tagged w/ Cape Wind
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By Megan Hagist, Media Consortium blogger
One year after the worst oil spill in U.S. history began, key questions about its environmental impact remain unanswered. The 4.9 million barrels of BP oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico continue to threaten marine wildlife and other vile surprises have surfaced along the way.
Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard lists 10 reasons why we should not let the BP spill fade into the background. Perhaps the most important is the spill’s effect on locals’ health, about which Sheppard reports:
Of the 954 residents in seven coastal communities, almost half said they had experienced health problems like coughing, skin and eye irritation, or headaches that are consistent with common symptoms of chemical exposure. While the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is conducting health monitoring for spill cleanup workers, residents in the areas closest to the spill are concerned that their own health problems have gone unattended.
Unfortunately, protests from these communities are unheard. Low-income and minority communities are typically targeted for oil production due to inadequate political power, but indigenous women in the United States and Canada are ready to change that.
Acting Against Big Oil
Organizations like Resisting Environmental Destruction On Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), Indigenous Environmental Network, and Women’s Earth Alliance are working together to apply continuous pressure on oil companies in order to stop some of their more environmentally disastrous projects. Ms. Magazine’s Catherine Traywick shares insight from activist Faith Gemmill:
“We are trying to build the capacity of community leaders who are on the frontlines of these issues so that they can address these issues themselves,” Gemmill says. Her organization trains community members who are confronted with massive industrial projects and provides them with legal assistance and political support. Women’s Earth Alliance similarly links indigenous women leaders with legal and policy advocates who can, pro-bono, help them fight extractive industry, waste dumping and fossil-fuel production on sacred sites.
Meanwhile, Congress continues to neglect the National Oil Spill Commission’s advice to endorse safety regulations, while demands for domestic offshore drilling become more vocal under presumptions of lower gas prices and increased employment. But are these reasons worth the economic and environmental risks associated with drilling offshore?
According to Care2’s Jill Conners and Matthew McDermott, the answer is no. They break down the facts, noting:
Political posturing notwithstanding, offshore drilling will not eliminate US demand for foreign oil or really even make significant strides into reducing that dependency. At current consumption, the US uses about 8 billion barrels of oil per year; conventionally recoverable oil from offshore drilling is thought to be 18 billion barrels total, not per year. What’s more, offshore oil drilling will not guarantee lower fuel prices — oil is a global commodity, and US production is not big enough to influence global prices.
What about Wind Power?
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement approved the Cape Wind Project, a plan to build an offshore wind farm five miles off the southern coast of Cape Cod. First proposed 10 years ago, the farm will consist of 130 wind turbines, each 440 feet tall and capable of producing 3.6-megawatts of energy.
The controversial project has been opposed by some environmentalists, who expressed fears that the installation of the turbines could have destructive impacts related to aviation traffic, fishing use, migratory birds, and oil within the turbine generators, among other issues.
Moral issues are raised too, as local tribes have fought against the Cape Wind project. Earth Island Institute’s Sacred Film Land Project has reported on the Wampanoag Indian tribes’ petitions, which ask for protection of sacred rituals and a tribal burial grounds located directly in Cape Wind’s path of installation.
Green-Ed
A somewhat worrisome study published Monday by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication sheds light on Americans’ climate change knowledge. Results show teenagers understand climate change better than adults, regardless of having less education overall, with a larger percentage believing climate change is caused by humans.
Some of the study’s questions were summarized by Grist’s Christopher Mims, who recounts that only “54 percent of teens and 63 percent of adults say that global warming is happening,” while only “46 percent of teens and 49 percent of adults understand that emissions from cars and trucks substantially contribute to global warming.”
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 outletsBy Megan Hagist, Media Consortium blogger
One year after the worst oil spill in... more
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And the award for the ‘Best Producer of April 2010’s Weirdest News’ goes to: Planet Earth. In his poem “The Waste Land”, T.S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month.”
