EcocentricOil
I’m in Washington DC today to attend the TEDxOilSpill conference. As I wrote in an earlier post, TED is a California-based nonprofits that puts on conferences that connect very smart—and sometimes very wealthy—together to discuss outside the box approaches to global problems. And if there’s one problem that needs some outside the box …
EcocentricOil
Greens used to be great when it came to protesting—top of the table. Activists could chain themselves to trees—or just live in one, like the devoted Julia Butterfly Hill—to protest logging. Anti-nuclear protesters were able to capitalize on the legacy of Three Mile Island, helping to end the construction of new plants. Lois …
EcocentricOil
Bad news good news. The bad news is that the tropical depression that had been forming in the Caribbean has now officially become a tropical storm—named Alex—the first of what’s likely to be many in a rough season. The storm may even strengthen to become a minimal hurricane by the time it makes landfall. The good news is that it’s …
EcocentricOil
It doesn’t take much to disrupt the jury-rigged system BP has designed to contain some of the oil spewing into the Gulf. Just a few days ago an underwater remote operated vehicle bumped into a venting system, requiring BP to remove the containment cap for about half a day—during which time oil flowed from the well virtually …
EcocentricOil
Remember the line Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman? “Every word she says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” I’m beginning to think those words may apply to BP as well. I’ve written before about the company’s habit of not just downplaying the extent of the oil gushing from its blown well in the Gulf, but repeatedly telling …
EcocentricOil
It’s link day! I have a story on the main page about the possible human health impacts of the spill—and the difficulty in tracking those effects. As I’ve written before, the scariest impacts could be to the psyches of Gulf residents—especially as this slow-motion disaster moves on and on.
EcocentricTechnology
I have a piece in the paper edition of TIME—the one that comes with stamps and everything—on the legacy of Thomas Edison and the crisis in American scientific innovation.
Update: So TIME has put its magazine content behind a paywall. Brave new world of journalism! Well technically not a paywall because right now there’s no way to …
EcocentricInvasive Species
Fishermen in Lake Clumet, Illinois—just six miles downstream from Lake Michigan—netted a fish on Tuesday. That generally being what fishermen do, the news wouldn’t have caused much of a stir, but this was no ordinary fish. They caught a 20 lb. bighead carp, one of a number of Asian carp species that were imported into the U.S. in …
EcocentricPolitics
The National Enquirer—the once-scorned supermarket tabloid that scooped the mainstream press on John Edwards’ extramarital affair—broke a story yesterday about a masseuse in Portland Oregon, who claimed that Al Gore tried to force her to have sex with him and subjected her to “unwanted sexual touching.” Detectives at the time passed …
EcocentricOil
Billy Nungesser is mad. This by itself is not unusual—as the president of Plaquemines parish in southeastern Louisiana, Nungesser has been dealing with the oil spill since day one, and since maybe day two he’s been angry with BP and the federal government’s sluggish response to the catastrophe. Nungesser—a constant presence by …
