The BP oil leak is much worse than we are being told, it’s getting worse by the day and it might already be too late to do anything about it. Oil is now leaking up from the seabed itself, because the well is fractured under the sea floor. That means that whole oil field, theoretically, can now leak out of cracks in the ocean floor no matter how they attempt to “plug” the BP holes.    No wells, pipes or man-made holes are needed.  It’s possible the pressure caused by the “top kill” procedure made it much worse, too.  If we are lucky the whole thing won’t blow like a super-volcano.  Unfortunately, if we were “lucky” this would never have happened, as this is going to end up negatively affecting the entire country.

This video was recorded from the Viking Poseidon ROV 1 on June 13th, 2010, and shows bursts and seeping oil coming up from cracks in the seabed.  BP denies that oil or gas are leaking from cracks in the sea floor on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, of course, because they deny all reality when presented with it.

The oil bursts are allegedly coming from the seabed made of rock. If it’s seeping through rock, that would mean there are substantial cracks in that rock. Worried yet? There will be more to come about this later.  BP’s live feed from the Viking Poseidon ROV 1 is here, (but I can’t see it on my computer for some reason.)

President Obama is expected to mention a climate and energy bill in his speech tonight. What I would like him to say is that this disastrous oil catastrophe is one of the most important events in human history because it will instigate an important turning point for humanity. That turning point will be the end of the fossil fuel era. It will be as important to human civilization as the industrial age, or the invention of electricity itself. This will be the beginning of the human race entering a future that is sustainable, where energy is clean and available equally and affordably to everyone around the world, which will mark  a huge leap forward in human development.

But he won’t say anything like that. He’ll probably even mention that we should continue to drill for oil.

Just in case you are now sunk in despair, here is a video that might make you smile, (unless you are British.)

Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner takes your questions about the Deepwater BP Oil Spill and the Federal response to the disaster.

Carol Browner looks like she’s barely holding it together for this little “take your questions” session that they held online on Friday.

Her answer to the question on why they are still allowing the use of the dispersant is classic:  It’s still being used because it’s on the list of EPA approved dispersants.  Even though it’s banned in England.  So it’s being used because it’s approved.  BP thinks its perfectly OK to use it here, even if it does rot your flesh, and give you cancer and make appendages turn black and fall off; or whatever  else Corexit does.  It’s not healthy stuff.

Until recently the EPA was not releasing Corexit’s ingredients to the public, but last Friday they made public a list of, supposedly,  all of the ingredients on their website.  Until Friday, some of the chemicals in Corexit were still a protected trade secret.  That means that BP was granted the right to experiment with its chemicals on people and wildlife, while keeping those ingredients secret.  If one of the clean-up workers had to be treated by an emergency doctor, the doctor did not even know what chemicals caused the damage to the patient. How can doctors treat people when they don’t even know what possible toxins they are trying to counteract?  From Greenwire:

Three ingredients of the two Corexit formulas were already available on material safety data sheets that outline the human health risks of using the dispersants in the workplace. Corexit 9527, used in lesser quantities during the earlier days of the spill response, is designated a chronic and acute health hazard by EPA. The 9527 formula contains 2-butoxyethanol, pinpointed as the cause of lingering health problems experienced by cleanup workers after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and propylene glycol, a commonly used solvent.

Corexit 9500, described by Pajor as the “sole product” Nalco has manufactured for the Gulf since late April, contains propylene glycol and light petroleum distillates, a type of chemical refined from crude oil. Nalco had previously declined to identify the third hazardous substance in the 9500 formula, but EPA’s website reveals it to be dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a detergent and common ingredient in laxatives.

We’re supposed to believe that only the “safer” Corexit has been used since April?  Neither BP nor the EPA has been even remotely honest with the public, as we are just now finding out.  Apparently, the EPA had the list of ingredients of Corexit from the beginning and withheld it from the beginning.

If they didn’t, that means they approved of the use of a dispersant without even knowing all the ingredients in it.  How could they do that?

Obama’s  new “science-driven” EPA thinks this poison is perfectly fine to dump in the ocean, [...]

Photo: Sean Gardner - An Oil-covered pelican sits on the rocky shore line of Queen Bess Island Pelican Rookery three miles north east of Grand Isle, Louisiana June 6, 2010.

Besides the Gulf Oil Spill, there is a lot of other environmental news happening.

OECD tells G20 fossil fuel subsidies should end

PARIS (Reuters, June 9) – The OECD urged governments to end fossil fuels subsidies in a statement on Wednesday that argued this could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent and help deliver on G20 promises to combat global warming. Leaders of the Group of 20 economic powers meet in Toronto in late June and pledged last September in Pittsburgh to press for a phase-out over the medium term, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said.

Green Business

“Many governments are giving subsidies to fossil fuel production and consumption that encourage greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time as they are spending on projects to promote clean energy,” OECD chief Angel Gurría said.  “This is a wasteful use of scarce budget resources.”

Yes, it certainly is.  The only energy that should be getting subsidies these days is renewable energy and nuclear power, but only the safest, 4th generation nuclear power that is currently in development.  We will probably need at least some of it because the oil faucet is going to be turned off very soon.  Electric cars will need massive amounts of electricity and we have to stop burning coal too.  (Unless our car culture somehow disappears, and that is hard to picture unless it is done by force).