April 2010 saw ice on fire in Iceland as a volcano thrust Western Europe under a cloud of ashen spew, while sundry earthquakes and extreme weather in diverse place were so numerous that they often only got second billing and brief sound bites. Humans were perhaps trying to trump the planet’s mayhem by creating a monstrous oil blob of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, that was, for a brief time, aflame. However, the month ended with one bright spot: The approval of the long embattled Cape Wind offshore wind farm near Cape Cod, Massachusetts — America’s first offshore wind farm.
I wrote an in depth article for my website about this project and the fight to stop it when that fight began in 2003. The article focused on how General Electric, a company with a poor environmental record, was getting into the renewable energy business. The article was entitled: “Green Change or Hot Wind at GE?” Here’s a reposting of that article to give you a history of our first offshore wind farm and how it came to be:
GE’s wind power division is helping to make the U.S. a world leader in wind electricity generation. Is the wind division a P.R. move to outshine the company’s less than stellar environmental history or a sign of things to come from one of the world’s biggest and oldest corporations? Or, is it just plain greenwash?
When I first began to research a series of articles on the topic of renewable energy technologies I did not expect to be writing about major corporations like GE in any favorable light. I expected to be writing human-interest stories about “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” types fighting to get major corporations to shift to renewable fuel sources and clean up their acts with respect to pollution. While researching such a story, I came across a large amount of data that I could not ignore, mostly because I was surprised to find it.
My research revealed that an increasing number of companies are beginning to implement environmentally friendly business practices. It would be nice to report that this shift is based on a new respect for our shared biosphere, but it is more accurate (and perhaps more promising for both our citizenry and our economy) to be reporting otherwise. What some companies are discovering is that keeping informed of advances in renewable resource technologies may help them recognize and corner new markets. Additionally, implementing green business practices can make good fiscal sense in that they can yield a competitive advantage by helping a company become more energy efficient and maintain a happier, more productive employee base.
So, rather than a new trend in environmental altruism, the environmentally beneficial changes in most companies I am following are rooted in careful intra-corporate study of the bottom line and research of strategies that will keep the business profitable well into the future. The upside for the rest of us is that these shifts could also offer a healthier planet to cohabitate without the added costs associated with funding government programs to legislate environmental change in the corporate world. History has shown that legislative environmentalism has often failed and been costly to tax payers in the congressional process (costs associated with researching and enacting new laws at the State and Federal level) as well as the costs of enforcement. Historically, there have been additional costs absorbed in getting resistant corporations to conform to new legal standards.
Presently, several technologies are finally allowing an economically feasible realization of ideas that have existed among environmentalists for decades. What corporate scientific study and bean counting is finding is that environmentalism and capitalism may no longer be mutually exclusive terms.
Prime examples of a new trend in natural capitalism are the developments over the course of 2003 within General Electric. GE is currently becoming a world leader in the wind power generation business. One question that initially came to my mind was whether the company is engaging in this business to help offset public image problems with respect to their environmental record. Also of note is the legal battle being joined in Cape Cod between the energy companies vying to build what would become America’s first, and the world’s largest, offshore wind facility off the coast of Cape Cod against a citizens’ group trying to stop them. GE designed and is manufacturing the new offshore wind turbines that would populate Cape wind project.
(Read more on the original post.)And the award for the ‘Best Producer of April 2010’s Weirdest News’... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Two disasters flared up this week, one environmental, the other political. Off the coast of Louisiana, oil from a sunken rig is leaking as much as five times faster than scientists originally judged, and the spill reportedly reached land last night. And in Washington, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) jumped from his partnership with Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) just before the scheduled release of the draft of a new Senate climate bill.
The trio had worked for months on bipartisan legislation on climate change. After Graham’s defection, his partners promised to press on, but the bill’s chances of survival are dimmer.
The next Exxon Valdez?
As Grist puts it, the spill off the Louisiana coast is “worse than expected, and getting worser.” The oil rig sank on April 20, and since then, oil has been pouring out of the well and into the Gulf of Mexico.
