Weekly Mulch: When will America be free from BP?

by: The Media Consortium

Fri Jul 02, 2010 at 15:41

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom-the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts it at AlterNet:

"We're in an abusive relationship and unable to leave our abuser. The plight of the people in Louisiana proves the point. Louisianans have been punched in the face by the hand that feeds them, and yet their biggest worry is that the oil and gas industry is going to walk out the door and leave them."

Where's the love?

It's clear that BP, for instance, isn't playing carefully with our country or its resources. At Mother Jones, David Corn relates the latest example of the company's callousness. Its recovery plan had no stipulations about handling even a small storm like the one that stopped clean-up this week. It did, however, include plans to save sea life that hasn't lived in the Gulf for millions of years. As Corn put it, the company was "prepared for walruses, not prepared for hurricanes."

The biggest problem, of course, is that BP wasn't prepared to handle a blow-out to begin with. The leak has gone on for so long that governmental officials are now taking unprecedented measures to protect the wildlife most vulnerable to its effects. Beth Buczynski reports at Care2 that official are going to dig up about 700 sea turtle nests on Alabama and Florida beaches that are at risk from the oil.

"Once the eggs have hatched, the young turtles will be released in darkness on Florida's Atlantic beaches into oil-free water," she writes. "Translocation of nests on this scale has never been attempted before."

Halliburton

No matter how badly these companies treat us, it seems we can't get rid of them. Take Halliburton. The company has latched its talons into the country and will not let go. It is second only to BP in shouldering responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon spill. As Jason Mark reports for the Earth Island Journal, just before the oil spill, Halliburton took over Boots & Coots, a company that deals with oil-well blowouts; that company now has a contract with BP to help with the relief well.

"Halliburton is essentially making money from causing the accident and then helping to repair it," Mark writes. "Halliburton's many-fingered tentacles is just the latest illustration of how powerful the company is."

Wimpy Washington

Washington isn't strong enough to fight back against that sort of corporate  power. Over the past year, energy interests have whittled down the climate change legislation to a tepid half-step. Right now it looks most likely that a bill that passes will regulate only the utilities sector.

"We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further," Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) told Politico this week after a White House meeting on the bill.

"If you're looking for the sorry state of American energy politics distilled into one line, there it is," writes Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. "Kerry fights harder for clean energy than just about any national politician."

Still, if anything passes the Senate, Washington will celebrate. As Aaron Wiener explains at the Washington Independent, "For all the disappointment among environmentalists over the repeated compromises Democrats have made on climate legislation to win over moderates, some argue that a utilities-only cap would achieve most of the goals of an economy-wide carbon pricing scheme. The question now is whether Democratic leaders in the Senate can muster 60 votes for even a weakened bill to overcome a Republican filibuster."

Our friends abroad

On an international level, our governing bodies might be doing a better job, but not by much. Inter Press Service reports that the countries at the meeting promised to scale back taxpayer subsidies of fossil fuels. Even that promise is limited, however. "Countries agree to phase out "inefficient fossil fuel subsidies" but each country decides what those are," IPS reports. "Some countries like Japan, Australia, Italy and others have already said they don't have any."

And at Earth Island Journal, Ron Johnson heard a different story.

Johnson spoke to Kim Carstensen, who leads the World Wildlife Fund's Global Climate Initiative, who compared this meeting's report to that of the last G20 summit and found that climate issues had dropped off the radar. "There were eight references to clean energy in the final report from Pittsburgh (the last G20 Summit) and they have been completely vacuum cleaned," he said. "That is kind of scary."

Fight back

In situations like this, it takes massive pressure from outside to move the political apparatus forward. At AlterNet, Heetan Kalan has some ideas about how to progress-reach beyond the environmental community; enlist "doctors, nurses, public health officials and patients speaking out about the connection between consumers of coal energy and their immediate health concerns." Kalan writes:

"After all, climate change is not solely an environmental problem - it is a human/planetary problem. If we are going to rely on a small base of environmentalists to carry us through this crisis, we are in trouble. Our spokespeople on this issue have to come from a wide spectrum of citizens and leaders."

Certainly, they have to come from somewhere, and as Steve Benen writes at The Washington Monthly, whoever is speaking on this issue now, they're not speaking loud enough.

"Lawmakers aren't facing much in the way of public pressure," he writes. "The polls look encouraging, suggesting the public is inclined to back the Democratic proposals, but that support hasn't translated into aggressive advocacy - phone calls to lawmakers' offices, letter-writing campaigns, district meetings, sizable rallies, etc....If engaged constituents want more, Congress will have to feel considerably more heat than they are now."