Murkowski vote reveals dirty Democrats,  from TrueSlant

Senator Lisa Murkowski R-Alaska. Image by Getty Images via @daylife

“If you want to know why the United States has failed to act on climate change–a political failure that could precipitate a larger political failure for the world–here’s one answer: Evan Bayh of Indiana, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas (one of Obama’s favorites), Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. [Get these people out of office! ]

Those are the six Senate Democrats who voted with Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski this afternoon in a failed effort to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. Murkowski enjoyed the support of all her fellow Republicans in the resolution, which went down 47-53 (roll call).

Independent Joe Lieberman voted with the majority to defeat the resolution. “

The “dirty Democrats” should be replaced as soon as possible.  (Looks like we are stuck with Blanche for awhile though). They will hold up any climate legislation and fight against the EPA.  It’s astounding that some of these people are from the southern states where the oil spill is having the largest impact!

Is It Antiscience to Limit EPA’s Authority on Greenhouse Emissions?
YES, because they are attempting to strip [...]

You read that correctly. Exxon, the most profitable company in the history of the world, paid no federal taxes at all  last year. Instead, they got a $156,000,000 tax refund from the IRS.   Regular citizens who pay taxes sent Exxon money to pollute the world with their dirty fossil fuel energy. In addition, Sanders reported today in a radio show that Exxon is spending millions on lobbying fees so that they can retain the rights to drill offshore and so is BP. In 2009, he said, BP spent $19 million dollars just on lobbying. (Who is getting that money?)

We are effectively “bailing out” Exxon through our taxes that go to the IRS, a company that doesn’t even remotely need bailing out. We need to stop handing over our money to multi-billion-dollar polluters like Exxon and BP.  We need to get off fossil fuels completely.

Bernie Sanders is a liberal Senator who is on a radio show every Friday. (The Thom Hartmann show). He is one of the few Senators who realizes that we need to move “very aggressively” away from fossil fuels and he said today that we have adequate technology right now to do that. He has legislation currently before the Senate that calls for 10 million new solar panel-covered rooftops in America, new solar thermal plants (that could provide 30% of the electricity to homes in the Southwest, according to Sanders) and other renewable energies. The following is from senate.sanders.gov, the website of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Repeal Big Oil Tax Breaks

BP posted $5.6 billion in first-quarter profits. Exxon Mob il, the world rsquo; ;s most profitable corporation, paid no federal income taxes for 2009 and – guess what? – received a $156 million IRS refund. Enough is enough! Oil industry tax breaks that Bernie called “obscene” would be repealed by an amendment he filed Wednesday. Outlining the proposal in a floor speech, he said it would begin to transform our energy system away from dirty and dangerous fossil fuels by investing $10 billion in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, and cut the deficit by $25 billion. Another bill Bernie filed in the wake of the BP oil disaster would ban offshore ocean drilling and make cars get far better gas mileage. “Sanders gets it,” Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote for The Nation.

Global Warming

The Senate on Thursday defeated a Republican-led effort to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases. The Senate voted 53 to 47 to reject an attempt to block the E.P.A. from imposing new limits on carbon emissions based on its 2009 finding that the gases threaten human health and the environment. Senator Bernie Sanders framed the debate in terms of science vs. politics. “With all of this evidence who’s arguing against [...]

These bastards have no shame.  There is no end to their greed, all at the expense of our environment.

BP Gulf Oil Spill No Barrier to $3.8 Billion Refinery Expansion

By Joe Carroll

June 2 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc’s $3.8 billion expansion of the largest refinery in the U.S. Midwest won’t be delayed by criminal and regulatory probes into the company’s role in the largest oil spill in the country’s history.

BP is upgrading a 119-year-old refinery in Whiting, Indiana, on the southern shore of Lake Michigan to process more heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands, [tar sands]  according to the London- based company’s website. The expansion will enable the plant to boost daily gasoline production by 1.7 million gallons, which at current retail prices would be worth $1.69 billion a year.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in November ordered the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to review construction and operating permits issued for the expansion in 2008.

The review, which hasn’t interrupted work on the project, isn’t taking into consideration the April 20 explosion at a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of crude into the sea, said Rob Elstro, a spokesman for the state environmental agency.

“The Whiting permits are being evaluated independently of the spill,” Elstro said today in a telephone interview from Indianapolis. “This preceded the spill.”

Read more.

From BP’s website, a peek into the minds of some of the most greedy, destructive  people on earth:

“Why is BP developing the Canadian oil sands?

BP has a clear strategy to invest to grow exploration and production profitably through a portfolio of leadership positions in the world’s most prolific hydrocarbon basins. Canada’s oil sands more than qualify, being second only to Saudi Arabia in terms of proven reserves. BP creates value through the application of technology and capability to drive performance and operating efficiency. Also, through BP’s Midwest US refineries there is a distinctive opportunity to create a balanced portfolio of upstream production and downstream conversion, which will allow BP to participate in the margin across the whole value chain.”

In other words, they want their dirty, greedy fingers into every possible money-making aspect of the Canadian tar sands.