British Petroleum (BP), which operates the rig, along with the Coast Guard and now the Department of Defense, has pushed to contain and clean up the spill. The problem is deep under water and difficult to measure, but by mid-week, experts estimated that it was gushing 5,000 barrels a day from three different leaks.
Interior department officials said the spill could continue for 90 days. Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum looks at a couple of estimates for how much oil could end up in the Gulf and concludes, “An Exxon Valdez size spill might only be a few days away.”
The federal government has rallied to respond. Administration officials have traveled to Louisiana, and both the executive branch and the legislative branch have announced investigations into the spill. But, as Care2 writes, the White House is saying that the explosion should not derail plans for future drilling.
“In all honesty I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last,” press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, according to Care2.
New drilling, no regulations
Just a few weeks ago, President Barack Obama announced that the government would open up areas off the East Coast for offshore oil and gas drilling. The proposal already had some opponents, and the spill makes the politics of new drilling that much trickier. Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard reports that White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner acknowledged the issue, along with energy experts around Washington.
“This reopens the issue: Is the risk worth the reward?” Lincoln Pratson, a professor of energy and environment at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, told Sheppard.
And even though BP is relying on the Coast Guard and the Department of Defense for help managing this spill, the company is pushing back on efforts to minimize those risks, Lindsay Beyerstein reports for Working In These Times.
The company “continues to oppose a proposed rule by the Minerals Management Service (the agency that oversees oil leases on federal lands) that would require lessees and operators to develop and audit their own Safety and Emergency Management Plans (SEMP),” Beyerstein writes. “BP and other oil companies insist that voluntary compliance will suffice to keep workers and the environment safe.”
Climate bill catastrophe
The country might also have to rely on companies’ “voluntary compliance” with measures to combat global warming: Congress doesn’t seem likely to pass a bill regulating carbon any time soon. Sen. Kerry and friends were supposed to release their version of climate legislation Monday, but over the weekend, Sen. Graham backed out. His reason? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had floated the idea of prioritizing immigration reform, which Graham argued would undermine work on energy legislation.
“It seems like the senator…has a bit of an attitude problem,” wrote The American Prospect’s Gabriel Arana. “He storms out of climate talks because Democrats have dared consider working on two things at once? The degree to which movement in the Senate hinges on this single, mercurial senator, seemingly the only one whose agenda includes something more than stymieing Democrats, is remarkable.”
Call the clean up crew
After Graham’s announcement (Arana called it a “hissy fit”), congressional democrats scrambled to prove that the climate bill was not knocked entirely off course. On Monday, Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman met with their wayward colleague; by Wednesday, Sen. Reid had promised that he would “move forward on energy first;” and by Thursday, Kerry and Lieberman had asked the EPA to start evaluating the bill’s environmental and economic impacts.
Although a draft of the bill was supposed to come out on Monday, no one has seen it. At Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard reports that even the EPA, which is supposed to analyze the bill, hasn’t received the full draft.
“According to the EPA, the senators submitted a “description of their draft bill” for economic modeling,” she writes. “The agency confirmed in a statement to Mother Jones the senators “have not sent EPA any actual legislative text.” The agency is determining whether it has enough information about the bill to produce an analysis of its economic and environmental impacts.”
Despite assurances from the Senate leadership, it’s not clear if climate legislation will come to the floor this year or, if it does, that it will pass.
Not a disaster
There was one bright spot of news for environmentalists this week: the United States will build its first off-shore wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod. The project, called Cape Wind, has a host of opponents, but Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar decided to approve it. The scale will be smaller than originally planned—130 rather than 170 turbines, the Washington Independent reports—which could mollify critics who worried about its visual impact.
Cape Wind is a prime example of how clean energy projects can still cause harm or anger the people who live in their shadow. The Texas Observer recaps opposition to clean energy projects: A working-class neighborhood fought against efforts to build a biomass plant in their town, and won.
“Despite some activists touting these projects as solutions to global warming, and politicians promoting them as the key to economic prosperity, renewable energy projects tend to have their own sets of problems for local residents,” reports Rusty Middleton.
