Don't Let the BP Gulf Oil Spill Get You Down

Don't let a disaster discourage you from living green. By Carol Thompson With roughly 2.5 million gallons of oil gushing into the ocean every day, it's easy to let yourself slip into nothing I do matters mode. Such tremendous loss of habitat and wildlife in the gulf can make walking instead of driving seem like a lost cause. What's a couple of gallons saved in relation to such a huge leak? But don't give up the cause! You control your lifestyle (whereas nobody seems to have control in the gulf), and you have the power to make an impact on your family, your neighbors and your community. All it takes is one person to do right and set an example, and others will surely follow. Updates on the BP Gulf Oil Spill. The easiest ways to start going green. Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/going-green/tips/bp-gulf-oil-spill-response#ixzz0t3Y4apod

No more BPs: we must turn our deserts into solar power

The Deepwater Horizon disaster should make us look to the sun, and start a revolution in how we meet our energy needs Ulrich Beck * o Ulrich Beck o The Guardian, Tuesday 6 July 2010 o Article history Why hasn't the Deepwater Horizon spill, one of the worst ecological disasters in US history, led to a storming of the Bastille of Big Oil? Why aren't the most urgent problems of our time – environmental crises and climate change – being confronted with the same energy, idealism and optimism as past tragedies of poverty, tyranny and war? The current state of the oil industry is reminiscent of the ancien regime on the eve of the revolution. The Gulf of Mexico disaster has many faces. BP's incompetence is one. But there is also the failure of legislative oversight. What until recently was praised as an economic stimulus policy is now being criticised as "collusion with scoundrels". The BP boss, Tony Hayward, dons sackcloth and ashes and speaks of an "unprecedented series of mishaps". At a hearing in the US House of Representatives, a Democrat congressman confronted him with the list of BP accidents and revealed another truth: there are still hundreds, indeed thousands of oil platforms in this region alone, but also throughout the world, for which the other oil majors are responsible. To beat up on BP alone is shabby. Deepwater Horizon is the symbol of the demise of a global experiment: a model of progress and development based on exploiting fossil fuels. No one can claim they didn't see it coming. For two centuries machines and engines have been driven by combustion and steam. Nonetheless, a generation has grown up knowing that the fossil fuel industry is burning up its own foundations. More than a century ago, Max Weber foresaw the end of oil-based capitalism when he spoke of a time when "the last hundredweight of fossil fuel is burnt up". Yet why should a world that every day receives many times its energy needs from the sun, a free and inexhaustible source of energy, look on impassively as clouds of oil spew into the deep sea? Right now, we need the celebrated innovative power of capital and the utopian enthusiasm of engineers. "Swords into ploughshares" was the motto of the peace movement. "Deserts into solar power" should be our slogan now. As the oil gushes forth, the truth is coming to light. "We underestimated the complications involved in drilling for oil at a depth of 1,500 metres," confesses Hayward. Nobody possesses the necessary safety technology to prevent or respond to such a scenario. Engineers have bored to ever greater depths on the assumption that the risks could be controlled. The depressing truth is that the "residual risk" of deep-sea drilling rests on ignorance. BP estimated that, in the event the safety technology should fail, it would take two to four years for the oil to discharge completely into the sea. Faced with this long-term catastrophe, Barack Obama has declared "war" on the dark enemy from the deep. But military thinking is no help, because the greatest dangers do not come from enemy states, but from the side-effects of economic, scientific and political decisions. What is the commander-in-chief supposed to do? Send out his fleet of submarines to torpedo the oil leak? Launch a military strike against the management of BP and its sponsors? In the war against terror, George W Bush held Afghanistan and Iraq responsible for al-Qaida. Should Obama follow his example in this Gulf war by making Britain, as BP's assumed country of origin, responsible for the catastrophic attack on the American coast? Obama stresses the adjective "British" when speaking of the energy company, as though this were 1814 and British troops were again besieging Washington DC. BP itself has long since been engulfed by globalisation. British Petroleum is not British. In 1998 the company merged with US oil giant Amoco and took the opportunity to abandon the adjective "British" and replace it with "Beyond". BP, we were invited to think, was the beginning of the future without oil. And the globalised BP cannot be pinned down: it is jointly owned by Americans, its drilling rig was built by Koreans, and it pays corporation tax in Bern. Yet just as Chernobyl was dismissed as a failure of a "communist" reactor, Deepwater Horizon is now being blamed on the country with which the US used to enjoy a "special relationship". Obama needs, in his own words, "an ass to kick". Postwar prosperity in the west laid the foundation for environmental awareness. Now environmental awareness must provide the basis for prosperity in developing countries. These countries will adopt sustainable policies to the extent that the affluent countries invest in their development and adopt a new vision of prosperity and growth. China, India, Brazil and African countries will not agree to any approach that tries to limit their efforts to achieve economic parity – and rightly so. But does the future lie with a global environmental policy based on carbon trading, which amounts to the global sale of indulgences for CO2 sins? Or will we have the courage to invent and realise a new age of solar energy in which prosperity is not an environmental sin, and when everything from cows to electric toothbrushes is blamed for contributing to CO2 emissions? "It is time to introduce clean forms of energy," Obama has said. If he can ring in an era that is truly Beyond Petroleum, Big Oil's Bastille will be doomed.