I’m getting so angry about this oil leak I have to take some time off reading and writing about it. I can’t look at any more oil-covered wildlife. I can barely look at reporters talking about it.   I am ready to start throwing things.  No, it’s not happening where I live, but it feels very personal, like 9/11 initially felt very personal  (until we learned more about it).   This oil leak is something that is being done to all Americans.  It feels like a war.

I’m extremely pissed off at BP,  Transocean, Congress, at the lack of adequate government response,  (No, I don’t believe that they’re doing everything they can. If they were doing everything they can the leak would be over by now. Send in the Marines) and the insane, continued calls for more offshore drilling.   The officials in Louisiana would rather get their oil jobs back as soon as possible than protect the environment. They have gone stark, raving mad.  Their response to the biggest environmental disaster in our history is to drill in the ocean even more.  Gov. Bobby Jindal and Mary Landreau and a few others need lobotomies.**

So now, not only is British Petroleum polluting the Gulf of Mexico, the waters off of the southern United States, for probably about 60-70 years, but it plans on burning the oil it is collecting. BP is going to pollute the atmosphere enormously, while oil gushes into the ocean.  If they gathered the oil, refined it and sold it to be burned later by cars or factories, would the pollution be more or less than if they just burn it up at sea?

I suppose this is good in an ironic way because it means we will reach the end of oil even sooner than before,  and then we can get off of this dirty greasy crud for good.  I’m curious if anyone thinks this is really a good idea or an absolutely crazy idea: Burning the oil at sea.  Pollute the air now or later?

This is a recent announcement that I read this morning in passing on CSPAN. They announced it like it was no big deal. Gather up hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from the ocean and just burn it.  Hey, why not.   (Personally, my reaction when I first read this was more or less incoherent and unprintable.)  I’m so upset with these  Billionaire Pollutors at the moment I can’t even think rationally about them, or our energy policy, or  our disappointing government response to this, and the fact that BP has its own “reporters” that it quotes on its web site of propaganda.

Oh yeah, BP is deep into the Canadian tar sands too, of course. But their approach to the dirtiest, most unconscionable source of “oil” on earth is that they are doing it “responsibly”. Which by now means nothing at all. From USAToday:

“. . . . The government has estimated 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons [...]

Photographer Chronicles Petroleum Planet

Edward Burtynsky is a photographer, and in his new photos he shows us how addicted to oil our country has become.  Our entire transportation system is built around oil — and the saddest thing is that it never had to be this way. The first cars were electric and we have always had the technical know-how to mass produce electric cars. We also have the technical capability of driving battery-powered cars. Where are they? Now that we are in the midst of a climate crisis and an oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s time to look at how we can get off of our oil addiction once and for all.  The article below is reprinted from Earth Island Journal.

Houston, Texas, photo by Edward Burtynsky

The fish, famously, doesn’t know it’s in water. Our relationship to petroleum is much the same. From our waking moments we are surrounded by oil: It helps grow the grains in our breakfast cereal, takes us to and from work, forms the plastics that wrap our products, and then delivers those very same items to us. Oil has become the sine qua non of our lives. And for that reason it’s so easy to forget that’s it’s even there.

Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky wants to remind us. Burtynsky has spent most of his career focusing on the landscapes of manufacturing complexes, creating formal compositions of industrial scenery that are at once attractive and abhorrent. His latest project is titled, simply, Oil.

Ten years in the making, the collection is the result of Burtynsky’s travels throughout the globe to examine oil fields, refineries, car culture, and the eventual disposal of our oil-thirsty machines. The photos take us to places we’ve never seen and in the process reveal the massive, complicated apparatus that undergirds our lives of seamless convenience.

Oil, which toured North America and Europe last year, is divided into three categories. “Extraction & Refinement” examines the landscapes that have been formed (or deformed) by the petroleum industry. An image of oil pipelines snaking through the Canadian forest is unsettling. The stark contrast between the silver of the pipes and the trees’ green shows how alien our technologies can appear on our own planet.

The next section, “Transportation & Motor Culture,” then pivots to look at the built environments that, however artificial, have become our homes. Perhaps the best in this series is Burtynsky’s shot of Breezewood, PA, a town that could, with its riot of corporate logos, be Anywhere, USA. The image is incontrovertible proof of how we’ve remodeled much of our world – not to serve real people, but to accommodate the needs of our cars, which have become like second skins.

Burtynsky concludes with “The End of Oil.” [...]

“Has the oil spill created a doomsday scenario” for the Gulf? MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann asks. I didn’t use the word Doomsday — they did. It’s not good to predict things will get too horrible because that just gives the “denialist” movement more to complain about. So let’s just say things could possibly get even worse.

Today on another MSNBC show I happened to catch another new graphic showing the oil traveling around the west coast of Florida, entering the loop current, and going up the east and southern coasts of Florida and then up the Atlantic side of the U.S. Given all the devastation that is probably going to cause, I doubt BP will be with us much longer. RIP, BP. Another talking head was talking about setting off a nuclear bomb, an idea I’m seeing more and more online. For the record, the Obama administration has said that idea is nowhere on the table, and it shouldn’t be.