Biomass is one thing: burning materials like waste wood might produce fewer greenhouse gasses, but a biomass plant still dirties the air around it. But if the choice is between an off-shore wind farm that could mar a pleasant vista or an off-shore drilling operation that could spill gallons of oil onto your coast, it seems clear which is the better option.
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
Two disasters flared up this week, one... more
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BOSTON--In a groundbreaking decision that some say will usher in a new era of clean energy, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the nation's first offshore wind farm today off Cape Cod, a person briefed on the decision said this morning.
Salazar is expected to announced his decision at noon at a joint State House news conference with Governor Deval Patrick after nine years of controversy over the proposal.
Several other sources with knowledge of the wind farm project said they expected Salazar to announce approval of the project. The governor is to be briefed by the secretary at 11:30 a.m., a source said.
The decision has been delayed for almost a year because of two Wampanoag tribes’ complaints that the turbines, which would stand more than 400 feet above the ocean surface, would disturb spiritual sun greetings and possibly ancestral artifacts and burial grounds on the seabed, which was once exposed land before the sea level rose thousands of years ago.
Supporters have long said an approval would be a giant step forward for renewable energy efforts in the country, while opponents have said they would seek to kill the project through legal action. The project, if it is not held up by lawsuits, could begin construction within the year.
The project has undergone years of environmental review and political maneuvering, including opposition from the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, whose home overlooks Nantucket Sound. While opponents' main concern is aesthetics -- the turbines would be visible low on the horizon from the Cape and Islands -- the battle was fought by raising other issues, including possible effects on property values and harm to birds, fishing, aviation, and historic and cultural sites.
Horseshoe Shoals, the part of Nantucket Sound where the wind farm is proposed, is widely considered the best place along the East Coast to build a wind farm. That's in part because the site is in shallow, sheltered waters close to shore -- the nearest beach is five miles away. But it is also because it is in federal waters: Political will to build such a massive wind farm in state waters three miles from shore does not exist.
Cape Wind Associates said the wind farm could produce enough wind power to handle three-quarters of the electric needs of the Cape and Islands. The price of its electricity is expected to be higher than conventional power. The company is still in negotiations with National Grid, the utility, that has agreed to purchase some of the power the farm produces.
US Senator Scott Brown criticized Salazar's decision, saying it was "misguided."
"“With unemployment hovering near ten percent in Massachusetts, the Cape Wind project will jeopardize industries that are vital to the Cape’s economy, such as tourism and fishing, and will also impact aviation safety and the rights of the Native American tribes in the area. I am also skeptical about the cost-savings and job number predictions we have heard from proponents of the project," Brown said in a statement.
But George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, hailed the decision, saying it was "a critical step toward ending our reliance on foreign oil and achieving energy independence. "
"Those who continue to resist and litigate are simply on the wrong side of history," he said.BOSTON--In a groundbreaking decision that some say will usher in a new era of clean... more
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Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pledged on Wednesday to make a final decision on the controversial Cape Wind project on Nantucket Sound in April, while some powerful opponents said they will keep fighting until the wind farm is moved to a less visually disruptive site.
The project has been caught in a regulatory net for nine years.
"I think that nine years after an application is filed for a permit from the United States government, to have it continuing to face a future of uncertainty is bad for everybody that’s involved," Salazar told reporters.
The announcement followed meetings in Washington with officials from local towns, tribes and opponent and proponent organizations.
Salazar said if the parties can't resolve their standoff by March 1, he would terminate the consultation process and make a decision to fully deny or approve the project on his own. ...
http://solveclimate.com/blog/20100113/u-s-interior-promises-cape-wind-ruling-aprilInterior Secretary Ken Salazar pledged on Wednesday to make a final decision on the... more
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
The next United Nations climate change conference is almost a year away, and health care is still dominating the legislative agenda in Washington. That means climate reform opponents, from the coal industry to the global warming skeptics, have plenty of time to work, out of the spotlight, to derail progress. Here’s a glimpse of the enemies of reform—and the companies and individuals that are still fighting for change in 2010.
