Weekend Enviro-Blog: The Pickens Scam

I wrote previously about the hypocrisy of billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens, who runs around pretending to care about the environment and ending our dependence on oil, while he has been one of Bush's biggest supporters, and is in fact still supporting Republicans who want to drill drill drill and not invest in alternative energy. I said at the time, that he wasn't to be trusted. He obviously has ulterior motives.

So curious to figure out the real reason he is pushing wind energy so hard, I did some searching, and came across this, which serves as a good introduction to T. Boone for those not fond of a lot of reading:



But for those who like to read a bit (two pages), here is an excellent overview of what Pickens is really all about. Bottom line, it is alll about profit, T. Boone doesn't give a shit about the environment, and he is still heavily invested in oil. Don't buy his bullshit:

Why T. Boone Pickens' 'Clean Energy' Plan Is a Ponzi Scheme
by Scott Thill, AlterNet

Update: More on T. Boone's water scheme here and here.

Full Environmental Disclosure

If we want people to start noticing how their everyday consumerism is impacting climate change and the environment, why not put carbon footprint labels on all products?

This is, after all, market capitalism is it not? The theory revolves around consumers having full access to information about available products so they can make the best market-based decisions. I think it is time for the market hypocrisy to end, and for producers to have to offer consumers appropriate information about their products (both about what those products do to our bodies, as well as the environment), instead of the typical misinformation or attempts to fight stricter labeling regulations.

Maybe plastic bottles should come with a little label that says "This product will litter the planet for billions of years, I hope it was worth it."

The Delusion Revolution

Here is a thought-provoking article that expresses some of the frustration that I feel with our society's unwillingness to take crises, especially global climate change, seriously. It is best exemplified in this excerpt:

Imagine that you are riding comfortably on a sleek train. You look out the window and see that not too far ahead the tracks end abruptly and that the train will derail if it continues moving ahead. You suggest that the train stop immediately and that the passengers go forward on foot. This will require a major shift in everyone's way of traveling, of course, but it appears to you to be the only realistic option; to continue barreling forward is to court catastrophic consequences. But when you propose this course of action, others who have grown comfortable riding on the train say, "Well, we like the train, and arguing that we should get off is not realistic."

The article goes on to describe how our society is barreling down the wrong track, and how we very well might not fully appreciate the scale and immediacy of the coming train wreck until the point of impact, or seconds before. Basically it doesn't paint an optimistic picture, but I believe it paints a realistic one. I think it is well-worth a read. And as an added bonus it contains a bit of a feminist critique again pornography. Check it out:

The Delusion Revolution: We're on the Road to Extinction and in Denial
by Robert Jensen, AlterNet

Also check out this article on our over-medicated society.

Real Education Matters

Yesterday there was a big victory for education and reality over ignorance and nonsense. Yesterday a judge ruled that the University of California system can deny credit to incoming students from religious schools who took "faith-based" "science" courses at their schools. See, the California University system has some basic standards of education for incoming students, as they should, they are an institution of higher learning. But religious schools wanted their fake science courses that indoctrinate their students with lies about whats real and whats not to count as real science classes, but the courts said no way.

Here is an example of a religious textbook that the court found doesn't qualify as science education:

Another rejected text, "Biology for Christian Schools," declares on the first page that "if (scientific) conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong."

Hmm....yeah, it doesn't take much to see the problem there!

Christian schools seemed to think this was ok:

Christian schools in the suit accused the university of rejecting courses that include any religious viewpoint, "any instance of God's guidance of history, or any alternative ... to evolution."

However the judge made it clear that this was not the case:

Rejecting claims of religious discrimination and stifling of free expression, U.S. District Judge James Otero of Los Angeles said UC's review committees cited legitimate reasons for rejecting the texts - not because they contained religious viewpoints, but because they omitted important topics in science and history and failed to teach critical thinking.

He nails a key point there. Learning facts is one part of education, and it is obviously an important one, but memorized facts can, and usually do, fade over time, especially on rarely-used subjects (for most people) like biology, chemistry and higher levels of mathematics, but the most important thing to be gained from education is the ability to think. Critical thinking, that is the foundation of education, learning, and expanding our knowledge and understanding of the world. Critical thinking is antithetical to religion. At its core it is predicated upon not thinking, on suspending critical thought in favor of blind faith. There is a place for that, it is a church, but a place of education is not compatible with the fundamental values (anti-thought) or the teachings (creationism, etc) of religion. So if you want to live a life of faith, ok, do that. If you want to live a life of faith but you still want a real education for some reason, that's fine too, but in doing so you have accept that education isn't going to make special accommodations for your particular beliefs, and they shouldn't have to, it isn't fair to people who actually learned the facts and how to think critically.

So why is it so important? Here's a case in point, a perfect example of why a real education is important, and why religion should have nothing to do with the world of the educated or public policy. Recently Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, a champion of the Christian Right from Minnesota, tried to explain her ardent anti-environmentalism, and she eventually fell back on this gem of logic:

"[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she's just trying to save the planet," Bachmann told the right-wing news site OneNewsNow. "We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet -- we didn't need Nancy Pelosi to do that."

Oh yes boys and girls, this right-wing nutjob essentially believes we shouldn't do anything protect the environment, and we ought to just rape the hell out of the Earth, cut down the forests, strip mine the mountains, pollute the air and rivers, kill off endangered species, and of course drill the hell out of protected offshore sanctuaries, alllll because Jesus already saved the planet 2,000 years ago. Yes, Jesus did it, so Pelosi doesn't have to! That's funny, because I don't remember seeing Jesus lobbying for the Clean Water Act or chaining himself to a tree in an old-growth forest. In fact, I think he has been pretty MIA on environmental protection, I don't think we can really rely on him. And besides, even if you believe the completely debunked creationism nonsense in the Bible, do you think God would be really happy that he worked his ass off for six days creating this great planet for us to inhabit, and you thank him by trashing the place? Is that what you do with a gift? Is that how you show gratitude? Hey, thanks for the new pad, I think I'm going to shit on the floor now!