This clip from Countdown features oil and gas expert Robert Cavnar talking about the potential of an “underground blowout, ” or oil forced out through the ocean floor due to high pressures from the attempts at drilling and capping so far. This is probably why the “Top Kill” procedure was stopped so abruptly — U.S. scientists, including Steven Chu, discovered that the pressures under the ocean floor had built up to levels that could blow the whole thing underground. And that would be kind of a “beyond doomsday” scenario, according to Mr. Olbermann. If this clip seems uncomfortably terrifying, keep in mind that Olbermann’s job is to anger people and keep his ratings up. That is not to say this couldn’t happen though. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida thinks it is happening already.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It also seems very odd to me, suspicious even, that there aren’t hundreds of ships in the Gulf sucking up this oil somehow. It can be done. People have been sending in ideas on how to do it for weeks. Yet there is hardly anything out there — visibly — absorbing this oil. That is the reason so many conspiracy theories are making the rounds, and why some of them are kind of believable.

Below is more information on the possibilities of this “doomsday” (not my word!) scenario occurring, according to Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and another source.

Senator Confirms Reports That Wellbore is Pierced; Oil Seeping From Seabed in Multiple Places | FloridaOilSpillLaw.com

Senator Bill Nelson was interviewed by Andrea Mitchell this morning on MSNBC and confirmed reports of oil seeping up from additional leak points on the seafloor.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL): Andrea we’re looking into something new right now, that there’s reports of [...]

Laughing Bird Caye, Belize, south of the Gulf of Mexico

Today is World Oceans Day. See more here on it.   It should be a day of mourning for the Gulf of Mexico too. People are ruining the oceans off the coast of the United States with oil and natural gas and contaminants like “dispersants”. Dispersants are toxic, deadly chemicals that are designed in part to hide the amount of oil on the surface of the ocean after a big spill. They do that by breaking it into small bits so that it becomes suspended in the water column under the surface. The Gulf of Mexico is now filled with these chemicals. And in a sad report I heard on the Thom Hartmann radio show today, a caller said that tar balls are being reeled in on the fishing lines by fisherman off Key Largo in Florida today. Florida, you are next. It’s already there.

“What a thing we have created. What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed; it’s a monster of a scale and proportion we can barely even fathom.

Because if you’re honest, no matter where you stand, no matter your politics, religion, income or mode of transport, you see this beast of creeping death and you understand: That is us. The spill may be many things, but more than anything else it is a giant, horrifying mirror.”

Read more at: sfgate.com

Stay horrified.  As of June 7th, some scientists believe that 100,000 barrels of oil per day may be still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.  This is from McClatchy, a highly respected news organization.

“BP’s runaway Deepwater Horizon well may be spewing what the company once  called its worst case scenario — 100,000 barrels a day, a member of the government panel told McClatchy Monday. “In the data I’ve seen, there’s nothing inconsistent with BP’s worst case scenario,” Ira Leifer, an associate researcher at the Marine Science Institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a member of the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group, told McClatchy.”   Read more here.

We have created this monster, so how do we stop it?  There may be no way to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. (The next post will be about that.)

How do we stop oil from being our master in the future? By not allowing our government to get away with telling us we need fossil fuels.  We know that’s a lie. The people who need fossil fuels are the millionaires and billionaires, the corporations, Wall Street, and the capitalists.  T. Boone Pickens needs fossil fuels; I don’t.  The rest of us could, in a few years, do without it.  We could, if we tried, transition off of fossil fuels in a few years;  but the above-mentioned people won’t let us, and no one is trying.  It [...]

U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Cabinet members and senior administration officials during a meeting on the BP oil spill, in this White House handout photograph taken on May 14, 2010, REUTERS/Pete Souza/The White House

I doubt that President Obama ever thought that a growing, ongoing environmental catastrophe would be his biggest challenge as President, but that is what it’s turning out to be. What I hear so many people lamenting about the whole thing is that he is not using the BP disaster to convince Americans that we need to get off oil completely.  He should and could be using this to make a case for renewable energy more forcefully, as presidents who present themselves as politicians more influenced by science than by polls.  He should be using it to educate the public about climate change, global warming, the toxicity of petroleum products, how they cause cancer, how they destroy the environment, how they destroy the climate — and he’s not doing that, at least not in public.  Why not?  No one seems to know, but it probably has a lot to do with the economy.  Below is a recently statement from the Sierra Club.  (I’m not currently a member, but I like what they have to say.)

Washington, D.C. – The Sierra Club is running a full-page ad in The Hill newspaper tomorrow, June 8. The ad features a stunning AP photo of a bird weighed down by a thick coat of oil and calls on President Obama to end America’s dependence on oil in 20 years.  You can view the ad here: http://sc.org/BeyondOilAd

(Warning: it’s another oil-coated, dying bird.  If you are sickened from looking at photos like that, you are not alone.  This site is not going to publish any more photos of dead and dying birds coated in oil, or other dead wildlife, because you can see those photos everywhere else and honestly, they are depressing.   I think it’s important that people see them but once you have, there is little value in continuing to stare at tragic photos of dying animals.)

The ad reads: “Tipping point, game changer, wake up call, the last straw…President Obama, we encourage you to embrace another phrase: Leadership Moment.”

The ad is part of a new effort launched by the Sierra Club in the face of the BP Disaster, calling on President Obama to deliver a plan to move America beyond its dependence on oil in the next twenty years. Sierra Club has been organizing rallies around the country and reaching out to volunteers and supporters since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20.

