EcocentricPolitics
This afternoon, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi called them back from their six-week summer break, members of the House of Representatives passed an emergency $26 billion spending bill to prevent the layoff of 300,000 teachers, police and other civil servants from layoffs due to state cutbacks. The bill passed
EcocentricOil
More good news on the oil spill front: around 9 A.M. today, BP began pouring cement into the well in the final phase of its static kill procedure. BP had earlier pumped 2,300 barrels of heavy drilling mud into the well—enough to equalize pressure in the reservoir and achieve a static situation, preventing any additional oil from …
EcocentricOil
That’s what BP reported early Wednesday morning, in what the company called a “significant milestone.” BP stopped pumping heavy mud into the blown well around eight hours after beginning on Tuesday afternoon, saying that the procedure had achieved its “desired outcome.” Here’s part of the press release from BP:
The well is now being
…
EcocentricOil
The “static kill” is so called because that’s what BP aims to create—a static situation within its blown well, one where the drilling mud the company is currently pumping into the well offsets the pressure in the reservoir itself. If BP’s Houston-based drilling engineers want some advice on how to create a static situation, however, …
EcocentricOil
Want a laugh? Think back to the end of March, back when people probably thought “Deepwater Horizon” was the title of James Cameron’s next film. President Obama roiled the environmental community by announcing his support for expanded offshore drilling, as part of a broader, more comprehensive energy strategy. Here’s a relevant passage …
EcocentricEcocentric
A carbon cap now seems to be beyond the greenest dreams of environmentalists, but is it possible that Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid’s energy bill will be more than just oil spill measures? It could happen. Though Reid had said last week that he wouldn’t be able to include a renewable energy standard (RES) in his bill—mandating …
EcocentricEcocentric
Expects lots of forthcoming post-mortems on comprehensive climate and energy legislation, which effectively died (for now) last week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid decided not to include a carbon cap or renewable energy standard on the stripped-down bill he intends to introduce this week. I’ve already had my say—today in the …
EcocentricRegulation
Carbon cap-and-trade is dead—at least for this political lifetime. And while the circular firing squad among Democrats and greens has already begun, it’s worth taking a deep breath and remembering that there are other tools that can be used to deal with climate change. As TIME’s Joe Klein points out, the Supreme Court ruled more than …
EcocentricPolitics
The headline has been written countless times, but this time it is true: carbon cap-and-trade of any sort will not come out of this Congress—and perhaps it never will. Instead of comprehensive economy-wide carbon cap that Senator John Kerry had urged—and that the House had already passed a year ago—or even the compromise …
EcocentricPolitics
The Gulf oil spill is a visceral example—a sticky and black one—of how dysfunctional our national policy on oceans and shorelines really is. In granting energy companies leases to drill ever deeper in the Gulf of Mexico, the Department of the Interior seemed to give little thought to how a blown well might impact the region’s …