More bad news for the Gulf Residents

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – The Obama appointee managing BP's oil spill disaster fund said there's "not enough money in the world" to pay all claims and suggested home owners with plunging property values could lose out.

The warning from prominent US lawyer Kenneth Feinberg came as Hurricane Alex disrupted clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico and pushed oil deeper into fragile coastal wetlands and once-pristine beaches.

The storm made landfall late Wednesday south of the US border with Mexico as a Category Two hurricane, with 100-mile-per-hour winds and heavy rains lashing the coast, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

The NHC said at 0600 GMT Thursday that Alex's winds extended outward up to 35 miles (55 kilometers) from the eye, and tropical storm force winds extended out to 205 miles (335 kilometers), well into Texas.

While the hurricane made landfall far from the epicenter of the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana, rough seas forced a halt to skimming operations in the spill area.

Efforts to permanently plug the leak by drilling relief wells continued, and two containment ships are still capturing the oil at a rate of about 25,000 barrels per day despite seven-foot (two-meter) swells.

But the rough seas have delayed the deployment of a third ship aimed at doubling the containment capacity.

Senior government officials were set to meet with President Barack Obama Thursday to discuss whether a new containment system should be installed in the interim.

That system would further raise capacity, but would require the current cap to be removed and involve careful manipulation some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface.

An estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil a day has been gushing out of the ruptured well since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank on April 22 some 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

Some 423 miles (681 kilometers) of US shorelines have now been oiled as crude gushes into the sea at an alarming rate, 10 weeks into the worst environmental disaster in US history.

Feinberg, who Obama named to administer the 20-billion-dollar claims fund, insisted that BP will "pay every eligible claim," but cautioned that many perceived damages may not qualify.

"I use that famous example of a restaurant in Boston that says, 'I can't get shrimp from Louisiana, and my menu suffers and my business is off,'" Feinberg told the House of Representatives Committee on Small Business on Wednesday.

"Well, no law is going to recognize that claim."

Feinberg said he was still sorting out how to deal with indirect claims like hotels that lose bookings because tourists think the beaches are covered in oil, or people who see their property values decline but live several blocks away from an oiled beach.

"There's no question that the property value has diminished as a result of the spill. That doesn't mean that every property is entitled to compensation," he said.

"There's not enough money in the world to pay everybody who'd like to have money," he said.

Feinberg, who headed a compensation fund for victims of the September 11 attacks, assured lawmakers the fund would be "totally independent" and said BP had agreed to top up the escrow account as needed to meet proper claims.

The British energy giant has already disbursed over 130 million dollars in emergency payments to fishermen and others affected by the slick. Feinberg said lump sum payments would be offered to claimants once the true extent of the damage is assessed.

"It sure would help if the oil would stop," he told the committee.

Obama on Wednesday ordered the development of a long-term plan to "restore the unique beauty and bounty" of the Gulf Coast.

The Long-Term Gulf Restoration Support Plan aims to "ensure economic recovery, community planning, science-based restoration of the ecosystem and environment, public health and safety efforts, and support of individuals and businesses who suffered losses due to the spill," a White House memo said.

Obama, Gulf OIL

Obama Renews Push For New Energy Policy

President Obama seized on the BP oil spill Wednesday to renew a push for legislation to "fully embrace a clean energy future," including an end to tax breaks for oil companies.
Obama said his vision for a new U.S. energy policy "means rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies so we can prioritize investments in clean energy research and development."

In a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Obama said the largest oil spill in U.S. history should spur the public and policy makers to pursue long-term energy policies that don't rely on fossil fuels.

He cited energy efficiency, greater use of natural gas reserves and more nuclear power plants as fundamentals to reducing U.S. reliance on oil. Obama also renewed his call for climate change legislation while conceding that the Senate currently lacks the support needed to pass a bill drafted by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn.

"The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months," Obama said. "I will make the case for a clean energy future wherever I can, and I will work with anyone from either party to get this done."

The president said that the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the subsequent oil spill highlight the "inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes."

While Obama looked beyond the BP spill, two senators zeroed in on the oil giant.
Sens. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on the company to delay paying dividends to shareholders.

They say the company may need every penny to maintain high capital reserves to cover the rising tab for the oil spill. Published reports estimate that BP has spent almost $1 billion so far on efforts to contain the Deepwater Horizon spill.

In a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward, the lawmakers cited an estimate by Credit Suisse Group AG that the cost could hit $37 billion if BP cannot stop the well from leaking until August, when it hopes to complete relief drilling.

"We are certainly not opposed to BP paying dividends after the well is capped, cleanup has been completed and the victims have been justly compensated," Schumer and Wyden wrote. 

Source: CQ Today Round-the-clock coverage of news from Capitol Hill.©2010 Congressional Quarterly Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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