As part of its ongoing response to the disaster, the Sierra Club will be holding events and rallies around the country, conducting robust outreach to its 1.3 million members and supporters as well as concerned citizens everywhere, and putting together videos and a short documentary film. On Friday afternoon, the group launched a new website, http://www.beyondoil.org. . . . . .

<p [...]

FuturArdita

June 8, 2010
9pm
Circolo Futurista Casal Berone, Rome

Roma, 7 giu. (Ign) – Saranno Edoardo Sylos Labini, Beatrice Feo Filangeri e la nipote del fondatore del Futurismo, Francesca Barbi Marinetti, a raccontare la donna ‘futurista’ in occasione di ‘FuturArdita’, la ‘Rassegna di donne e futurismo’, realizzata con il contributo del ‘Comitato Nazionale per le Celebrazioni del Centenario del Manifesto Futurista’ e con il patrocinio dell’assessorato alle Politiche Culturali e della Comunicazioni del Comune di Roma, che si terrà domani, martedì 8 giugno, alle 21 al Circolo Futurista Casal Bertone, in via degli Orti di Malabarba 15, a Roma.

Una serata fatta di parole e di arte. Proprio in occasione dell’incontro di domani sera al Circolo Futurista Casal Bertone è stata allestita una mostra con i disegni di Giovanni Filocamo raffiguranti F.T.Marinetti – l’Alcova d’Acciaio, mentre nel corso della serata gli artisti Maurizio Pio Rocchi e Vito Bongiorno si esibiranno in una performance simultanea. Gli interventi dell’associazione DeA (Donne e Azione) e del Movimento Giovani Poeti d’Azione apriranno e chiuderanno la serata.\

press release

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More junk for the landfill, or green choices?

There was a good article called “Going Green? Good Luck” about consumers really going green versus just thinking they are in the Star Tribune on Sunday.  It was based in part on an article in Discovery magazine by Thomas M. Kostigen about water use.

“Water is a precious resource, and there is embedded or “virtual” water in everything we consume. According to a Discover magazine article by Thomas Kostigen, “Virtual water is a calculation of the water needed for the production of any product from start to finish.”

Kostigen goes on to quote the virtual water for everything from a banana (27 gallons) to a cup of coffee (37 gallons) based on calculations from Waterfootprint.org, which has a virtual water footprint calculator that allows you to see how much water is in the food you are consuming.” — From The Lifecycle of Your Dinner, another related article.

Of course, American consumerism is a big source of CO2 emissions in the first place.  But our economic systems demands we shop or it all collapses.  So we should make choices in what we buy that are as smart as possible (or stop being capitalists, which is always an option).

The point of “Going green? Good Luck” is to show us how we never think of all the energy and water that goes into our great ideas that we think are “green”, when it turns out they are not.  For instance, in Canada there is a push, like everywhere else, to “eat local” food.  That involves eating locally grown tomatoes, which are grown in a giant 1,600 greenhouse covered in glass, even in the winter.  What they save in transportation costs to get tomatoes from California in the winter is completely overcome by the energy required to light and heat a greenhouse in Canada in the colder months of the year.  So there is a net rise in CO2 emissions overall from that locally-grown tomato.  “When you consider how much water is used in growing, processing, transporting and selling coffee, the virtual water use of a single cup of coffee is 37 gallons”.  That’s enough to make you think twice about throwing out that half pot of coffee that you don’t want to drink.  Maybe you could refrigerate it and drink it over ice later instead of making new coffee tomorrow.

How much water is used to make leather shoes?   This is shocking — 4,400 gallons.  Even the “green” shoes use hundreds of gallons of water to manufacture.  The greenest shoes are the ones you already own.  That goes for clothes, furniture, books, and other things that don’t use energy to operate.

Another example is going electronic with your books and other reading.  It seems like a no-brainer. With an e-reader you save paper, and trees,  and read on an electronic device.   It sounds like common sense.  But it’s not the greenest way to read [...]

More new oil spill animations from June 3rd are seen and described here.

And here’s the new live BP oil spill video feed showing a new picture of semi-captured oil! (Maybe)  PBS reports: We modified our original Gulf Leak Meter because the video takes our sliding scale out of the abstract and into reality.

Their original Gulf Leak Meter is seen here in the right-hand column.  You can slide the scale back and forth, depending on who you believe.  But today it looks like we can celebrate.    BP has had a semi-success with their new capping procedure, and some of the oil is now being channeled. That means some of the oil gushing from the ocean floor is now going to be captured. Then it can then be stored, refined, sold and burned, where it will pollute our atmosphere and climate instead of our oceans.  That’s considered progress.  At least there is no major food chain living in the sky.

President Obama will be talking again today in the Gulf Coast region. I don’t expect him to use this as a teaching moment to educate the public about climate change and the wrong-headed increased use of fossil fuels. Climate change is something he has barely mentioned since becoming president. I don’t expect him to not embrace oil and gas and coal in the near future.

I expect him to talk about how offshore oil is great for “our energy needs”. He inappropriately talks about how great offshore drilling is at every possible public moment. It’s almost obscene. I don’t expect Obama to express much genuine or sincere concern for the environment at all, but he will probably mention jobs and the economy a lot. Preserving temporary jobs and economic systems is much more important to all national politicians than preserving a livable, habitable planet. That’s the way it is.