Oh yes, this nutjob has a history of outrageous anti-environmental comments (although none beat the Jesus line, they come close), like that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) doesn't actually contain any wildlife, and how Democrats are involved in some sort of demographic conspiracy to use high gas prices (which Republicans caused) to force suburban whites to move into the inner city.

Yeah, she is an ignorant, right-wing nut, and a perfect example of why you shouldn't mix religion, and paranoid bigotry, with public policy.

And she is of course up for reelection, and it will probably be a tight race, so please support her opponent, Elwyn "El" Tinklenberg, and if you live in Minnesota's 6th district, vote for him!

Weekend Enviro-Blog

Here are two interesting enviro articles to read.

The first describes how to cut excess plastics out of your life, which is something I've been consciously attempting for quite some time. The author gives three great reasons to cut out the use of plastics, but doesn't hit on the biggest one (at least for me), which is waste. Plastic never goes away. If we produce a plastic widget for your consumption, that widget will be around for millions and millions of years after you are dead and gone (plastic never biodegrades). Think of how much superfluous plastic we "consume" every day--grocery bags, annoying excess packaging, water/pop bottles, shitty pointless happymeal toys that provide about 4 seconds of entertainment until they go in the trash--all things that are essentially worthless in their utility, completely unnecessary, and have infinitesimally short useful lives, yet will be clogging up landfills, rivers, oceans, and animal esophagi for all eternity. Is it worth it? Personally it disgusts me, it distresses me. To think of how much harm we do to the planet every day, even if we don't mean to, simply because plastics pervade our existence. So whenever possible I try to avoid using plastics, and when I have no choice but to use them, I reuse them and reuse them and then eventually recycle them. Anyway, I think this is a great and thought-provoking article for people who care about the environment, yet haven't really thought about how harmful plastics are. Check it out:

Deplasticize Your Life!
by Starre Vartan, Eco Chick

The second article of interest is about junk mail, that worthless crap we hate to get, yet nevertheless fills our mailboxes. The vast vast vast majority of the time this unsolicited waste goes directly from the mailbox to the trash, sometimes being handshredded in between in the case of ever-wasteful bankspam. Yet as unnecessary and utterly worthless as junk mail is, its impact on the environment is far from insignificant. A recent study estimates that "destroying forests to make paper for junk mail releases as much greenhouse gas pollution as 9 million cars." Check it out:

Junk Mail Produces as Much CO2 as 7 States Combined
by Dan Shapley, The Daily Green

And sign the Petition to Stop Junk Mail!

McCain Only Cares About His Own Backyard

Obama's new ad in Nevada, targeting McCain on his support for dumping nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Funny thing, McCain doesn't want nuclear waste in his home state of Arizona, but using neighboring Nevada as a nuclear waste dump is something he can get behind:

China's Olympic Hurt Pride

I thought this was funny. Yesterday some US Olympic cyclists made a bit of a splash in China after they arrived wearing protective face masks:

After months of speculation about how Olympic athletes would react to the air quality problems here, some answers arrived at the airport Tuesday, when four track cyclists on the United States team stepped off their flight wearing masks over their mouths and noses.

They were the first athletes at these Summer Games seen wearing masks publicly to combat the effects of pollution, and the sight of them drew considerable attention and criticism from United States Olympic officials.

Yes, the USOC, China and others were apparently quite upset by this. And the cyclists got a little tongue-lashing for their precaution:

U.S.O.C. officials were apparently unhappy with their choice, scolding the cyclists for walking off the plane wearing the masks because it might embarrass the host country, Friedman and Lea said. The cyclists said they did not remember the name of the official who spoke with them.

“They told us that the Chinese were mad and that this is a politically charged issue, but we didn’t mean to offend anybody,” Friedman said. “When they handed us these masks, they never said, ‘Here they are, but don’t wear them.'"

Hmmm...now why on earth would Olympic cyclists wear protective face masks in China...? Hmmmm...



Oh yeah! Maybe it is because China's nonexistent environmental protections have turned their major cities into toxic shitholes!

*GASP!*

Now I could care less if the US won or lost at the Olympics, so I'm not saying this out of nationalist pride or anything, but seriously, if I were an athlete who had to be at peak physical performance, I would wear a mask in that dump too. Oh, and guess who else wears face masks in China? The Chinese!!:



Yeah, and those people aren't there to compete against the best athletes in the world. I think cyclist Mike Friedman summed it up in fairly obvious terms:

This is really a surprise, because I didn’t think it was going to be such a big deal. Why we wore the masks is simple: pollution. When you train your whole life for something, dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s, why wouldn’t you be better safe than sorry?

I've heard that some people found the masks disrespectful. I say inviting guests into a toxic waste dump is disrespectful, as are the clouds of pollution that blow into neighboring countries from China, as are China's numerous human rights violations, as is their pervasive censorship, as is China's steadfast support for genocide in Darfur. What, exactly, has China's repressive government done to deserve respect..?

The Olympics shouldn't have even been held in China, for health reasons and for moral ones. Take your pick, but the Americans aren't the ones to blame this time.

McCain's Oil Drilling Gimmick

MoveOn has a new ad out calling McCain on his offshore drilling "gimmick" (personally I'd call it an oil company-sponsored scam to boost corporate profits while lying to the voters about wanting to help them). I think it is an effective spot, since it is the first ad that actually drops some facts about how the scam does nothing, and it actually comes out and calls it a gimmick. Sure, there are a lot harder hitting facts out there, but you can't fit all that into an ad, so, all in all I think it is good:



Oh yes, did I mention that Exxon just reported the biggest quarterly profit ever by any US corporation in US history? Yep, $11.68 billion in PURE PROFIT, in just 3 months. Yeah, wrap your head around that figure. All the while gas prices are hurting American families coast to coast while they help throw our economy into a tailspin. And Exxon is getting record profits. And John McCain wants to pursue a gas tax holiday scheme that will do nothing for Americans but give oil companies an extra $10 billion, and offshore oil drilling, which would do nothing but give oil companies more money. I'll hand it to McCain though, he knows who writes his checks.