Take the case of Cape Wind, an offshore wind farm planned for Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound, as an example. The project faced yet another roadblock this week, when the National Park Service said the site could be listed as a historical place, prized by Nantucket’s Native American tribes. But as Kate Sheppard writes in Mother Jones, the park service’s decision counts as a victory for a less sympathetic opponent as well. William Koch is the founder and president of the Oxbow Group, a privately-held group of companies, and he has laid out more than a million dollars to fight Cape Wind.
“Koch … has made his fortune off mining and marketing coal, natural gas, petroleum, and petroleum coke products,” Sheppard explains. “He’s the son of Fred Koch, founder of oil and gas giant Koch Industries, and brother of David and Charles Koch—who have supported conservative groups like Citizens for a Sound Economy (which later merged with another group to form FreedomWorks) and Americans for Prosperity, which has campaigned against both climate legislation and health care reform.”
Mother Jones is also on the case of the Atlas Foundation, a think tank that promotes climate change skepticism (and also receives funding from Koch). Josh Harkinson examines this group and other foundations that are supporting “a loose network of some 500 similar organizations in dozens of countries” and that are in turn financed by “carbon-spewing American industries.” The Atlas Economic Research Foundation alone has supported more than 30 other foreign think tanks that buy into climate change skepticism, Harkinson reports.
“The foreign groups’ finances are opaque, yet an Atlas Foundation spokesman acknowledges that some of them wouldn’t exist without dollars being pumped in,” Harkinson writes. “In the coming months, these groups will lead the fight in their own countries to derail the shaky deal made in Copenhagen—which will likely prompt American skeptics to cite widespread international opposition to taking action on climate change.”
Of course, the skeptics do have opponents, including the solar and wind power industries that stand to gain from climate change legislation. One group that can be added to that list: Farmers. Lynda Washington of the Iowa Independent reports that “most, but not all, [agricultural] producers will benefit from the package passed earlier this year by the U.S. House of Representatives,” according to a new study by Kansas State University (KSU) researchers.
The American Farmland Trust, which funded the KSU study, will have plenty of strange bedfellows as it lobbies Congress on climate change legislation. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reports that the groups joining the battle on Capitol Hill include “venture capitalists, the natural gas lobby, America’s most iconic soup maker Campbell Soup,” according to a new analysis of federal records.
“The sheer range of interests registered to lobby on climate change is expected to create further delays in the Senate’s effort to complete a successful bill to curb fossil fuel emissions,” Goodman explains.By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
The next United Nations climate change... more
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Conservation collides with clean energy in a calamatous climate kerfoffel on Cape Cod.
Cape Wind has become Cape Fear for some Massachusetts coastal residents, including some at the posh Kennedy compound, but for wind energy advocates, this is one US project that’s creating more fanfare than fright.
Slated to be the first offshore wind farm in the continental US, Cape Wind will provide 130 mammoth turbines in the middle of the Nantucket Sound. These energy generating windmills will deliver 420 megawatts of clean power, enough to to supply 75% of the region’s energy needs.
While this excites islanders looking to clean up their energy consumption, this project does have it’s critics. An organization called Save Our Sound claims there are significant wildlife and safety hazards like interference with the 400,000 flights that traverse that air space.
Cape Wind plans to address those concerns and suggests a radar upgrade could eliminate the hazard. This maneuver and stimulus billions available to support the project may get the wind farm’s propellers going after all.
For the latest on the Cape Wind controversy, visit some of the following links:
Cape Wind proposal clears big obstacle (Boston Globe)
A day at the beach remains unspoiled (Springfield Republican)
Cape Wind will proceed in face of political hot air (Worcester Telegram)
Cape Wind foes spent $2 million on lobbying (National Journal - Under the Influence)
Photo by rich_awn.Conservation collides with clean energy in a calamatous climate kerfoffel on Cape Cod.... more
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Cape Wind, the controversial wind farm planned off the coast of Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts, cleared a crucial hurdle today with the release of a report from the federal agency that oversees it.Cape Wind, the controversial wind farm planned off the coast of Nantucket Sound in... more
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