A new memo was released yesterday, and  UN climate leader Yvo de Boer states his opinions on America’s contributions to climate talks. It’s not a flattering picture.  Reported in New Scientist:

According to de Boer, the document was “unbalanced” and heavily biased in favour of western nations. “The Danish paper destroyed two years of effort in one fell swoop,” de Boer wrote in a memo shortly after the conference ended. The memo was obtained by Danish journalist Per Meistrup, author of Kampen om klimaet, and can be seen online at bit.ly/aanbGg.

I don’t expect much from our political leaders at all anymore. They are too busy dealing with the next upcoming election to ever do what is necessary for climate change. (That’s just reality. We need to face reality in order to decide what we can do to fight climate change. I have written off federal level politicians entirely.)  As Dmitri Orlov wrote recently,

It is embarrassing to be lost. It is even more embarrassing for a leader [...]

The Pentagon feels it is a priority to use renewable energy like  solar panels within the military.  It should be as much if not more of  a priority to get everyone inside the U.S. using renewable energy as soon as possible too.

From DID in May, 2010:  On July 25/06 Al-Anbar commander and U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer submitted an MNF-W priority 1 request. It pointed to the hazards inherent in American supply lines, and noted that many of the supply convoys on Iraq’s roads (up to 70%, by some reports) were carrying fuel. Much of that fuel wasn’t even for vehicles, but for diesel generators used to generate power at US bases. That is still true, and Afghanistan has even more daunting logistics. By some estimates, shipping each gallon of fuel to Afghanistan requires 7 gallons of fuel for transport.

A number of Pentagon projects use alternative energy at various installations, but Zilmer’s request is believed to have been the first formal request from a front-line commander. . . . .

Newly updated developments:

•    The Need on the Ground [updated]
•    Options and Considerations [updated]
•    Contracts and Key Developments
•    Additional Readings [updated]

Very interesting are some of the developments from last month:

May 21/10: During exercise African Lion in Morocco, Marines test a portable system called the Expeditionary Forward Operating Base program (ExFOB). The system uses portable SLMCO water purification systems and Zero Base power generation systems, in order to provide drinking water, LED lights for a medium size general purpose tent, and power outlets for small electrical devices like ruggedized laptop computers. USMC.

May 18/10: The US Army announces that it will hold its first-ever Renewable Energy Rodeo and Symposium June 8-9 at Fort Bliss, TX.

May 6/10: Lockheed Martin announces a $3.5 million contract to develop the containerized Integrated Smart-BEAR Power System (ISBPS) for the U.S. Air Force. The Basic Expeditionary Airfield Resources (BEAR) program equips U.S. forces with lightweight, air-transportable gear used to establish mobile air bases. ISBPS will integrate a variety of energy sources, including renewables, into the existing BEAR power grid, with goals to reduce fuel consumption by 25% and improve power availability. Lockheed is partnered with SkyBuilt Power.

Read more at the links above.

Why is the military so busy at developing and using renewable energy, and our own government is not?  As they are doing all of this, we still have people in Congress (who fund the Pentagon, obviously) who still deny global warming is happening.  Obviously, the Pentagon k knows it is, and knows the important of renewable energy.

Now if they could be even more conserving of their energy use and stop waging senseless wars and shut down international military bases that we don’t need to keep open. Think how much smaller our military’s carbon footprint would be if they stopped the wars [...]

According to Mike Pappantonio, who appeared on the Thom Hartmann radio show today, June 2nd, said the workers in the Gulf of Mexico are getting seriously ill due to the use of dispersants. BP does not want to admit it, but scientists and the MSDS fact sheet  on Corexit (material safety data sheet) said that the use of Corexit can cause a person to suffer from “incurable flu-like” symptoms, including diffused muscle pain, nosebleeds and breathing problems. The MSDS says people who work with Corexit need respirators because being around it can lead to organ damage, especially of the kidneys, liver and lungs.   BP is playing down the bad effects of their dispersant, but Corexit can cause very serious health effects in people besides organ damage, including altering a person’s DNA. This is according to Mike Pappantonio, the MSDS sheet for Corexit, and Dr. Ricki Ott, who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill aftermath.    BP has been firing people who even brought in their own respirators because they didn’t like the way it looked.  From EDF:

Writing in the Huffington Post, Dr. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist who worked on environmental remediation after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, noted that some of the first responders to the Deepwater Horizon disaster “are getting sick from…working on the cleanup”. Boom installers and other temporary workers have complained of nausea and bad headaches (conditions that might be linked with overexposure to 2-butoxyethanol, a major component of one of the COREXIT chemicals).

Mike Pappantonio also confirmed that President Obama (via the Secretary of Labor) has suspended the Davis-Bacon act and now BP is importing workers from Mexico to work on the clean up with inadequate safety gear and paying them slave wages.  This is something George Bush did after Hurricane Katrina and he was highly criticized for it. It basically means that people can be hired by BP and work for less than minimum wage, and BP has no legal safety responsibilities towards people that come from other countries and work in the U.S.

Streaks left by oil that retreated during low tide are visible on a public beach on June 2, 2010, in Dauphin Island, Ala. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

And here are some Dick Cheney ties to this mess from Pro Publica:

“In a speech last week on the disaster unfolding in the Gulf, President Obama told the nation that for decades, there existed a “scandalously close relationship between oil companies and the agency that regulates them,” and that he took responsibility for a culture that had “not fully changed” under his administration.