Update: I'm not sure how I missed this, but I just came across a video of Obama nailing McCain on his offshore drilling deception, using the facts that seem to be excluded from the media coverage of the issue....which is probably why we never saw it. Check it out:



Update #2: Obama puts two and two together, as I just did, between record profits and McCain's big payday:

Perhaps the only thing more outrageous than Exxon Mobil making record profits while Americans are paying record prices at the pump is the fact that Senator McCain has proposed giving them an additional $1.2 billion tax break. While Senator McCain’s plan has succeeded in helping his campaign raise over $1 million from oil and gas company executives and employees just last month, it won’t lower gas prices or end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil. Instead of an energy policy that reads like an oil-company wish list, it’s time to create a new American energy economy by investing in alternative energy, creating millions of new jobs, increasing fuel efficiency standards, and ending the tyranny of oil once and for all.

McCain's Laughable Oil Ad, And A Response

Obama has a new ad out, in response to McCain's ridiculously laughable ad that actually suggests Obama is to blame for high gas prices, because he opposes offshore drilling. If you know even a tiny bit about the issue, you should have no trouble seeing why it is ridiculous.

Let's just put aside the fact that offshore drilling won't solve any of our energy problems, and the that the lack of it certainly isn't the cause for our current high gas prices (the war in Iraq, energy speculation, and oil companies deliberately keeping supply tight to get rich of high prices are the actual main causes). So McCain is blaming Obama for high gas prices, because he opposes offshore drilling, just like McCain himself did up until a few weeks ago when he completely flip-flopped on the issue and sold out to big oil (which paid handsomely). Offshore drilling hasn't even come up for a vote since McCain's flip-flop, so by McCain's own logic, he is just as much to blame as Obama. Furthermore, since McCain has been in Congress longer, he must be MORE to blame than Obama for high gas prices because even if Obama had voted for offshore drilling on his first day in Congress, not a drop of oil would have been pumped from these areas yet, and wouldn't for years to come (or even decades since oil companies are already not even trying to pump on plenty of lands they already have access to). Secondly, there has been an executive ban on offshore drilling this whole time, which Bush just rescinded in the last few weeks, so up until then, Bush was standing in the way of offshore drilling! Yet it is supposedly all Obama's fault. I won't even get into how many times McCain voted against alternative energy and other energy policy that would lower gas prices. I think McCain's blatant lies and rampant hypocrisy in this ad are reason enough to laugh at his ad. Anyway, Obama's ad, which does a good job at hitting back, even if it can't possibly fit everything that is wrong with McCain's ad in 30 seconds:

McCain Plays Puppet For Big Oil, Gets Paid

“ It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

— Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)

There is, of course, a very good explanation for why Republicans can only make our energy crisis and climate change worse, it is because their lobbyist money depends on making it worse, or at least doing absolutely nothing to make it better, which in the end does make it worse.

Take for instance John McCain, who recently flip-flopped on offshore drilling, which has been proven to be absolute bullshit, as it would do absolutely nothing for decades, and even decades from now, it wouldn't help Americans at the pump AT ALL. When McCain flip-flopped on this, an interesting thing happened:

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

Here is how that breaks down. In three and a half months McCain got $882,000 from the oil industry, which is a lot of money, but after McCain flip-flopped and started pushing the oil industry's lies about offshore drilling, suddenly the corporate money comes in a wave, and McCain makes $825,000 from them in two weeks. Oh, and you think McCain didn't know he would get paid handsomely for selling out the environment and struggling Americans? Think again:

McCain delivered the speech before heading to Texas for a series of fundraisers with energy industry executives, and the day after the speech he raised $1.3 million at a private luncheon and reception at the San Antonio Country Club, according to local news accounts.

Yes, I bet McCain got a warm reception there, to say the least. It is no wonder that McCain now says whatever the oil companies tell him to say, he is their puppet, nothing more.

But it doesn't stop with McCain, that is how Republicans are in general. For example, while Republicans have been pushing for false-solutions like offshore drilling, Democrats have actually been trying to solve the problems, for instance by regulating the energy markets (which some of McCain's advisors helped deregulate) that have allowed rampant energy speculation, which most experts believe have been an important factor in driving up oil prices. So we have basically the only short-term solution to energy prices, one of the easiest, most sensible steps to take, and guess what happened:

A US Senate proposal designed to curb speculation and increase transparency in the energy markets was blocked by Republican legislators on Friday.

The move frustrates Democratic efforts to show the party is taking action on record petrol prices. The Stop Excessive Speculation Act, sponsored by Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, fell 10 votes short of clearing a procedural hurdle.

The vote marks a victory for the futures industry and Wall Street banks, such as Goldman Sachs, which lobbied heavily against Mr. Reid’s proposal, and is a setback for the airline and trucking industries, which strongly supported it.

The legislation would have required regulators to impose limits on speculative oil and natural gas trading. But Republicans countered with proposals for increases in drilling in environmentally protected areas, mining for oil shale in the west and new nuclear power stations.

An ad hoc coalition – backed by the CME Group, operator of the world’s biggest futures exchange, the InterContinental Exchange (ICE), and Nymex, the New York energy exchange – lobbied hard against the legislation, arguing that limits on trading would make it more difficult for investors to diversify their holdings and that such curbs would drive US markets overseas.

Once again, you see who is actually trying to solve problems, and who is just trying to look out for the interests of big corporate interests. And again, you see them pushing offshore drilling as the solution to everything, even though the oil companies are refusing to drill on open lands they already own the rights to. Yeah, something the Republicans don't like people to know, the oil companies want more land, so they can sit on it while demand goes up so they can make more money when they eventually drill it, but the problem isn't a lack of places to drill, because they already have plenty.

