Just A Reminder

Oil is a dirty, unsafe business:

Over 500 fishing boats join Dalian oil spill cleanup operations after pipeline explosion

DALIAN, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Over 500 fishing boats Monday joined a massive oil spill clean-up operation underway off the coast of northeastern China's Dalian City, three days after pipelines exploded near the city's oil reserve base, one of China's largest.

A dark-brown oil slick has stretched over at least 183 square kilometers of ocean near blast-hit Xingang port, with 50 square kilometers severely polluted.

The over 500 fishing boats have been loaded with oil absorbers and dispersants to help in the clean-up south of Dalian's Golden Pebble Beach and east of Bangchui Island.

We never did get that serious debate on our oil dependency and the harm it does to the environment. Instead we got ridiculous politicians like Haley Barbour, drunk on oil money, claiming offshore oil drilling was safe (it's not).

I'd rather we accept the very obvious risks as fact and move forward with the debate from there. If people think the risks are worth continuing our dependency on dead dinosaurs, then explain why. But I suspect we never have these hard conversations because Certain Important People won't like what most people believe in this country. Some facts are a little too inconvenient. So we never have the conversation, we just talk about the unimportant stuff. Nothing to see here, move along.

It's the dirty shame of our current political stalemate that nothing important is every seriously discussed so nothing substantial can ever be done about it. And the money keeps flowing. Huzzah.

Years from now we will look back on this time with astonishment.

It's The Refineries, Stupid

I realize it’s probably getting boring for people, but here’s another reminder that right wingers don’t know what they’re talking about: Oil demand has been steadily decreasing; demand peaked a few years ago and we're on the downward side of the slope. As a result, oil refineries are being shut down:

July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. oil refining capacity fell for the first time since 2003 as the weak economy reduced demand for gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

There were 148 refineries at the beginning of this year with an operating capacity of almost 17.6 million barrels per day, down 87,760 bpd from last year, the Energy Department's analytical arm said. It the was the first decline in total U.S. refining capacity since 2003.

The decline in capacity was due mostly to the shutdown of two refineries, Sunoco's (SUN.N) 145,000 bpd Eagle Point refinery in Westville, New Jersey and Valero's (VLO.N) 182,200 bpd Delaware City, Delaware refinery.

Those two shut refineries were offset, in part, by the 180,000 bpd expansion of Marathon's (MRO.N) Garyville, Louisiana refinery, the agency said.

Going forward, the EIA expects continued excess refining capacity due to higher vehicle fuel efficiency standards and congressional mandates for the U.S to use more renewable fuels that "will limit the potential for growth in petroleum demand."

So just to recap: We are using less gasoline, in part because of the economy, in part because people are driving more efficient vehicles, and that doesn’t appear to be changing any time in the future. This is a good thing.

It also means the refineries are cutting back on their production and idiots like Jeff Hartline, who claim we need to build more refineries in this country, need to shut their yaps (and just as an aside, would someone for once please ask these people just where these refineries are supposed to be built? You think TN-5 wants an oil refinery in their back yard? Really? Unless you want to build the refinery in the district your’re running for, zip it.).

I’ve written about the refinery issue before, notably here and here.

We don’t need new oil refineries; we aren’t using the ones we’ve got. What we need is a national energy policy that further moves us away from dirty energy.

All Of Those Leaky Offshore Oil Wells

Well this is just peachy. AP has discovered the Gulf of Mexico is littered with over 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells, some dating back to the 1940s. None are being monitored to determine if they are leaking which, considering the age of some of these wells, they undoubtedly are.

I wrote about one such well three weeks ago. Taylor Energy’s Ocean Saratoga rig has been leaking 10 miles off the Louisiana coast since Hurricane Ivan hit back in 2004! (Remember when John McCain said hurricanes don’t affect offshore oil rigs? Yeah, me too.)

The Ocean Saratoga leak has been small -- an estimated 14 gallons a day -- but over six years it’s created a 10-mile-long oil slick captured on satellite. Worse, Taylor Energy says they’ve been working all this time to plug the leak. Okay, I’m going to call bullshit on that. Six years, people? You can’t stop a small oil leak after six years? If that’s the case, then things look pretty dim for BP's gusher. Excuse me for saying this, but I don't think the folks at Taylor Energy are trying very hard.