In other words, if America wants to be free of coal, oil, gas, and the energy industry, we're going to have to fight for it.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members  of The Media  Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of  articles on environmental issues, or follow us on  Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project  of The Media Consortium, a network  of leading independent media  outlets.

The Celebration of a Progressive Holiday

by: Mike Lux

Sat Jul 04, 2009 at 10:00

As I discuss in my book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, the Tories who opposed American independence were the conservatives of their day.  They revered tradition, and proudly followed orders from the king and the aristocracy in London.  They hated and feared the idea of democracy, and thought the idea of equality was laughable.  As Tory Samuel Seabury, the first Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, argued:

"If I must be enslaved, let it be by a king at least, and not a parcel of upstart lawless committeemen.  If I must be devoured, let me be devoured by the jaws of a lion, and not gnawed to death by rats and vermin.

In a letter to the editor of a British newspaper, another American Tory argued that the colonists had shown:

...an extravagant zeal for liberty without considering...that nothing is as essential as a due obedience to the government they live under.

The Tories valued tradition over justice, feared the unintended consequences of change, and hated the idea of being "gnawed to death by [the] rats and vermin" of democracy.

Our progressive revolutionary founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine argued that we should "make the world new again." Paine's pamphlet Common Sense lit a fire under the American people, reaching working class and poor people as well as the elites, and fundamentally changed the debate. Before Common Sense was published, most Americans were debating how they could best claim their rights as Englishmen.  Afterwards, the debate was about revolution itself.

And make no mistake: the ideas we take for granted today were truly radical in 1776. Before our revolution, every country on earth was ruled by some kind of king and aristocracy. Ideas like democracy and equality were shocking and terrifying to the conservatives of the day. Even among the brave leaders who came together in Philadelphia, their list of grievances with the king and Parliament were pretty basic.  But in Jefferson's stunning opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, he blew away thousands of years of assumptions about government - the divine right of kings, citizens owing obedience to whatever government they lived under, adherence to tradition, rule by aristocracy.  And he set the stage for an American debate about the progressive values of equality and justice that have inspired our debates ever since.  

Listen to the words again with fresh ears.  Think about how radical they were then, and how their values should inform our modern debates:  

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.  That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.

Those ideas are progressive ideas.  Those values are progressive values.  So as we are fighting today's battles - to expand our definition of equality to all of our people, to protect our rights as free citizens, to make sure all of the children growing up in a great country have a legitimate chance at their own pursuit of happiness - let's remember and embrace that history.

Happy Independence Day.

Liberal and Patriotic in Idaho Falls

by: Living Liberally

Tue Jul 08, 2008 at 17:25

Every Fourth of July, we liberals are tasked by the need to prove that you can be both liberal and patriotic. We argue that our dissent, our protest, our standing up for what is right when the government is wrong, makes us patriotic. They argue that if we don't subscribe to the ruling party's platform 100%, we're not patriotic.

So what's a liberal to do? March in the parade? Watch fireworks? Stay home?
Turns out that our own Idaho Falls DL chapter has the answer to this progressive puzzle.

On July 4th, a dozen Idaho Falls liberal drinkers and some of their families entered a float in the local July 4th "Spirit of Freedom" parade. Of course a Drinking Liberally would call a float in such a parade "Free Spirits of Freedom." But they add, "It's about thinking, not drinking."

Standing in front of a portable bar, the crew tossed about 40 pounds of root beer flavored candy to the crowd and mounted a "Stop War" sign to the front of their patriotic vessel.

In this way, the Idaho Falls DL expressed their liberal views loud and proud and managed to join in and celebrate with the rest of their community, some liberal, some conservative but all American.

Sounds like a great to celebrate July 4th. One that's liberal, patriotic, and most importantly: Awesome!  

PA-05: McCracken for Congress -- A Call for Energy Independence

by: vmo1701

Mon Jun 30, 2008 at 14:43

On Friday July 4th we will celebrate Independence Day marking 232 years since our founding fathers declared that the United States of America would be an independent nation.  Back in 1776, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and others showed courage, leadership and vision by drafting the Declaration of Independence creating a democratic government based on freedom and rights for the common people.  

Now, 232 years later, we need to see the same courage, leadership and vision from our elected leaders to declare independence again.  In 2008, the independence we need to declare is not from tyrannical leaders and an oppressive government but energy independence from foreign sources that have too much control over a product that is so vital to our nation.