Oil companies are lying to you. McCain is lying to you. Republicans are lying to you, and doing everything they can do stop real solutions, while trying hard to secure oil companies even more outrageous profits.

But hey, at least John McCain gets lots of money for selling out.

Update: I'm embarrassed, here I was so focused on the huge wads of cash McCain is getting from the oil industry that I totally failed to mention to lobbyists:

Fox, Lies and Oil Spills

So it turns out that Fox "News", like CBS, is taking their campaign to help McCain to the edit room. While CBS prefers to cut out foreign policy gaffes (lies) from McCain's interviews, and replace wrong answers to questions with answers that had nothing to do with the questions but are nonetheless loaded with McCain's anti-Obama talking points, it turns out that Fox has noticed those polls that show Americans uneasy with McCain's advanced age, and so they have broken out on a quest for the fountain of youth. Well, they didn't find it, so they had to fake it, which is why Fox is now using 8-year-old footage of McCain, from back when he was a spry 64, and are trying to pass it off as footage of his current campaign. Check it out:



So you learn a lot in that video, three major things actually:

1. Fox News, unsurprisingly, goes out of its way to deceive its viewers with a pro-McCain bias. I can't really say I'd put this past ABC, or CBS, because it is certainly less nefarious than editing out his lies for him, but I think it is certainly an amateur mistake they would probably know to avoid. Maybe if they could get their hands on a good video editor they could cut a few years off in the edit room, while still using current footage.
2. Ben Stein is a giant conservative douchebag. Seriously? 75,000 people wanting to experience a historic moment with the best candidate we've seen in decades = Hitler. Really? Is that all you got? You are facing a huge enthusiasm gap between your soggy old candidate and Barack Obama, so the best you can do is try to suggest that Obama is Hitler? Hey Ben, do you know who else is just like Hitler by your own criteria? John F. Kennedy, who was the last candidate to make such a speech in an arena. Of course a psycho like Ben Stein would no doubt love to compare JFK to Hitler as well, because, well, he is an lunatic, and worse, he is conservative.
3. And lastly we hear that John McCain canceled a trip to an oil rig to push offshore drilling because of Hurricane Dolly. Interesting spin Fox, because in reality he canceled his trip not because of the Hurricane, which was no threat, but because there was a big oil spill nearby. But of course Fox wouldn't say that, because it kind of hurts McCain's "offshore drilling is completely safe and the answer to all of our problems" spin, and probably cost their rich oil baron financiers a bunch of cash.

And this is why you can't get any real information from the media. For those concerned with fact, here is the real reason why McCain's offshore drilling photo-op was ruined:

The U.S. Coast Guard has closed 29 miles of the Mississippi River from New Orleans southward after a tanker and a barge collided, spilling more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil into the river.

Tugboats hold up pieces of a barge after it collided with a tanker Wednesday in the Mississippi River in New Orleans.

The river, a major shipping route between the Midwest and Gulf of Mexico, could be closed for days during the cleanup, the Coast Guard said Wednesday.

More than 30 ships already are queued up along the river, waiting to pass through the closed zone, Coast Guard Petty Officer Jaclyn Young said.

The Coast Guard has deployed 45,000 feet of inflatable booms to contain the spill and is lining up another 29,000 feet, but it could be days before the river is reopened, she said.

The accident left a sheen over 90 percent of the area, she said.

And this one will be an exceptionally hard spill to clean up, because the oil is of a heavy, unrefined variety that can sink to the bottom, instead of staying on the surface. Some specifics from blogger "ukit":

State Department of Environmental Quality officials warned the unrefined, tar-like # 6 fuel oil is so thick that it could sink, complicating the cleanup efforts. Therefore, the fuel oil won't simply evaporate off the surface, which means workers will try to remove it before it starts to sink.

Additionally, the spill has already disrupted the local drinking supply:

Residents in Algiers, Gretna, St. Bernard Parish and Plaquemines Parish are also being asked to conserve water, as water intakes for those communities are closed to prevent contamination of the drinking water supply. Water flowing through the tap is from reserve supplies, which could run out in many areas by afternoon or early evening, officials said.

Finally, the report offers a sobering description of the disaster area:

Oil from the spill is visible along the New Orleans riverfront, with a thick coat of black muck washing up along the rocks near the Moonwalk. Farther away from the bank, the muck broke off into small islands.

A thick blanket of oil stuck to the hull of a Coast Guard cutter patrolling the area between the wrecked barge and the riverfront near the Aquarium of the Americas. The surrounding air there smells like it would near a gas station or in a traffic jam, only stronger.

Mmmm, smells like oil company profit! Gotta love that offshore drilling! It would be quite comical, for the reality of offshore oil drilling to mess up McCain's photo-op, if it weren't for the very real environmental damage that the spill caused. At the very least though, it is ironic. For more on McCain's (and Bush's) oil lies, see my past blog on offshore drilling.

Oh yes, one last thing on Fox "News" because I wrap this up. Last night Keith Olbermann did a nice piece exposing how according former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, the White House sends their talking points directly to the decision makers over at Fox so they can know what to report. Yes, that's right, in addition to being a bunch of lying right-wing hacks, Fox is essentially a propaganda outlet for the Bush administration! As if we needed any more proof that Fox is not a real news network. Here's the video of the story:



Update (7/30): That oil spill isn't going away anytime soon.

T. Boone Pickens: Hypocrite

This has been bothering me for awhile, and I just saw it again, so I'm just going to quickly vent. Have you seen T. Boone Pickens and his commercial for his "Pickens' Plan"?:



This is my favorite line:

"We don't need anymore talk, we need action, and a plan. And it's got to be the top priority of the next president and the next Congress."