Anyway, I’m not surprised that the AP has uncovered leaky oil and gas wells going back decades. I’m not surprised that this is suddenly a news story. But I am surprised that people in the industry whose business it is to know about such things have basically kept quiet about it. I’m disturbed that the Interior Dept. has not conducted inspections, nor did it mandate that the oil industry do so. I'm tired of us ignoring things until a major disaster occurs, at which point we pass some legislation which inevitably is ignored.

I’m not surprised, but I’m very, very bothered by this:

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — even though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP's Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation's history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

(Before we go any further, let me say the very first thing on the agenda for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation & Enforcement (formerly MMS) should be an immediate and thorough assessment of all abandoned oil wells.)

There seems to be a pattern here. After the Kingston coal sludge disaster, we learned about more leaky TVA coal sludge ponds. But what was done about it?

The EPA has spent the past year assessing coal ash containment facilities. Last month they announced two options for dealing with coal ash, one regulating it as “special waste” and one treating it as “non-hazardous” which means basically keeping things exactly the way they are:

The EPA itself admits that under its weaker option, many states will not adopt strict federal guidelines and that approximately 50% of the coal ash generated in the U.S. will continue to be managed under state programs that do not require basic disposal safeguards.

I wonder which option the coal industry and electrical utilities support?

It cannot be stated often enough or loudly enough: there is a cost to our inaction and denial. We simply can no longer afford to put the needs of the energy industry above the needs of everyone and everything else. We can no longer tolerate one industry riding roughshod over everyone and everything else.

We cannot allow Big Oil and King Coal to dictate the health of the water we drink and the air we breathe, to destroy an entire fishing industry for which we have no alternative. Oil and coal are important to our economy right now, that’s a fact of life. But they are transient. Guess what: we have alternatives to oil and coal. We don't have alternatives for clean air and water.

My message to Big Oil and Big Coal is a simple one: you’re selfish, greedy and irresponsible. Sorry guys, but you know it's true. You're important, but we do have alternatives. On top of which, your business depends on a finite resource. God stopped making dinosaurs a few million years ago. So if you want to keep playing on our playground, quit being bullies.

Learn to share.

My Job Is More Important Than Your Job

[UPDATE]:

Hey Mary Landrieu I wrote this post for you.

-------------------------------------------

One of the most frustrating things about the whole offshore oil drilling debate which has surged to the frontburner thanks to BP is this notion that we need to keep drilling offshore because of jobs.

It’s been simmering on the back-burner during the oil spill crisis, occasionally hitting the headlines: a worry about lost oil jobs from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, or a similar concern from Louisiana Democratic Congressman (and Senate candidate) Charlie Melancon. This week it came to full boil as those sidelined by the moratorium on offshore oil drilling gave voice to some grave concerns about their livelihoods.

And I’m sympathetic, I really am. It’s a terrible thing that happened. Our economy is still in the shitter and then along comes a disaster caused by a company's concern for profits over safety and now everyone is having to pay the price. It’s awful that these folks are having to deal with this at a time in our country’s history when finding another job is going to be pretty darn impossible. So I’m sorry. You have a right to be scared, and I’m scared for you. You have a right to be angry, and I’m angry along with you.

But here’s the deal: the oil spill has killed off a big bunch of the commercial fishing industry in the Gulf. I hate to be the one to break it to you folks but the shrimp and oysters aren’t coming back, not for years. Maybe not ever. Sport fishing is gone. Tourism will come back, but not this summer, not as long as oil and chemical dispersants and gas fumes pollute the beaches.

So to the oil rig workers and those businesses who depend on that industry: you aren’t alone. This disaster has affected your neighbors, your family, your brothers and sisters who work in other industries that also depend on the Gulf of Mexico. And those people need the Gulf of Mexico to be healthy for their jobs to survive.

So when folks like myself call for a permanent ban on offshore oil drilling, it’s not without the full knowledge of what we are proposing. We understand there are families who need these oil jobs. But at what point does one industry trump another? At what point does it make sense to say, oil drilling may be risky and unsafe but we are willing to put other industries at risk anyway? We are willing to put fishing and shrimpers and tourism in a precarious place for this one unsafe, polluting, dirty industry?

