility we all share in this...
Here's an excerpt...
The most important thing you can do is to get involved in the political process and get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington D. C. Who are nothing more than corporate toadies for companies like Exxon and Southern Company, these villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of American interests and ahead of the interests of all of humanity.
This is treason and we need to start treating them now as traitors.
And they have their slick public relations firms and their phony think tanks in Washington D. C. and their crooked scientists who are lying to the American People day after day after day.
And we have a press that has completely let down American democracy.
That's giving us Anna Nicole Smith and Paris Hilton instead of the issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy.
Like global warming.
And so I got to tell you this that the next time you see John Stossel or Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, these flat-earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public and telling you that global warming doesn't exist.
You send an email to their advertisers and tell them you're not going to buy their products any more.
And I want you to remember this; that we are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds, we're protecting it because Nature is the infrastructure of our communities.
And if we want to meet our obligation as a generation, as a civilization, as a nation, which is to create communities for our children.
That provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment and good health and prosperity and stability as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting our environmental infrastructure.
The air we breathe, the water we drink, the wildlife the public lands the things that connect us to our past to our history that provide context to our communities and that are the source ultimately of our values and our virtues and our character as people and the future of our children and I will see all of you on the barricades.Robert F. Kennedy, Jr delivers his opening statement during the Select Committee on... more
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Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal company in the country, blasted politics and the press, comparing Charleston Gazette Editor James. A. Haught to Osama Bin Laden Thursday evening when he addressed the Tug Valley Mining Institute in Williamson.Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal company in the country,... more
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About 470 mountain tops in Appalachia, including the one next to Coal River, have been destroyed. Mountaintop removal mining is faster and cheaper than underground mining but its impact on the environment is much worse. About 470 mountain tops in Appalachia, including the one next to Coal River, have been... more
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