Why is this funny? Well, for that you have to know a little bit more about T. Boone. T. Boone is a Republican. T. Boone was a big supporter of Reagan. T. Boone was a big financial backer of none other than George W. Bush. Not only that, T. Boone helped fun the Swiftboat Veterans for "Truth", which "swiftboated" Kerry, and are typically attributed with winning the 2004 election for Bush. He also offered a $1 million reward for anyone who could prove the swiftboaters had lied about Kerry, which Kerry took him up on, and then T. Boone reneged on that offer.

So seriously? We are getting lectured on energy policy by someone who helped Bush "beat" Al Gore in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004? We are seriously getting a lecture from someone who supported the worst president for the environment in history, someone who has obstructed any and every attempt to fight climate change, and someone who has repeatedly muzzled NASA's climate scientists because what they had to say conflicted with what the oil companies wanted?? Is this for real? Hey T. Boone, if you REALLY care at all about the environment or energy independence, a small forest of wind power plants are nice, but do you know what is even nicer? NOT SUPPORTING PEOPLE WHO DEVOTE THEMSELVES TO FIGHTING EVERYTHING YOU PROFESS TO STAND FOR!! Yes, this means Republicans. "We don't need anymore talk, we need action, and a plan. And it's got to be the top priority of the next president and the next Congress." Talk about a hypocrite.

And has he learned anything since he supported Bush in 2004? Not likely. Pickens was on the executive committee of Rudy Giuliani's Presidential Committee. Even after four decades of supporting the party that has made fighting the environment a centerpiece of its mission, T. Boone can't seem to get enough, even though if he were serious about this being the "top priority", he clearly would need to support a Democrat. This is why Pickens is either a complete fake, or a complete idiot. I'm betting on fake. The guy is a big supporter of natural gas, and talks more about independence from foreign oil than renewable resources. My bet is he is trying to greenwash his activities with some wind turbines, just like all the big oil companies are doing now as well. Pay lip service to climate change, say you are part of the solution, and then continue to pursue policies, or help elect people, that will continue to put profit over the environment. Let's start a countdown to him starting to push offshore drilling.

The bottom line: You can't separate politics from anything, especially climate change and energy policy. Don't pretend you want change, and then turn around and support the exact same party that has been responsible for the problems are you complaining about. You are either a fool, or you take everyone else for fools.

Update from the Future: T. Boone's second round of ads are up, and as expected he is now saying "drill drill drill!"

What Is Thy Bidding, My Master?

“ My friends, we have to drill off shore. We have to do it. It's out there and we can do it. And we can do that. The oil executives say within a couple of years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it?

— John McCain - July 22, 2008

Exhibit #88491 why McCain shouldn't be president. John McCain takes his energy advice directly from the rich oil executives, no questions asked. Get that? We have to drill, because the oil executives told him it was the right thing to do.

And as for the results, read this for the real story on oil drilling.

Planet Green

Earlier this month the Discovery Channel launched a new called called Planet Green, which is the first cable channel devoted solely to environmental issues. I think it is a great idea, and I find myself unable to turn it off. They have a lot of cool stuff, especially if you are into remodeling, and I'm assuming that as they take off they will add even better shows and specials and all that. I'd like to see them focus on environmental issues around the planet, to really highlight the problems and get people motivated to get involved.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to check it out, go to their website and you'll be able to find the channel it is on, in addition to other cool things.


Update: I almost forgot, also check out Huffington Post's new "green" section, its a good source of environmentally-related latest happenings.

Update #2: Check out this diary for a bunch of links to different interesting green technology stories.

Oxfam: Biofuels Increasing Global Poverty

Oxfam has released a report which backs up my longstanding criticism of biofuels as the false deus ex machina of the alternative energy debate. Its research has found that the growth of biofuels has had profound impacts on the price of food (I'm still not sure how people didn't see that coming from miles away), which has plunged more than 30 million people around the world into poverty. Oxfam also states that biofuels will do nothing to combat climate change, no doubt due to its small scale, changing land use patterns and the large amounts of petroleum required as inputs for crop cultivation.

Currently the European Union has a target of making 10% of all transportation run on renewable resources by 2020. Oxfam is now urging the EU to scrap that target.

Oxfam is of course absolutely right, biofuels are clearly the wrong direction in alternative energy. We need to drastically change how we consume energy. We need cars that use very little, if any, petrol or ethanol. We need to greatly increase our reliance on public transportation and bikes/scooters. We need to start getting a large portion of our energy from solar and wind power. We need to think local. We need to stop shipping food from one side of the world to the other when we could grow most of the same food nearby. We need to conserve energy at the household level. We need to equip our houses with solar panels and other systems to make them more, or completely, self sufficient. We need big changes, but driving up the price of food by using it as gas to fuel our cars is not the solution, and it will just lead to bigger problems. We are already seeing these big problems manifest, and we have barely begun to reach for our target development of biofuels. If we don't wake up and realize that we are making a huge mistake we are going to create a global crisis. We need our leaders to start thinking ahead. We need our leaders to think big. We need our leaders to lead us into a fundamentally different economy, a green economy.

And for chrissake people, buy some goddamn canvas bags to use for groceries instead of wasting plastic bags that will never decompose! (You can also get great canvas bags from Whole Foods) We have to start taking responsibility for the problem. This is a national problem, a global problem, and a grassroots problem, and it will take solutions on all levels to save us from ourselves.


Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags--the equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.

Put CEOs On Trial

Finally, someone who gets it:

James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, will today call for the chief executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature, accusing them of actively spreading doubt about global warming in the same way that tobacco companies blurred the links between smoking and cancer.

[...]

"When you are in that kind of position, as the CEO of one the primary players who have been putting out misinformation even via organisations that affect what gets into school textbooks, then I think that's a crime."

[...]

"The problem is not political will, it's the alligator shoes - the lobbyists. It's the fact that money talks in Washington, and that democracy is not working the way it's intended to work."