This makes no sense to me whatsoever. Especially when I know that the people who work on oil rigs could easily be put to work building an offshore wind farm or an offshore solar farm. Why not? Has a solar spill ever killed off the oyster beds? Has a wind spill ever destroyed the summer tourist season?

I’m sorry oil people are hurting right now. You want your lives back. Well guess what: so does everyone else. So do shrimpers and the folks who operate tourist restaurants and hotels in the Gulf. So does the guy who rents beach umbrellas and the lady who sells seashells at the gift shop down by the seashore. You’re not the only ones who make a living down there.

Here’s the good news: you folks really could, theoretically, be put to work building offshore wind farms and the like. You have options in the green energy economy. If the state and federal governments could show some freaking leadership and clear the way for clean energy to begin replacing oil platforms now, not at some future “after we transition” date, you guys will be okay.

You know who won’t be okay? The people who harvest shrimp and oysters. The motel owners on the beach. Those people are screwed. They have no fallback.

Just something to think about.

What We Have To Look Forward To

A special preview for the people in the Gulf of Mexico, from your colleagues in Alaska:

Three years after the 11 million-gallon spill in Prince William Sound blackened 1,500 miles of Alaska coastline, the herring on which he and other Cordova fishermen heavily relied disappeared from the area. Platt and some others stuck around, fishing for salmon and hoping things would improve.

The herring never returned to Cordova. Platt's income plummeted, severely straining his marriage and psyche. He dipped into his sons' college funds to support his family.

"People's lives were ruined," Platt said. "There were damn good fishermen here in the Sound, and they just said, 'Screw it' and left, and tried to make a living elsewhere."

As for Platt, who stayed: "I wasted 20 years of my life," he said.

[...]

The herring loss alone has cost the region about $400 million over the past 21 years, according to R.J. Kopchak, a former fisherman who is now developmental director at Cordova's Prince William Sound Science Center.

And here’s the best part:

Exxon says the spill had nothing to do with the herring disappearance. In a statement, Exxon said the herring catches were outstanding for the first three years after the spill, and that scientific studies showed that the subsequent decline was caused in part by ocean factors that led to poor nutrition, and perhaps by disease. Other studies, Exxon said, pointed to competitive interactions between young herring and young salmon, and to predators.

Oh just fuck you, Exxon. I mean, really. What else is there to say?

Look, I’m tired of hearing people say we “need” to drill for oil offshore. No, actually, we don’t. We have alternatives. We've had these alternatives for over 40 years. Meanwhile, the ocean is our source of food, people. Why in God’s name would you want to piss in your refrigerator? Crap in your pantry?

There are people who go out into the ocean and bring that food back to us on land. Other people clean it and process it and other people sell it. It’s, you know, hugely economically important. And it’s now been destroyed because some other people have been telling us for the past 40 years that we “need” that oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

We’ve had 40 years to implement conservation and alternative energy technology -- technology we already have, by the way. But we didn’t. Instead, we decided to destroy a major source of food for this country.

Stupid.

Goodbye White Sand Beaches

Nice tourism economy you have there, Gulf Coast. Be a shame if anything happened to it:

NEW ORLEANS -- Oil leaking from a sunken drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico oozed slowly toward the coast Monday, endangering hundreds of miles of marshes, barrier islands and white sand beaches in four states from Louisiana to Florida.

The areas, home to dolphins, sea birds, prime fishing grounds and tourist playlands, could be fouled later this week if crews can't cut off an estimated 42,000 gallons a day escaping two leaks in a drilling pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface.

[...]

The spill, moving slowly north and spreading east and west, was about 30 miles from the Chandeleur Islands off the Louisiana coast Tuesday. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said it would likely be several days before any oil reaches the coast.

George Crozier, oceanographer and executive director at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, said he was studying wind and ocean currents driving the oil. He said Pensacola, Fla., is likely the edge of the threatened area.

Meanwhile, at least Gov. Jindal has seen fit to order the Coast Guard to protect the Pass A Loutre wildlife refuge. Haley Barbour of Mississippi is predictably dithering.

