Oil companies are salivating at the prospect of prospecting for crude in the Arctic. Early tests have shown significant potential for oil in the cold waters of the far North, but there was always one slight problem: ice. The …
Oil
The Climate Movement Temporarily Stops an Oil Sands Pipeline. Now They Need to Start Something
Give Bill McKibben and the thousands of other protesters who put their safety and freedom on the line in protest after protest against the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline: they won their battle. Today the State Department—which has jurisdiction over the project because it connects the U.S. with Canadian oil sands— …
Why Obama’s Offshore Drilling Plan Isn’t Making Anyone Happy
Is it just me, or is the past getting past faster than ever before? It wasn’t that long ago—a little more than a year and a half—that President Obama stood at Andrews Air Force Base and outlined an ambitious energy deal. Greens would get the carbon cap-and-trade legislation they had been working for since the start of his time in …
Greens Are Justifiably Mad About the Oil Sands Pipeline. But Sitting Out 2012 Elections Would Be Insane
For the past week, hundreds of activists—from celebrities and scientists to ordinary citizens—have come to Washington to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring up to 500,000 barrels of crude a day from western Canada’s oil sands. Scores of those activists have been arrested, but more keep coming every day, …
Standing Against Oil Sands—and Standing for the Climate
Back in 2008, former vice president Al Gore decided that it was time to take the fight against climate change to a new level. Speaking at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, Gore said that the world had “reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience,” and called for young people to take the lead. The …
Why Michele Bachmann’s $2-a-Gallon Gas Promise Is a Fantasy
Since virtually the entire field of Republican presidential candidates has decided to abandon science — with the exception of Jon Huntsman, whose negligible support has to be measured with an electron microscope — I could easily spend the next 15 months shooting down every false statement they make about climate change, energy …
Why Dropping the Gas Tax Would Be a Disaster
In the wake of last month’s game of chicken/debt deal compromise, the country was almost paralyzed again by another fiscal dispute—this time over funding for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Congress couldn’t agree to re-authorize the FAA’s operations, thanks to a disagreement between some Republicans and Democrats over a …
An Oil Spill Grows in the North Sea. Sound Familiar?
On April 24, 2010, I wrote this about the aftermath of the explosion that took down the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico:
The good news is that this spill looks as though it will be largely contained. The Coast Guard reported Friday morning, April 23, that a remote-controlled camera found that oil was not leaking
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Why Oil Exploration in the Arctic Is Another Sign of the Drive for Extreme Energy
Well, there’s one thing you should take away from the Interior Department’s decision yesterday to conditionally allow the oil company Shell to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean: the Obama Administration is not anti-energy. Despite constant complaining from the energy industry and Republicans in Congress that the White …
An Oily Mess in the Niger Delta
Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest oil producers, pumping 2.6 million barrels a day—a little less than half what the far larger U.S. produces. But Nigeria is also one of the world’s dirtiest oil producers, a place where spills and sabotage are common, and where the money generated by the lucrative oil business hasn’t really …