It is shocking how many problems in the world can be traced directly back to corporate greed. The war in Iraq was in large part a direct result of corporate greed. Skyrocketing cancer rates are almost certainly a direct result of corporate greed (filling our food, environment, bodies full of toxic chemicals free from regulation). The tainted food and toys, corporate greed (and again, corporations fighting against government regulation, with Republican help). Our broken health care system? Corporate greed. The crippling poverty in the third world, and the billion people in the world who are slowly (or quickly) starving to death, greed greed greed. Do you think there isn't enough food in the world? There is enough food in the world for every person on the planet to eat over 2,700 calories per day, that is enough for everyone in the world to be overweight. And yet we have a large percentage of the world starving. Greed, and in large part corporations are responsible when you really look at the way food is distributed globally. And virtually every single environmental problem on the planet can be traced back to corporate greed--deforestation, pollution, waste, global warming, all of it. And yes, just like tobacco companies knowingly made a ton of money while slowly killing millions with products they knew were dangerous and addictive, corporations like Exxon are complicit, criminally negligent, responsible for global warming denial and for stonewalling every single attempt to combat global warming. When big species like polar bears go extinct because their habitat has been destroyed, it will be the oil companies and climate change deniers (including the politicians who fought against the solutions) who will bear responsibility. When sea levels rise and the billions of people in the world who live in coastal areas are displaced and disease and overcrowding cause a global crisis, it will be these people and their greed that let it happen. When more Katrina-like hurricanes and unprecedented extreme flooding and droughts occur due to the changes global warming produces in our weather, it will be the corporations who profited off the death and destruction.

So hell yes, these people are criminals. If stealing a car is a felony, I'd say covering up and exacerbating climate change for decades all for corporate profit is a crime to say the least. Yes, it is a crime against humanity. Sure, it isn't as directly evil as what Hitler, Stalin, Suharto or Bush have done, and it effects our felt much more subtly, but the end result is still death, the end result it still destruction, poverty, pain and ruined lives. And the motivation is greed, these CEO's and lobbyists knowingly advocating against critical changes that would reverse global warming and spare us all of its grave impacts, speeding us toward the point of no return, all to pad their pockets with cash they don't even need.

That's criminal. That's theft of lives. That's a silent slaughter. They shouldn't be allowed to do this for decades and then retire comfortably with their millions keeping them safe and happy while billions upon billions of less-fortunate people around the world suffer for their greed.

Update: Check this out for more of Hansen's take on the immediate necessity of action to combat global warming.

The McCain/Bush Oil Scheme: Pure Deception For Pure Oil Company Profit

We've long known that Republicans care more about playing politics than actually solving problems. This is especially the case with the environment. For decades liberals have warned of the dangers of global warming and environmental degradation but were dismissed by conservatives as a bunch of alarmist nuts. Now look at who the nuts are, now that liberals were vindicated by science and denial of global warming is about as ridiculous as Holocaust denial. Finally, the mainstream is starting to fully understand what those on the left have known for a long time. Yet even in the last couple of years the Bush administration has tried to silence scientists who have tried to warn us about the role of humans in climate change. Global warming is the most frequently given example of McCain's separation from mainstream Republicans, and rightfully so, he has acknowledged the existence of global warming while most of his colleagues have continued to lie about the overwhelming evidence so they can keep lining corporate pocketbooks with fresh green cash. That, however, is setting the bar pretty low.

That also doesn't mean McCain is in any way green, or in any way opposed to playing politics to feed his corporate friends thick profits while offering fake solutions to Americans that will do nothing to solve problems like global warming. Take for example the Bush/McCain gas tax pander scheme. I've written about this a lot, but since I was writing in the context of the primary election, I focused on Hillary's embrace of this "quick fix", which essentially amounts to a $10 billion handout to oil companies that does almost nothing to reduce gas prices for average Americans. The plan, especially the Republican version of it, actually does quite a bit of harm considering the suspension of the federal gas tax would drain the already underfunded Highway Trust Fund on much needed revenue (you know, the money needed to keep bridges from collapsing as you drive over them), while in theory (if it actually worked to decrease gas prices, which it wouldn't) also increasing demand for gas, thus further exacerbating global warming. If anything at this point we should be discouraging driving by encouraging the use of mass transit and alternative modes of transportation. A great example of eco-friendly mass transit that we should be investing in is intercity passenger rail (Amtrak), which coincidentally is also a great example of another green solution that McCain is against. So on the gas tax pander scheme, McCain sides with Bush and the oil companies, while playing voters for fools by peddling a false solution that will actually end up screwing them over in the end.

McCain has been running around the country touting his "green" credentials, saying he supports alternative energy research even though he consistently voted against research and other investments in alternative energy over the years. McCain has actually made it a bit of a running campaign theme to talk about how we need all kinds of new solutions, while opposing any investment in those very same solutions in the Senate. If hypocrisy were a viable alternative to gasoline, McCain would be a national treasure. On the campaign trail McCain has saved some lukewarm criticism for oil speculators which are believed to be part of the reason for soaring oil prices. Energy speculators are able to drive up prices and generally do whatever they want as a direct result of deregulation in energy trading markets, which has been a pet cause of the Republicans for decades. And guess who's campaign co-chair and top economic advisor (former Texas Senator Phil Gramm) had his hand in pushing the so-called "Enron loophole" that makes all this unrestricted speculation possible? I'll give you a hint: It rhymes with "McSame". Yet again, McCain talks tough about gas prices, yet does the bidding of big oil while opposing every real solution to our crisis of energy independence and climate change.

Of course no discussion of McCain would be complete without a flip-flop, McCain's specialty. While McCain was campaigning for the Republican nomination back in 2000 he was opposed to environmentally destructive offshore drilling, which probably hurt his chances with his corporate-friendly Republican base. This time around, McCain has learned his lesson and has embraced the same destructive right-wing policies of Bush. Flip-flop. Now McCain and Bush sing the praises of offshore drilling as a hideous duet. Given that offshore drilling has become a major part of McCain's so-called "solution" to soaring gas prices, let's take a look at what his "solution" really means.