If you grew up in California then the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill has been seared into your consciousness. For those who don’t remember, a Union Oil platform exploded off the coast of Santa Barbara in January 1969, sending 200,000 gallons of crude into the Pacific over 11 days. It was a major environmental disaster by anyone’s estimation, tens of thousands of birds were killed, and oil washed up on the beaches literally for years afterward (trust me, I remember “beach tar.”) Many credit it with raising the nation’s environmental awareness and giving birth to the environmental movement.

Of course our memories are short, and “drill here, drill now” has become the new rallying cry of an energy-hungry nation.

Wonder what the shrimpers, oystermen and tourist businesses think about this?

Oil Rig Explodes Off Louisiana Coast

Happy Earth Day

A TransOcean oil rig under contract to BP exploded off the Louisiana coast last night. And the timing of this tragedy, so close on the heels of the Massey coal mine disaster, should be lost on no one.

Prayers to the families of the missing workers. And a reminder that oil and coal are a dirty, nasty, risky business. Think about that next time you fill up the SUV.

Hey Bill Frist: remind me, how many people were killed by wind power again?

Don't Hate The Player, Hate The Game

Well okay, hate the player. Massey Energy and Don Blankenship are certainly deserving of our scorn. But while our hearts go out to the families of the West Virginia coal miners who lost their lives, and our anger is turned on Massey Energy, which appears to have bought every politician which has stood in its way, we all need to look in the mirror, too.

Coal produces 54% of our electricity in this country. Every time you flip a light switch or crank up the air conditioning or purchase another appliance, think about where we get the juice to power that equipment. Think about what you are doing to keep the Massey Energies of this country in business.

Look, folks: coal ain’t cheap, regardless of what TVA’s Tom Kilgore and the folks at Big Coal would have you believe. It just looks cheap because when they’re crunching the numbers, they only count part of the cost. They don’t factor in the cost of cleaning up all those leaky coal sludge ponds, and the environmental and health costs associated not just with coal burning but also things like mountaintop removal mining.

(And while we’re talking about this, good for Senator Lamar Alexander, who last year introduced a bill that would basically ban mountaintop removal mining. This is so huge and significant and Lamar deserves a flood of phone calls thanking him for taking this step. And every other senator needs a phone call asking them to support the Cardin-Alexander Appalachian Restoration Act.)

However, it’s not enough. We need to do more, and we need to do it faster. West Virginia, Kentucky and other Appalachian states need to transition their economies away from the coal mines which have forced people to choose between poverty and poison. And some choice that's been: these states are still among the country’s poorest. People need jobs but they shouldn’t have to choose between poisoning their communities and risking their lives just to put food on the table.

Hate the player all you want, folks. But the problem is the game.

There are things we all can do to cut our coal consumption. At the Beale household we swapped out leaky old windows. When we remodeled our house we purchased energy-miser appliances. I close our blinds in the summer to keep the sun out, which does an amazing job of keeping the house cool. We changed our light bulbs to CFL’s. We signed up for TVA’s Green Power Switch program. And lastly, we put up a solar array on our roof, so NES actually pays me. I am sure we still use some coal, but not as much as we used to.

If you need some ideas on simple things that can save you lots of money in utility bills, as well as the true cost of coal, check out the film "Kilowatt Ours."

We aren’t perfect at the Beale household. Our house is old and there are energy leaks all over the place, especially around old door frames. We use way more electricity than we should. But it’s a start.

Sending An Energy Message

I'm trying really hard to get upset about the Obama Administration’s announcement that it would open up coastal areas to oil exploration. Obviously I think it’s a terrible idea, for all of the usual reasons. But I just don't think this plan is serious. Maybe I'm in denial.

Most media folks seem to have bought the “we need to drill here drill now pay less” line the Administration is selling. From the New York Times:

The proposal is intended to reduce dependence on oil imports, generate revenue from the sale of offshore leases and help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation.