On that subject—the culture of coziness between the Minerals Management Service and industry—a non-profit Wyoming news service WyoFile published a report today that details some of the ties between MMS internal culture, the state of Wyoming, and the state’s native son, Dick Cheney. From WyoFile:

<p [...]

This is how millions of small dead fish look, courtesy of British Petroleum.

Thanks BP, we didn't like all those little parts of the food chain anyway.

That is not concrete — that is tiny silver fish, all dead.  Today governor Bobby Jindal toured the beaches of Louisiana and Grand Isle and he saw many sad sights.  He saw thick oily water washing up on the beaches, and he saw terns and pelicans virtually coated with oil, immobile, staring at the TV cameras with accusing looks.  He saw dead vegetation and marshes.  It was an incredibly depressing sight — absolutely hopeless looking. Everything was dead and dying.  Jindal was angry.

Then, amazingly,  he told the TV news people that he believes the temporary moratorium against offshore drilling should be lifted, because we should not have to make a choice between energy and our environment.  Unbelievable!  He’s right on the last point, (insane on the first) because if we would declare ourselves done with oil, we could move on to devoting ourselves to renewable energy.  Then all these little dead fish wouldn’t happen again.

Fossil fuels should stay where they are.  It’s when we try to bring them to the surface and burn them that all the trouble starts.  What bothers people the most is the knowledge that we don’t need them. And what are we doing to the only home we have?  Today the Sierra Club sent out the following:

Sierra Club to Obama: Move America Beyond Oil in 20 Years
After Viewing Gulf Devastation, Executive Director Michael Brune Calls for End to Oil Dependence

Venice, Louisiana – Today, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune toured coastal Louisiana to view the impacts of the BP Disaster. Following the boat tour, Brune called on President Obama to launch a plan to move America completely beyond its dependence on oil in the next twenty years.

The Sierra Club will be launching a new campaign urging the President to take action. The Sierra Club will be holding rallies and events around the country, will be running ads and reaching out to its 1.3 million members and supporters, as well as Americans who want to do something about the disaster but don’t know how to help.

Statement of Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune:

If Americans were on the boat with me today and saw what I saw, they would be beating down the doors of their representatives, calling for action. We watched a pelican struggling to fly under the weight of globs of oil. We saw a pod of dolphins straining to swim through the oil slick.

The most infuriating thing was that there was no one else out where we were. There were no BP crews rescuing birds. There was no BP ship laying booms or soaking up oil.  BP has created a disaster so huge that response efforts can never match the needs here.

We should stop using the term “clean up” because there is really no way to clean up this mess. It is heartbreaking. It’s [...]

Photo of Gulf Oil slick by Michael DeMocker, The Times-Picayune

Recent headlines. See if you notice a common thread.

Central America Storm kills 113+

Strong Hurricane Season Predicted

2010:  Hottest Year on Record

NOAA reported on May 17th that 2010 is the hottest year on record globally so far from January through April.

BP Gives up on Plugging the Leak

“BP Plc said it won’t be able to stop the flow of oil from a gushing well in Gulf of Mexico until August when a relief well can be finished, and in the meantime it will divert as much of the oil as it can to surface ships.” — Bloomberg

We have two on-going environmental disasters here but they are related to one thing — our lack of a good renewable energy policy.  One disaster people can clearly see — the enormous oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.  The oil hit Alabama beaches today, and was spotted at least 5 miles inland in the marshes.  The other disaster is one people cannot see — global warming,  which also continues, like the oil leak, except no one is really doing much about it.  People are clamoring for the government to DO something fast about the oil leak.  They should be clamoring just as loudly for the government to DO something about global warming.

If you are wondering what our government is doing about the ongoing crisis of global warming and the ensuing world-wide climate change, the answer is: Hardly anything. In fact, until the oil leak, President Obama was embracing the “everything” theory of addressing our energy needs:  Drill offshore, mine for more coal, get some mythological CCS technology in place, use lots of natural gas, a few windmills, a couple of solar panels, retrofit some leaky buildings, and pray.  This is not the science-driven government I voted for. Unless a miracle happens to change politician’s minds and attitudes, they are in the process of condemning humans to an early extinction, and it seems that not more than a handful of these politicians care.   They can barely muster up feelings of anger at the Gulf Oil leak, and not enough to pull out all the stops to clean it up; to say nothing of what will happen to the entire planet’s climate  in 20-50 years.

We are not off the hook with climate change at all, but that’s how Washingtonians act.   How about we elect more scientists or at least science-oriented people as our representatives in our  government?  I don’t know where most of our politicians come from, (insert joke) but it seems like they do not have an appropriate background for what we are facing in the 21st century.   Being a lawyer does not equip someone, most likely, for making decisions on energy and climate.  Meanwhile, emissions continue to rise, and climate change does not disappear just because our politicians stop talking about it. (Wouldn’t it be nice if it did?)

Global CO2 emissions to rise 43 percent [...]

