Shell’s Arctic drilling is what everyone feared: An unmitigated disaster
This is what passes for "good news' on the domestic offshore drilling front these days: An environmental disaster seems to have been narrowly averted in the waters off Alaska -- after an accident that...
View ArticleShell on ice: Arctic drilling scheme in trouble
Just a short update on the Shell Arctic drilling fiasco that I wrote about here last week. It's beginning to look as if the federal authorities who greenlighted this risky scheme are having second...
View ArticleGovernment and Lubchenco dispersing lies about Corexit to the Arctic now
There's a couple of things we've learned about the U.S. government -- and some of the people who've worked there -- over the last three years. We saw in the Gulf of Mexico that when it comes to...
View ArticleYet another reason not to drill offshore in the Arctic
Just a quick follow-up on a post I wrote earlier this month about offshore drilling in the Arctic, which so far has been one disaster after another ever since Shell launched its project off Alaska this...
View ArticleBP hasn’t learned from mistakes, plans risky Arctic venture
Will BP ever learn? I'm beginning to think the answer is 'no.' The company is back in federal court in New Orleans this week, for the next phase of determining how much oil actually spilled in the 2010...
View ArticleWhy are we still discussing the folly of Arctic drilling?
William Faulkner once wrote, famously: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Faulkner -- who'd probably be appalled at the environmental havoc that Big Oil has wreaked upon his native state of...
View ArticleThe wreck of the Kulluk, and how to make sure it never happens again
I’m worried, frankly, about the long-term effect of the steep drop in the price of oil. Lower prices at the pump – some places are registering under $2 a gallon for the first time in years – could...
View ArticleCan citizens in kayaks stop Shell when President Obama won’t?
Everyone knows that drilling offshore for oil in the unforgiving waters of the Arctic is a fool's errand. Three summers ago, Shell's initial foray into this extreme quest for crude oil was an...
View Article‘President Obama isn’t connecting the dots when it comes to oil’
Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, has an article on the Huffington Post this week that seems to ask the important environmental question of the moment: What, exactly, does...
View ArticleA new chapter in the insanity of Arctic drilling begins
So far, 2015 has been a mostly gloomy year in the arena of fighting back against fossil fuel. Neither the plunging prices for oil and gas nor the growing realization -- even embraced this week in the...
View ArticleObama’s blind spot on Arctic drilling
President Obama has been having quite a summer. In fact, some political pundits are calling 2015 the most successful year of his presidency -- his nuclear-weapons deal with Iran, congressional approval...
View ArticleObama’s hypocritical Alaska trip
President Obama landed in Alaska last night to begin a 3-day trip though the 49th state, his first extensive visit there since entering the White House. The trip is fascinating, important, very...
View ArticleFinally some good news in the fight against Arctic drilling
It's easy to get discouraged about the future of environmentalism when you're following news of the 2016 presidential race. After all, with an astounding 17 "major" candidates throwing their hats into...
View ArticleThe good guys win on Arctic drilling
A band of ferocious protesters called "kayactivists" were unable to stop it, at first. And the Obama administration, which had the power to at least delay it and probably halt it, didn't bother to try....
View ArticleRIP, Arctic drilling…but is it too late?
There's been a lot of news on the environment this week -- some of it very good and some of it very bad. Like the old joke, let's start with the good news first. Since the dog days of summer, when...
View ArticleA turning point in the fight against climate change
A season of upbeat news about humankind's struggles to combat climate change and to turn the tide on our addiction to fossil fuels reached its crescendo this past weekend. That's when the world's...
View ArticleClimate change and the new civil disobedience
Friday marked the 86th anniversary of Mr. Martin Luther King's birth (even though the national holiday will be on Monday). As time marches along, the brilliance of his efforts to bring freedom and...
View Article‘We’ve never seen anything like this before’
Every day, a new reminder of the urgency of the world's climate crisis -- and, by logical extension, the 2016 elections here in the United States -- shows up in my inbox or somewhere on the web. The...
View ArticleThe real costs of expanding offshore drilling
Environmentalists certainly won a big battle when the Obama administration reversed course earlier this year and nixed a proposal to allow offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean. That flawed plan...
View ArticleObama throws down the gauntlet on Arctic, Atlantic drilling
The Obama administration had already telegraphed that it was likely to impose what amounts to a ban on oil-and-natural-gas drilling off the Atlantic coastline and also in the Arctic waters near Alaska....
View ArticleMost Americans want to end offshore drilling. Now we need government to listen
Most Americans didn’t pay a lot of attention to offshore oil drilling before April 20, 2010. Indeed, it had been less than two years since a Republican National Convention crowd in Minneapolis had...
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