At present, oil saturates the Gulf Stream. An official six-month cessation of permits for new drilling did not actually affect the industry or government decisions. Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead. To explain such an authorization and waiver, the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Services Division which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar. He did not intend to forbid all first cuts in the Earth's crust. Absolutely not. The Federal Government approved wells off the coast of Louisiana in June. Regardless of the day, or realities that are anathema to our citizenry, little has truly changed. Today, just as in yesteryear, we, the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect Union, polishpolicies to appear as though our civilization would wish to protect and defend all beings, equally.
Weekly Mulch: Off-shore drilling, auto emissions, mountaintop mining from Obama administration
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
President Barack Obama announced this week that his administration would open areas from Delaware to Florida and in Alaska to offshore drilling for gas and oil. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation also released new guidelines for auto emissions to cut carbon emissions, and the EPA said new benchmarks for issuing mountaintop mining permits would prevent damage to waterways in Appalachia. The environmental community welcomed these last two announcements but both were overshadowed by the off-shore drilling decision, which green groups largely condemned.
Off-putting off-shore drilling decision
Although as a candidate President Obama began by opposing off-shore drilling, by the end of the campaign he said he would support an expansion of drilling areas. Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard explains the series of decisions that made this week's announcement possible:
"In October 2008, amidst calls of "drill, baby, drill" from conservatives, Congress failed to renew the long-standing moratorium on offshore drilling. Months earlier, George W. Bush had lifted an 18-year-old executive ban on offshore drilling, which had originally been imposed by his father in 1990. Obama, of course, could have issued his own order, but didn't."
The administration had been considering the decision to go ahead with drilling for about a year but kept deliberations quiet. Key senators, however, knew the decision was coming, and it's pushing Democrats like Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Mark Warner (D-VA) to warm towards energy legislation, TPMDC reports.
Cars' carbon emission
The EPA's announcement on auto emissions, on the other hand, comes as no surprise. It marks the first big step the Obama administration has taken to limit carbon emissions through regulation. Auto regulations are a relatively easy sell. A chunk of Congress wants to keep the EPA from taking these sorts of actions, but in this case, the auto industry supports the federal regulations. At the Washington Independent, Aaron Wiener notes that "the guidelines drew immediate praise from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which has long advocated national emissions and efficiency regulations rather than patchwork state-by-state rules."
Mountaintop removal mining
The coal industry will be less happy about the EPA's announcement on mountaintop removal mining. The agency admitted that the practice causes significant damage to streams and said its new guidelines would lead to significantly less harm.
The new policies, Jeff Biggers writes at AlterNet, will "effectively bring an end to the process of valley fills (and the dumping of toxic coal mining waste into the valleys and waterways)." It could be, he says, "the beginning of the end of mountaintop removal."
One sign that mountaintop removal's doomsday is nigh? Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), one of coal's staunchest and most powerful advocates on the Hill, praised the EPA's decision, reports Mike Lillis at the Washington Independent.
Green groups groan
Green groups are lauding the EPA's two announcements. (The Sierra Club called the mining announcement "the most significant administrative action ever taken to address mountaintop removal coal mining," for instance.) But the push for off-shore drilling has environmental advocates squirming.
"As the president extends olive branches to his critics, he's alienating allies in the environmental community, who say his policies are reminding them more and more of those of his predecessor, George W. Bush," says Mother Jones' Sheppard. "Some enviros are even likening Obama to Alaska's oil-loving ex-governor, Sarah Palin."
On Democracy Now!, Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity, called the decision "horribly disappointing" and said, "Obama is essentially embracing wholeheartedly the policy of: we can drill our way to energy independence."
The Obama administration's energy and environmental policy is creeping ever further towards the center. Ken Salazar, Secretary for the Interior, said this week that "Cap-and-trade is not in the lexicon anymore," TPMDC reports. It's no wonder that progressive members of Congress are starting to feel uncomfortable with the direction their climate bill is taking, as Sheppard reports. The president may be using up his reserves of political support from his allies as he stretches to meet conservatives and centrist Democrats on some shaky middle ground.
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.
This morning on NPR there was a story on fracking (hydraulic fracturing, in which water and chemicals are pumped into the ground at extremely high pressures to force natural gas to the surface), interviewing one Texan, Steve Harris, who believes the practice contaminated his drinking water. Fracking is completely exempted from federal regulation due to a loophole inserted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
Steve Harris believes that pressure also ruined his well. He lives on 14 acres south of Dallas. Shortly after a driller fracked a nearby well, he and his neighbors noticed a change in water pressure.
"When you'd flush the toilet - in the back where the bowl is - water would shoot out the top of the bowl," says Harris.