Let me be the first to call bullshit on that line of thinking. No, that’s not what the proposal is intended to do because it so clearly won’t do any of that. For one thing, oil companies are sitting on more offshore oil leases than they know what to do with. So don’t expect to see any oil platforms off the coast of Virginia any time soon; indeed, there will be windmills off the coast of Rhode Island long before Virginians need to worry about ExxonMobil drilling off their beaches. Aw heck, Virginians will see coastal wind farms long before they see oil platforms.

No one ever mentions this but that oil is too expensive to even think about pulling out of the ground until oil surpasses $100/barrel. That is, in fact, why it’s still there. For another, gas has been so cheap that the oil companies have been and continue to cut back on refinery production. I first wrote about the cut in refinery production to maximize profits last year; now, these cuts look to be permanent:

Energy companies are suffering huge losses from refining because of slumping gasoline use – a product of the economic downturn and changing consumer habits and preferences. Energy experts say refining cutbacks have already begun and will accelerate as corporations strive for profits.

Major refiners have been circumspect about their plans, saying they are considering options that could include closing refineries, selling parts of their operations, laying off workers or slashing spending.

“Refineries will have to be closed,” said Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. “Unless this excess capacity is permanently shuttered, a recovery in refining margins is unsustainable.”

Apparently the nation’s appetite for gasoline and diesel have peaked. Cutting refinery capacity pretty much ensures that trend will continue, because it’s keeping prices high.

Meanwhile, gasoline is one of those commodities where what you pay at the pump is affected by more than just traditional supply-and-demand mechanisms. Speculation is rampant in the oil markets, unrest in the Middle East affects prices (though most of our oil imports come from Canada)--even hurricanes in the Gulf have caused gas prices to soar.

Opening up more offshore oil leases doesn't change any of that, and everyone knows it. I happen to think it's just more Kabuki Theater. While my in-box floods with alarming pleas for action (and donations) from MoveOn, Repower America, Firedog Lake, etc. about this oil drilling thing, I just can’t believe anyone thinks this is serious.

Most media outlets have suggested that the President’s drilling plan is also an effort to woo Republicans on cap-and-trade. Let me again call bullshit: Republicans have made clear they plan to sit on their hands until the midterm elections, and I don’t think Obama or his advisors are so dumb as to think opening the coast to oil platforms will change partisan politics in Washington.

No, I think this whole thing was planned to send a message to our “friends” in the Middle East, Venezuela, at OPEC, etc. I think we're putting the world on notice that America won't be pushed around from an energy perspective. It's an energy declaration of independence, if you will.

Consider: while everyone was busy haranguing about the new healthcare law (heads up, folks! It’s not a bill anymore!) and its aftermath, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and EPA have quietly implemented new vehicle fuel and admissions standards.

Such a thing has been long, long overdue. The new standards, summarized here, take into account new technology, like electric vehicles:

The most intriguing part of the whole thing? Fuel efficiency isn't king--it's all about greenhouse gas reductions. This is probably the EPA's attempt at preparing for a future where most vehicles aren't just juiced up by gasoline. Carmakers shouldn't necessarily get off scot-free if their EVs are ultimately powered by coal-fired electricity plants, after all.

That’s certainly ingenious, and casts a far wider net than previous government fuel efficiency standards ever did. Coupled with the offshore oil announcement, the message this sends is that a) we are serious about conservation, and b) we can, will and are finding our own oil supplies, which we will tap if needed.

Of course, all of this comes as oil prices are rising, but note:

So far, though, consumption of gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil and jet fuel remains sluggish and markets are well supplied. The biggest sign of strength is from manufacturers using growing amounts of crude to restart the nation's factories.

How cool would it be if our nation’s factories were able to reboot using energy-saving technologies and conservation mechanisms, enabling us to recover the billions of dollars we throw away each year on energy waste? Our manufacturing sector needs to get on board -- and it is.

One of the hopiest-changeiest things I've seen in the past few years is the surge in renewable energy development. The economy is transitioning away from fossil fuels, not because the government is making us do it or because we're facing an apocalyptic Mad-Max-style future without "the juice" or because people drank Al Gore's Kool-Aid but because it makes economic sense. It's where the money is. Eight years of Bush-Cheney and their oil minions couldn't stop this train because the reality is that it is too expensive not to move away from the dead energy source that fueled our previous economic growth.

