Raping the Planet: Strip mining at Fort McMurray. Greenpeace \/ Colin O'Connor<\/p>\n
President Obama will address the nation on Tuesday night, June 15, after a two-day trip to the Gulf, and tell us whose ass he has decided deserves kicking over the oil leak.\u00a0 BP was told by the Coast Guard to come up with a plan to better deal with the leaking oil.\u00a0 The deadline was Sunday night.\u00a0 From the New York Times:<\/p>\n
The order came in a letter sent to the company on Friday by Rear Adm. James A. Watson, who is the federal government\u2019s on-scene coordinator for the cleanup effort. The letter, which was released to the media on Saturday, was sent to Doug Suttles, BP\u2019s chief operating officer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am concerned that your current plans do not provide for maximum mobilization of resources to provide the needed collection capacity consistent with the revised flow estimates,\u201d Admiral Watson wrote. \u201cRecognizing the complexity of the challenge, every effort must be expended to speed up the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Below is a link to a very interesting talk\u00a0 that puts our use of oil in perspective.\u00a0 This is a\u00a0 presentation by author Michael Klare on the follies and dangers of our unwavering ursuit of extreme energy. Klare\u2019s latest book is Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet.\u00a0 Oil is now actually “extreme energy”\u00a0 and unconventional rather than normal,\u00a0 because we are now getting it out of shale, from under miles of ocean water,\u00a0 and from tar sands in Canada, for example.\u00a0 We have passed peak oil, so oil is no longer readily available except by these extreme measures of extraction that push the very edges of what is possible.\u00a0 And while they are pushing those edges, some of the very nastiest environmental degradation and pollution is taking place.\u00a0 As a result, the Gulf of Mexico may have a permanent “dead zone” far bigger than anything imagined in the past.\u00a0\u00a0 Is this really what we want to do to our planet for a bit of energy that we will burn tomorrow and then it’s gone forever?<\/p>\n
Michael Klare’s entire talk can be heard and downloaded here.\u00a0 Watch, if you want to see the slides, from here.<\/p>\n
Klare also wrote the following which was cross-posted on TomDispatch and Huffpo:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Relentless Pursuit of Extreme Energy
\n A New Oil Rush Endangers the Gulf of Mexico and the Planet
\n By Michael T. Klare<\/p>\n
Yes, the oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in staggering quantities could prove one of the great ecological disasters of human history.\u00a0 Think of it, though, as just the prelude to the Age of Tough Oil, a time of ever increasing reliance on problematic, hard-to-reach energy sources.\u00a0 Make no mistake: we\u2019re entering the danger zone.\u00a0 And brace yourself, the fate of the planet could be at stake.<\/p>\n
It may never be possible to pin down [...]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Raping the Planet: Strip mining at Fort McMurray. Greenpeace \/ Colin O'Connor President Obama will address the nation on Tuesday night, June 15, after a two-day trip to the Gulf, and tell us whose ass he has decided deserves kicking … Continue reading