First, a little background on why people are against offshore drilling:

• A steady stream of pollution from offshore rigs causes a wide range of health and reproductive problems for fish and other marine life.
• Offshore drilling exposes wildlife to the threat of oil spills that would devastate their populations.
• Offshore drilling activities destroy kelp beds, reefs and coastal wetlands.
• Over its lifetime, a single oil rig can dump more than 90,000 metric tons of drilling fluid and metal cuttings into the ocean.
• Over its lifetime, a single oil rig can drill between 50-100 wells, each dumping 25,000 pounds of toxic metals, such as lead, chromium and mercury, and potent carcinogens like toluene, benzene, and xylene into the ocean.
• Over its lifetime, a single oil rig can pollute the air as much as 7,000 cars driving 50 miles a day.

And all that is when they are working properly, here is a look at what can happen when they suffer a catastrophic breakdown:

• In May 1992, Chevron USA pleaded guilty to 65 violations of the Clean Water Act and paid $8 million in fines for illegal discharges from the company's production platform of the California coast.
• In March 1997, Chevron was fined 1.2 million for operating a well off the coast of Ventura with a broken ant-blowout valve, a key environmental protection on an offshore oil well.
• In 1998, a rupture in Torch Oil's pipeline spilled 21,000 gallons of oil, damaging a rich ocean fishing ground and killing wildlife in the delicate coastal ecosystem at the mouth of the Santa Ynez River.
• State and local authorities repeatedly cited the Venoco Corporation for releases of deadly hydrogen sulfide gas at its Goleta platform in 1998-99.
• An ARCO pipeline ruptured in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, spilling 193,000 gallons of oil into the Santa Clara River.

And that is why citizens of coastal states like California and Florida have been strongly opposed to offshore drilling. Now, however, with rising gas prices Republicans (and oil companies) are looking to exploit voter unease to finally undo the decades old moratorium on offshore drilling so oil companies can expand on their already record profits, because apparently they don't already have enough money.

And since Bush, McCain and the Republicans are touting offshore drilling as the solution to all of our problems, we should run their claims through the reality filter.

First of all, according to the Department of Energy there are about 18 billion barrels of oil in these restricted areas that McCain/Bush want to open up to oil companies. That sounds like a lot, but it isn't. At peak production that oil would only decrease the price of oil by around $1.50 per barrel. Oh yeah, and peak production would be about 20 years from now. It would take nearly 10 years for the oil companies to locate the oil, setup platforms, drill and start having the oil flow to refineries and onto the global market (yes, global, did you really think that oil was going to go to the US? That isn't how the market works, all that oil is just a drop in the global bucket). So much for short term solutions. So Bush/McCain's solution is for us to decrease the price of a barrel of oil (now about $136) by $1.50, 20 years from now. If you are 20 now, you will be 40 years old by the time McCain's "solution" kicks in.

But let's stop for a little perspective on that "solution", because it gets worse. Look at it this way, on June 5th of this year oil jumped $5.50 per barrel. The next day on June 6th it jumped $11. That's a $16.50 increase in the price of oil, in 48 hours, McCain's solution would damage the environment and would only drop this price by $1.50 over 20 years! This "solution", even if we magically saw the peak benefits the very same day the drilling was authorized, would be maybe $2-3 per barrel if we drilled the hell out of these protected coastal waters AND the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) (which Bush has been wanting to drill for years now, but McCain has resisted, wait for this to be his next flip-flop). And have you noticed that the few times recently when oil prices actually dropped a couple dollars per barrel the gas prices didn't go down at all? Do you think gas prices would move at all with a minor fluctuation over decades in the price of gas? Hell no, oil companies would pocket that in an instant. Essentially all we gain by drilling is harming the environment, pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, and enriching the oil companies.

And there is another problem: The oil companies already have land they can drill, but they aren't drilling. Why would they not be drilling when they have all this oil laying around? Because keeping supply down drives prices up, and the longer they sit on their reserves and starve Americans for gas, the more money they make. Environmentalist's recent Daily Kos diary exposes the real picture of what is going on:

In fact, only 17% of the leased areas is in production. So, with about 33 million acres of [unprotected] offshore areas already available to drill and not being drilled, why does the oil and gas industry need to have access to still more? The fact is that nearly 25 BILLION barrels of oil off the coast of the United States is currently available for drilling...and industry is not drilling it.

Not to mention natural gas. Most of the natural gas occurring offshore (over 328 TRILLION cubic feet – an eleven year supply at current consumption rates) is currently available for leasing and development.

And they’re not going after it.

This is the story throughout the country, more than 44 million acres of onshore public lands are leased for oil and gas development and yet most of it is not being drilled. All told (onshore and offshore), 68 million acres are leased and sitting idle. Over 10,000 permits are currently 'stockpiled' by industry. But still they want more.

Between 1999 and 2007, the number of drilling permits issued for development of public lands increased by more than 361%. And did you see your gasoline costs drop? How about your electricity costs? Propane? natural gas? Uh...no. There is absolutely no correlation between the industrialization of public lands and the price of fossil fuels.

It has been estimated that if all of those currently inactive leases were drilled, the USA would produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas EVERY DAY, accounting for a doubling of US oil production and a 75% increase in US natural gas production. The Minerals Management Service tells us that about 80% of fossil fuels available in offshore are currently available for development.

What's going on here is yet another cynical attempt by the GOP and the oil and gas robber barons to increase and assure huge industry profits at the expense of the American people. These companies don’t want to drill these areas. They want to hold them as assets to limit the amount of oil and gas on the market so that prices rise still further - and they make more money. They want to hold on to these areas so that they can drill them ten or fifteen years from now and make an even bigger fortune.

Bingo. The Bush/McCain plan has nothing to do with lowering the price of gas because the problem isn't that oil companies can't drill in enough places, because they don't want to drill the resources they already have. The Bush/McCain plan amounts to nothing more than a big fat gift to oil companies, a giant thank you for screwing Americans at the pumps, and for padding the pockets of Republicans.

