EcocentricPolitics
Tonight’s State of the Union may be remembered as the moment when the White House stopped working on climate—and started working on energy.
Of course, it’s not quite that simple. Whatever initiatives President Obama chooses to launch with his annual speech, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will likely keep working on …
EcocentricPolitics
As Politico first reported last night, Carol Browner will be stepping down from her post as White House climate and energy czar. Browner, an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator in the Clinton Administration, was a key member of the “Green Dream Team” of cabinet appointees and White House aides who accompanied …
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 …
EcocentricResearch
For all the complaints about government gridlock, the 111th Congress proved to be incredibly productive, passing health care legislation, an unprecedented stimulus, major tax cuts, allowing gays in the military and vindicating a landmark arms control treaty. When President Obama addressed the press before Christmas, he celebrated those …
EcocentricEcocentric
You’ll hear it over and over again in the debates over the global climate negotiations: while the U.S. has put more carbon overall into the atmosphere than any other nation (and is still the number two emitter overall), the lion’s share of future carbon emissions will come from the big developing nations. China, now the world’s …
EcocentricOil
Environmentalists can take President Obama to task for more than a few disappointments over the first two years of his Administration—and some of them have—but one area where the White House has fulfilled its green pledges is in auto fuel efficiency. In May 2009 Obama brokered a deal with the auto industry that saw Corporate Average …
EcocentricOil
For all the attention over undersea oil plumes and seafood toxicity and depressed Gulf residents, it’s easy to forget that this well technically still hasn’t been killed. And now it looks like the final end of BP’s cursed Macondo well won’t be happening any time soon.
After days of struggling over how to deal with concrete that had …
EcocentricOil
How sealed does a well have to be before it’s considered sealed? That seems to be the question BP and its accompanying team of government scientists are grappling with as the active phase of the Gulf oil spill appears to enter its final days. Yesterday retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen announced that BP was holding off on finishing …
EcocentricOil
For weeks now, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen has been very clear: BP’s blown well would be considered fully fixed when the relief well was finally completed. “This well will not be killed until we do the bottom kill,” Allen said last week.
But it turns out that might not be true. As we reported yesterday, the final phase of …
EcocentricOil
You know, I’m going to miss these almost daily updates of well-capping procedures performed by robots 5,000 ft. under the surface of the Gulf of Mex…
No, I’m not. If I never hear another piece of vaguely violent drilling jargon—top kill, bottom kill, static kill—it will be too soon. It’s gotten to the point where I’m hearing …
