EcocentricOil
Internal medicine training programs in hospitals have what are called morbidity and mortality conferences—known as M&Ms. The reviews usually take place after unexpectedly poor patient outcomes—like deaths, for instance—and investigate what medical errors might have been made that contributed to the failure. M&Ms are dreaded by …
EcocentricPolitics
At noon today, Republican John Boehner will be sworn in as the 61st Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the GOP will take over partial control of the government. (Apparently the outgoing Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, actually hands over the gavel to the new leader, a ceremony that certainly has more gravitas than the Internet …
EcocentricOil
Last week I wrote a column asking the question: whatever happened to the Gulf oil spill? Thanks to presidential commissions and great investigative reporting, we know a great deal about why the spill happened and what impact it might have on the land and the water of the Gulf. In the news, though, the spill seems largely gone.
But …
EcocentricOil
The official announcement will come at from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at 1:30 EST today, but sources are already reporting that the White House will be pulling back on offshore oil and gas drilling. Drilling will only be allowed in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, and in parts of the Alaskan Arctic—both territories …
EcocentricOil
A few weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, triggering the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, I wrote the first cover story for TIME on the accident. We called it “The Meaning of the Mess,” and while I spent a few pages recounting how the explosion had occurred, and what the spill would likely mean for …
EcocentricOil
Since the Deepwater Horizon accident on April 20—and the moratorium on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that followed it—both the oil industry and environmentalists have been waiting for the White House to issue new rules on drilling. BP’s Gulf spill showed that there were clear problems with the way offshore drilling was …
EcocentricOil
If you’re curious about how the endgame of the oil spill is going—it’s still ending—check out a piece I had over the weekend on the Time.com mainpage. Now I’m beginning to think hockey season could get underway before the relief well is finally completed.
EcocentricOil
There seem to be two rules to being a passenger on a Greenpeace ship. One: if you take a beer from the refrigerator, always remember to log it on the drinks sheet. (And pay your bar bill before you leave the boat—otherwise, I believe they make you walk the plank.) Two: there is no such thing as a passenger on a Greenpeace ship. …
EcocentricOil
From the very beginning of the BP oil spill—when reporters were told that there probably was no oil spill at all—the people in charge have consistently underestimated the size of the spill. After that initial mistake, BP told us that oil was flowing at about 1,000 barrels a day from the blown well. (Each barrel contains about 42 …
EcocentricOil
With the well capped and surface oil fast disappearing from the Gulf of Mexico, the response to the BP spill seems ready to move to a new phase—and possibly a less intense one. Right now BP is preparing to begin the static kill, a procedure that involves pumping heavy drilling mud down through the cap over the wellhead, followed by …