When he took a shower, there was a foul odor, and the water left rashes on his grandson's skin. His horses stopped drinking from their trough, and there was an oily film on top of the water.
Today, a continuation of a short series looking into the factors affecting the current political climate. It's no secret that the country isn't too happy about the economy, the war in Iraq, and the direction the country is headed in. But for me at least, I like to see the data. First, the right track/wrong track question:
Click to enlarge.
The trend is clear, the numbers are huge: almost three quarters say we're off on the wrong track. Much more below.
This post was cross-posted from the DMIBlog and written by DMI Director of Research Amy Traub
Just about every politician out there would like to find the quick fix for the soaring gasoline prices that are straining the budgets of America's current and aspiring middle class. We know a gas tax "holiday" a la John McCain won't have any real impact on consumers. We know a miscellany of proposed new locations to drill for oil won't help for years - if ever. And while those stimulus checks may have been somewhat useful in offsetting the prices at the pump, Americans facing hard times also need the cash to pay for the rising price of everything else under the sun. So the question remains: how are we going to get to work today - and tomorrow - without the cost of the commute eating a huge chunk out of the paycheck?
So there's this sudden faux-grassroots movement on the right to open up all of our wildlife reserves and our shores for oil drilling, under the pretense that it'll reduce our dependence on foreign oil and lower prices at the pump. It's even got a catchy, easily memorable slogan: "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less." And it's all the rage in East Wingnuttia.
Too bad that it's completely wrong and as far from the truth as one can get while still being in the same space/time continuum.
Thousands upon thousands of homes are being foreclosed on, gas is over four dollars a gallon, the economy looks rosy only to the colorblind-and yesterday I learned that Leona Helmsley had left a trust worth between 5 and 8 billion dollars "to dogs." According to the New York Times, this sum represents nearly ten times the assets of all animal-related non-profit groups in 2005 (and I imagine some of those groups might even squander some of their dollars on non-canines).
The article noted that at first Ms. Helmsley had two goals for her trust:
"to help indigent people...[and] to provide for the care and welfare of dogs. A year later...she deleted the first goal."
Trust Ms. Helmsley to have her priorities straight.
Part of Living Liberally's mission has been to promote engagement and collaboration among progressive organizations. To fulfill this goal we at Living Liberally have decided to feature interviews with people involved in different parts of the progressive movement. Hopefully, through these interviews, we can learn about what progressives are working on today, and get a little more in depth about what its like to be a part of the progressive movement.
Our first interviewee, Daniel Mintz, is in Research and Development at progressive powerhouse MoveOn.org Political Action. He currently lives in Brooklyn and every once in a while shows up at the Original Drinking Liberally. Enjoy!
Seth Pearce: So, what did your parents say when your organization was condemned by the US congress? Daniel Mintz: I think, they, like a lot of people, were just blown away that with so many huge problems to tackle, the US Congress decided to spend so much time talking about a newspaper ad. Just like, whether you agreed or disagreed with the ad, what a manufactured controversy.
SP: What exactly do you do at MoveOn? DM: Officially, I'm in charge of Research and Development, which is to say that I'm the R&D dept. (we're a pretty tiny shop). What that means in practice is that I get to have my hands in lots of cool stuff that we're trying out.
SP: Stuff John McCain would know how to use? DM: Not so much.
SP: People think of MoveOn as this big shadowy progressive organization, running some kind of secret progressive world order- what are some specific things that MoveOn is working on right now? DM: Ha. What are we working on right now?...Let's see...We're getting ready to run a massive get out the vote operation in the fall, hundreds of paid organizers working with tens of thousands of volunteers. We'll be essentially combining our 2004 program, Leave No Voter Behind, where people in swing states canvassed their neighbors, with our 2006 program, Call for Change, where MoveOn members across the country made more than 7 million calls to voters in key House and Senate races.
We're also working on FISA: Right now, we're asking thousands of MoveOn members to call their senators every day to tell them not to cave on the FISA "compromise".
And we're running a National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President at gas stations across the country in a few weeks. McCain is pretty darn tight with Big Oil. Many of the more than 100 lobbyists associated with his campaign are lobbyists for Big Oil. We wanted to highlight those ties and push for our next president to free himself and us of our dependence on foreign oil. So we're holding hundreds of gas station rallies where thousands of MoveOn members will show up at local gas stations to rally and call for a real, progressive solutions to the energy crisis.
As we move the campaign from Democratic primary to general election mode, I am going to make some changes to the weekly progress report. Over the last few months I've used this weekly report give updates on the events we've participated in over the past week. I'll continue to keep you informed on where we're at and what we're doing but I'm going to provide comment on issues of interest to the citizens of the 5th district. We'll also keep you updated on what is going on inside the campaign.
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