In addition to flip-flops, no speech by McCain would be complete without McCain either flat out lying to people, or having absolutely no clue what he is talking about. For instance, during his energy speech (which was received very warmly by oil companies, surprise surprise) McCain said:

As for offshore drilling, it's safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston. Yet for reasons that become less convincing with every rise in the price of foreign oil, the federal government discourages offshore production.

Let's look at the reality of what Katrina and Rita did to our offshore drilling rigs:

The oil pollution in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could be among the worst recorded in North America, officials trying to coordinate the clean-up say. The US coastguard, which is responsible for the marine environment, said yesterday more than 6.5 million gallons of crude oil had been spilt in at least seven major incidents. The previous worst spill in US waters was the 11m gallons in Alaskan waters from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

The figure does not include petrol and oil spilt from up to 250,000 cars which have been submerged, or that spilt from hundreds of petrol stations. The coastguard says it has received almost 400 reports of spills, the vast majority of which have not been assessed.

Yeah, so much for no spillage or significant damage from Katrina and Rita. Let's take another look at how safe these oil platforms are:

Five days after Hurricane Rita made landfall, the extent of the damage to offshore oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico sharpened yesterday after Chevron indicated that one of its three large platforms had capsized after losing its moorings.

The deepwater platform, called Typhoon, was spotted Sunday drifting nearly 80 miles from its original position, a Chevron spokesman, Mickey Driver, said. The company had first said on Monday that Typhoon had been "severely damaged."

Offshore platforms, especially those that operate in deep water, are designed to withstand the most severe storms. Typhoon's accident came a few weeks after Royal Dutch Shell, the largest operator in the gulf, said that its Mars platform, which accounted for 15 percent of the gulf's oil production, had been damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

And more:

An oil rig tore free of its moorings as Hurricane Katrina lashed the Alabama coast, before surging downriver and smashing into a suspension bridge, witnesses said.

The platform broke free from the Bender shipbuilding and repair yard in Mobile during the morning as the then category four hurricane walloped the southern US coast.

The runaway rig then drifted through the choppy waters of the Mobile River before hitting the Cochrane/Africatown USA road bridge.

And more:

From New Orleans to New York, the jigsaw pieces of the USA's energy infrastructure — its rigs, refineries and pipelines — lay in disarray after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina.

A big offshore rig supplier, Noble, said the storm blew one of its giant platforms 17 miles off its moorings.

Another rig supplier, Rowan, said one of its rigs may have capsized and sunk.

Yeah, that seems really safe McCain. Nothing to worry about there, those oil-filled mammoths are as sturdy as mountains (extreme sarcasm). So, as is constantly the case with the crap McCain spews, we have to ask ourselves, is McCain knowingly lying to voters to further his agenda, or is he really that ignorant that he simply has no idea that crap he is saying is false? It is really hard to tell. He messes up so often, even when it doesn't really help his cause any, that part of me wants to say he is just a complete idiot that just don't have the slightest clue what he is talking about, whether it be foreign policy, national security or the environment (or his own record on any topic).

There is a lot of information here, so let's recap. McCain has consistently opposed measures that would help develop alternative energy and decrease our reliance of fossil fuels. McCain opposes Amtrak, which pretty much everyone (but him and Bush and some of the more hardcore Republicans) agrees is an extremely important investment for a greener future. McCain supported the war in Iraq and energy market deregulation that have been the largest contributors to the skyrocketing price of oil. And McCain's "solution" to record oil prices is to decrease them by a few bucks over the next 20 years by contaminating the coastal waters around our countries major tourist areas (which represent a $300+ billion a year industry) with oil, sludge and metals. That is McCain's "solution" to our energy/ecological crisis.

Obama's plan includes investing heavily in a "green" economy and alternative energy, increasing fuel efficiency standards, and mandatory decreases in CO2 emissions. Read more about his plan here.

“ Well, I don't believe that climate change is just an issue that's convenient to bring up during a campaign. I believe it's one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation. That's why I've fought successfully in the Senate to increase our investment in renewable fuels. That's why I reached across the aisle to come up with a plan to raise our fuel standards… And I didn't just give a speech about it in front of some environmental audience in California. I went to Detroit, I stood in front of a group of automakers, and I told them that when I am president, there will be no more excuses — we will help them retool their factories, but they will have to make cars that use less oil.

— Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA, October 14, 2007

Update: I'm not sure how I missed this, but I just came across a video of Obama nailing McCain on his offshore drilling deception, using the facts that seem to be excluded from the media coverage of the issue....which is probably why we never saw it. Check it out:



Update #2: Also check out McCain's big payday, courtesy of the oil companies after he completely sold out and started spewing their propaganda (lies) to the voters.

Cool Enviro-Friendly Thing Of The Day: Dual Flush Toilets

Four decades ago we put people on the moon, so it only makes sense that we finally developed fancy dual flush toilets. Yes, I'm doing a blog post about toilets.

I just came across the latest advance in human waste management and I decided to share. The idea behind dual flush toilets isn't that the toilet flushes twice, because that wouldn't be eco-friendly at all. Rather, the toilet can flush in two separate modes, one for, well, #1, and one for #2. Each mode uses a different amount of water, .8 and 1.6 gallons respectively, so that you aren't using unnecessary water washing away your potty. The result, via TreeHugger:

Sci-fi, through and through

This single innovation with its Half Flush and Full Flush technology can reduce water usage by up to 67% compared with the traditional toilet that uses 2.9 gallons in a single flush.

Simple huh? You'd think the "amazing" power of the market would have brought us something like this sooner, just like it probably should have came up with more fuel efficient cars decades ago, but I guess the market isn't all that forward thinking. Forget Milton Friedman.

And read about all that can go into an eco-friendly house. Pretty awesome.