Another environmental disaster about to happen.....

by moose67

I love Michigan.  Anyone who has ever seen the fantastic Great Lakes, fished our bountiful streams or walked our beautiful beaches which rival those of California or Florida would feel as strongly as I do.  If you've seen our "Pure Michigan" ads, you get a little glimpse of how protective we are of our natural resources.  But now, as the Gulf is being damaged beyond anything we can imagine for generations to come, by our demand for oil riches - the Great Lakes are on the verge of ecological disaster too.  

continued at Daily Kos....

BP Takes Another Life-Updated with Help Resource Info

by Oke

The criminals running loose are responsible for another life lost.
Gulf boat captain shoots himself on boat's deck

A Gulf of Mexico charter boat captain from Alabama committed suicide yesterday after he allegedly became too upset over the BP oil spill ruining the charter boat business.

UPDATE: I don't like presenting issues without some form of solution or action. There is a resource available for mental health and suicide.

continued at Daily Kos....

Bad Decision Overturns Drilling Moratorium

by rebb

crossposted at intlawgrrls

On June 22, Judge Martin Feldman of the Eastern District of Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction overturning the Department of Interior’s May 28, 2010 Temporary Moratorium on deepwater drilling. Several facets of this decision are truly astonishing. Nowhere in the decision is there any recognition of the unique, emergency circumstances or the grave threat to the public that the agency was seeking to combat. Nor did the judge pay much attention to the express and explicit congressional intention that offshore oil activities be suspended when necessary to protect against environmental threats.

continued at Daily Kos....

On Being Philistines

by rserven

Pelican Gate

Some of you have been following along with a local story I have been following for quite some time (last October):  the proposed destruction of an old-growth forest in West Orange, NJ by the administrators of Seton Hall Prep and the Archdiocese of Newark, as abetted...or in some cases just ignored...by the West Orange Zoning Board and elected officials.

Originally this was a story of people who had no concern for the environment or the value of old trees.  Then it became the story of the destruction of the habitat for an endangered species.  It progressed to being a story of civil irresponsibility when workers for Seton Hall Prep were instructed to demolish some 90 year old Japanese yew trees in favor of what were called "test pits."  Exactly what was being tested was unclear.

continued at Daily Kos....

Putting a Price on Carbon -- Polluting must No Longer be Free

by jamess

Imagine your local Widget Factory, employs dozens of workers,
to put together hundreds of the latest Must-have Widgets, each and every day.

Now imagine this Widget Factory, in the hopes of increasing profits,
took all its industrial by-product Gunk, gathered them up each day,
and quietly dumped them, each night around midnight, when no one was looking,
in the local River waterway.   Pollution be gone!

Instant Profit Gain, right?  No costly "Gunk Processing" equipment to buy or operate. No extra hidden costs, need be added to that Price of a Widget -- which could keep consumers from flocking to Widget Retail Outlets, right?

Wrong ... ONE Big Problem in this Free Market scheme ...

The Folks living downstream on that local River waterway!
The Folks making a living on the beauty and productivity of that River --

They all might notice that somethings up, in their once pristine Waterway?

They might eventually figure it out too, that "Widget One" has been "cutting corners", in its responsibility to be "good neighbors".

continued at Daily Kos....

One of the biggest fish kills in history of Endangered Species Act

by quaoar

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today issued a notice of violation and is seeking a $2.9 million fine from the city of Birmingham in Alabama for a 2008 incident in which city workers killed off more than half the population of a small endangered fish.

The fish kill resulted in the deaths of 11,760 watercress darters and injury to 8,900 other darters.

continued at Daily Kos....

FL-Sen: Rubio supports oil because it's safe

by Jed Lewison

Marco Rubio, running as a Republican for U.S. Senate from Florida, yesterday:

So now you’re talking about deep-water drilling. And I only want to see it if it can be done safely. And that’s why it’s so important that we study why this happened. And if you tell me we’re going to have to put up with a couple of more of these, of course not. But can it be done safely? There is evidence that it can be done safely. It’s being done safely all over the world.

So Rubio says he'll only support oil if it's safe, and then says there's evidence that "it's being done safely all over the world."

Case closed, right? Thanks to Dick Cheney's energy task force, oil is safe, right? Drill, baby, drill. Right?

Yeah. Uh, except there's always this:

It's being done safely all over the world. Except when it's not.

continued at Daily Kos....

It'd Cost You 7 Cents A Gallon To Ban Offshore Drilling!

by slinkerwink

You ready to pay seven cents per gallon in 2011, and eleven cents per gallon in 2035? That's exactly what would happen if we ban offshore drilling. Here's more on this from RFF Fellow, Stephen P.A. Brown, at the Resources For Future:

"If such risks are not taken fully into account, offshore oil and natural gas production will be too great; oil and natural gas prices will be too low; and the consumption of oil and natural gas will be too high," Brown writes. "Are tighter controls or a permanent ban on deepwater drilling in the United States a reasonable response to such externalities – or an overreaction?"

Brown assesses the implications of a permanent tightening of U.S. government control on deepwater offshore drilling through three scenarios. The first case represents business as usual. The second imposes additional regulatory safeguards that would increase the cost of exploration, development, and production in U.S. deepwater and ultra-deepwater areas by a combined 20 percent. The third case examines the implications of a permanent U.S. ban on drilling in deepwater and ultra-deepwater areas.

continued at Daily Kos....

Gulf Coast Attorneys File RICO Class Action Lawsuits Against BP

by bdemelle

Gulf Coast law firms Levin Papantonio, Eastland Law and others have begun filing a series of civil RICO actions in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama to hold BP accountable for the false assurances it gave the American people that it could handle a worst-case scenario deepwater oil spill. The suits allege that BP committed mail fraud, wire fraud and potentially other RICO predicate act violations when the company sought permits from the federal government for deepwater offshore drilling, knowing that it did not possess the technical expertise or equipment necessary to respond to an emergency such as the ongoing Deepwater disaster.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

continued at Daily Kos....

California: Break the Oil Addiction Cycle

by Ella Arnold

For weeks on end we have watched our dependence on Big Oil cause the greatest environmental disaster this country has ever seen. We have been horrified by pictures like this. We have been saddened by the stories of all of the Gulf Coast residents who have lost their jobs and are now struggling to make ends meet. And we have been angered by the ineptitude of the BP executives who allowed this tragedy to happen and could not care less if the Gulf Coast ever recovers.

The attitude of corporate greed and environmental irresponsibility has once again reared its ugly head, this time in the state of California, where on Monday, a deceptive ballot initiative called the California Jobs Initiative qualified for the state's November ballot.

continued at Daily Kos....