Dall’Futurismo all’Arte Contemporanea

May 26-30, 2010
Associazione Culturale M.I.C.RO

Futurism at the Fair:

ROMA – C’è anche il futurismo nel ricco programma di Road to Contemporary Art: Fino al 29 maggio al Associazione Culturale M.I.C.RO via di Monte Testaccio 34/A, a cura del Responsabile Culturale del Battistero Lateranense di Roma Gianluigi Linchi. L’evento intende compiere una riflessione sull’eredità delle Avanguardie del ‘900 ed in particolare del Futurismo, attraverso l’incontro ed il confronto di linguaggi diversi. Otto artisti – Teresa Coratella, Roberta Filippi, Giuliano Giganti, Gianpistone Velia Iannotta, Elia Li Gioi, Carlo Montesi, Serge Uberti – chiamati ad interpretare il senso ed il significato del contemporaneo. Il tutto sarà articolato da dibattiti, filmati, documentari, nonché dalla possibilità di godere delle prelibatezze della Taverna Futurista, luogo ispirato alla famosa Taverna Santopalato di Torino, dove Marinetti, Fillia e gli altri avevano dato vita alla gastronomia futurista.

Dal 26 al 30 maggio 2010
Orario: 10.00 / 24.00

Inaugurazione: 26 maggio ore 17.30

Artisti:
Teresa Coratella – Roberta Filippi – Giuliano Giganti – Gianpistone – Velia Iannotta – Elia Li Gioi – Carlo Montesi – Serge Uberti
Curatore: Rosanna Fumai – Salvatore G. B. Grimaldi

Programma:

26 maggio
inaugurazione e presentazione evento.
Intervengono l’ Assessore A. Lisa Secchi e Claudio Cantella, Presidente dell’Associazione Micro

27/28 maggio
esposizione delle opere con apertura continuata e proiezioni video

29 maggio
Conferenza ore 18.00: Dal Futurismo all’Arte Contemporanea, a cura del Responsabile Culturale del Battistero Lateranense di Roma Gianluigi Linchi.

30 maggio
Esposizione e chiusura evento.

L’evento intende compiere una riflessione sull’eredità delle Avanguardie del ‘900 ed in particolare del Futurismo, attraverso l’incontro ed il confronto di linguaggi diversi. Otto artisti chiamati ad interpretare il senso ed il significato del contemporaneo. Il tutto sarà articolato da dibattiti, filmati, documentari, nonché dalla possibilità di godere delle prelibatezze della Taverna Futurista, luogo ispirato alla famosa Taverna Santopalato di Torino, dove Marinetti, Fillia e gli altri avevano dato vita alla gastronomia futurista.

Contatti
http://www.comune.roma.it
(I° Municipio di Roma)

http://www.microarte.org
06.45494495

http://www.romacontemporary.it

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Amleto ad Altare

May 29 -  June 13, 2010
*Vernissage 6pm, May 29
Villa Barrili, Carcare
Organized by the Assessorato alla Cultura del Comune di Carcare +  circolo Tuela di Altare

more info

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Americans use way too much oil.  The following chart is part of the information from the CIA factbook. The data is from late 2008.

OIL CONSUMPTION BY COUNTRY

America uses, by far, more oil than anyone on earth.

During the current phase of the British Petroleum oil leak catastrophe, I keep thinking about people who lived in the past.  How did they survive without oil and gasoline?  Certainly they did, and they did it well.  Entire advanced civilizations were built before the days when humans used oil and gas — civilizations such as the Mayans and the Romans and Greeks and Egyptians.  You could even argue that in many ways, they accomplished more of value and substance than we are accomplishing now. In 2010, average Americans don’t accomplish a lot. We run around buying and selling things and pretending our lives are so advanced because we can hop in a car and go anywhere we want.  Americans don’t make much, we don’t invent much, we don’t influence much.   Much of the world has left us in the dust in many ways.   Worst of all, some Americans don’t believe in science at all,  and it’s hard to argue that people who are highly influenced by talk radio hosts, or Twitter streams, are very advanced either. (See: Idiocracy. )

Ancient people really made a lot of their shorter life spans, despite their lack of gasoline.  Look what they did without oil.  They are responsible for the beginnings of physics and astronomy, artwork, music, literature, exploration all over the world, philosophy, math, agriculture –  and they built huge, complex cities.  They somehow managed to live incredible lives without cars, or electricity, processed foods, or TVs.   People used to live in communities, and they traveled together and even lived together.  Everything they needed was in one city, not spread all over hundreds of miles. They ate local food, they didn’t take vacations hundreds of miles away every year.  A very long trip was a once in a lifetime event, if done at all.  Yet many of them they managed to be educated people, with good lives.

Now, contrast this with us.  We are modern human beings, the most advanced in history, (we tell ourselves)  completely and utterly and absolutely dependent on ancient fossil fuels, buried in the ground, that have to be extracted and burned.  Traveling anywhere, at any time, burning as much gas as we can afford is our right,  we think.  It just so happens that in 2010, we need lots of dirty, filthy oil in order to be free to travel as fast and far as we feel we should.  Unfortunately, in between digging, drilling, extracting and burning oil, sometimes the stuff leaks.

For some reason, Americans accept all of this as a necessary evil, the cost of living in the times that we do.  “Accidents happen,” people have been saying.  But they don’t have to.  Our energy and fuel system is all created by people.  It’s not the way things [...]