The magazine on peak oil and the Transition movement
The following letter from climate activist Bill McKibben was sent out today by 350.org. -- Ed. Dear friends, We woke up this morning with a deep sense of sadness. Hurricane Sandy has brought serious hardship to many of the people we love and places we treasure. Large parts of the Northeast are underwater, millions are still without power, and tens of thousands have been evacuated from their homes. Last night the floodwaters were swirling around the bottom floor of our Brooklyn … [Read more...]
A rush to drill is sweeping the United States. Across the country, the oil and gas industry is surging into new areas as quickly and cheaply as possible. And they have been using techniques like hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) long before we fully understand the extent of the negative impacts on the health of the local people, communities, water, air, climate, and other critical resources. Landowners and communities are struggling to cope: Existing laws are outdated and … [Read more...]
How soon we forget. Today marks the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But don't expect to hear much about it. The largest environmental disaster ever in American history, the BP oil spill dumped nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and its consequences continue to reverberate in the area. But unless you're a Louisiana shrimper or a fan of dolphins -- more than 700 have washed up on Gulf shores since the spill -- does it really … [Read more...]
How many Saudi Arabias did you say that was? It's hard to keep up these days with claims by oil and gas drillers about how many Saudi Arabia-sized reserves of tar sands oil/shale oil/deepwater oil/hydrofracked gas that North America is now allegedly able to access due to the smarts of petroleum geologists and the tenacity of oilmen. "Because of better technology, notably breakthroughs in drilling, the US all of a sudden realizes it is sitting on a century’s worth of gas supply," writes … [Read more...]
Did you think it was just an accident that conservatives seem so good at singing from the same hymnal on the issue du jour, whether it's privatizing social security, blaming the Dodd-Frank bill for Bank of America's (now cancelled) $5 debit card fee or defending Hermann Cain from sexual harassment charges? Well, it's not an accident. Whether it's El Rushbo, John Boehner or Michele Bachmann, they all actually did get the memo. And that memo is given out at the conservative strategy meeting … [Read more...]
Wall Street is the best immediate target for a huge protest movement, since it was the freewheeling gambling of big banks that pushed the economy over the edge in 2008 and started the Great Recession. Now, as Occupy movements pop up around the US and across the globe to draw attention to economic inequity and the government corruption that abets rule by the top 1%, Occupiers should not forget that ExxonMobil is as guilty as Goldman Sachs in buying politicians and squeezing the 99%. The New … [Read more...]
I'm their target audience. I already care about climate change. And I don't like Big Oil. Yet, it took Bill McKibben and more than 150 other activists getting arrested at the White House for me to finally care about the tar sands pipeline. Before that, I had five reasons to leave this particular issue to somebody else: Pipelines are boring. With the Environmental Protection Agency reporting up to 24,000 oil spills each year, plenty of crude must mess up dry land, but it lacks the … [Read more...]
"It can be difficult to distinguish between bullshit and wisdom when oil men are talking. That's because, as Houston We Have a Problem makes clear, they're full of both," writes reviewer Cindy Widner. I couldn't have encapsulated better myself the essence of Houston We Have a Problem: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Cheap Energy. As Widner puts it: If the film boasts a high concentration of oil company executives and wildcatters, it's mostly the better for it. Once we get past their … [Read more...]
Normally I don't pass along really blatant partisan propaganda. But because I think Big Oil's control over Washington is the biggest barrier America faces to enacting a sensible energy policy in the face of peak oil and climate change, I found the R-Oil Wedding campaign from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just too good to ignore. Don't get me wrong: I agree with Ralph Nader that Democrats and Republicans are just two wings of the same plutocratic party. Dems are surely no … [Read more...]
Can the president who killed Osama bin Laden now stand up to Big Oil? Encouraged by comments made by House Speaker John Boehner that subsidies for oil and gas companies should be on the table, Democrats led by Montana Sen. Max Baucus last week revived their stalled effort to cut billions per year in taxpayer handouts to the largest oil companies. No surprise, Big Oil is not going gently into that good night, even after just reporting profits up 30% from last year. At the same time, … [Read more...]
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