The future is green, not black. Everyone knows it, certainly our corporate overlords know it, and Newt Gingrich and Koch Industries stamping their widdew feet won't change it. This is positive news, excellent news, because it means we aren't doomed after all, and it means things like opening the Atlantic coast to offshore oil exploration when nobody seems to want or need the oil leases is just so much political theater.

Dinosaurs 4 Oil

Well this was an interesting press release:

As Governor, I would call upon Mayor Bill Haslam, CEO of the nation’s largest, diesel fuel retailer, to lead the way in assisting our state in financing and building the world’s largest, fossil fuel refinery on the Haywood megasite. The need for refineries is undeniable, and ultra-liberals have used them as a wedge issue with the intent of destroying private, capital markets.

You hear that, West Tennessee? GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Joe Kirkpatrick wants to put the world’s largest oil refinery in your backyard!

Everybody panic!

The Haywood Megasite is near the Hatchie Wildlife Refuge. The best neighbor for a wildlife refuge has definitely got to be an oil refinery. Not just any refinery, of course, but the world’s largest oil refinery.

I love how right-wing Republicans think!

Here’s a little piece of information for Joe Kirkpatrick: no one wants to build more oil refineries, least of all the oil companies. Back in February I linked to a story explaining that oil refineries are only operating at 80% capacity to increase their profits. It’s why gasoline prices are still high, even though demand has dropped.

Fast forward eight months, and we find refiners are actually shutting down U.S. plants:

HOUSTON -- Excess capacity, weak demand for fuels and rising product inventories continue to squeeze margins for U.S. oil refiners.

Sunoco ( SUN - news - people ), the second-largest refiner in the country that doesn't produce its own oil, said late Tuesday that it will soon shutter its Eagle Point refinery in Westville, N.J., which has a capacity to handle 145,000 barrels of oil per day. During the second quarter, Philadelphia-based Sunoco lost $77 million in its refining business and told analysts Tuesday that the third quarter could be worse.

[...]

Industry observers believe the Sunoco shut-in is a sign of what's to come. In September, Valero ( VLO - news - people ), the largest of the independent refiners, extended the shutdown of a refinery in Aruba and cut back capacity to process heavy oil at a subsidiary in Delaware City, Del.

Among the majors that produce and refine oil, ExxonMobil ( XOM - news - people ), which operates the largest refinery in the U.S. in Baytown, Texas, (572,500 barrels per day), reported a $15 million loss in the second quarter in the so-called downstream sector of its U.S. business. ConocoPhillips ( COP - news - people ), the fifth-largest refiner in the world, reported a second-quarter loss of $52 million in its refining and marketing business due to lower refining margins and volumes. On Wednesday, ConocoPhillips said it would sell $10 billion in assets over the next two years from its exploration and production and refining and marketing segments in order to reduce debt. (See "ConocoPhillips On The Block?")

Kirkpatrick wants to build the world’s largest oil refinery at a time when those already in operation are being shuttered for lack of buisness. Brilliant!

No wonder Republicans keep destroying our economy. Their policies are purely ideological, based on partisan talking points blaming “ultra-liberals” for everything. Let's put a grown-up in charge of Tennessee's government, shall we?

Wave Of The Future

As more American auto manufacturing moves south of the border, this is indeed welcome news for stricken communities like Detroit:

WIXOM, Mich. (WXYZ) - Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr. and Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm are unveiling plans to redevelop the shuttered Wixom Assembly plant into a giant renewable energy park.

The ceremony will include officials from Xtreme Power and Clairvoyant Energy. The new complex will be involved in building storage batteries, solar panels and wind turbines.

The companies have said they will buy and renovate the 320-acre site if state tax incentives and federal loans are approved. The state house approved the tax breaks last week. The Senate could pass them as early as today.

The new facility is expected to revitalize the area surrounding the plant, which was hit hard when Ford closed it in 2007. It is expected to employ at thousands of 'green' jobs.

More like this, please. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover!

China has positioned itself to capitalize on the Green Revolution:

Chinese factories already make a third of the world’s solar cells – six times more than America. Next year, China will become the largest market in the world for wind turbines – overtaking America. This fall, a Chinese firm will launch the world’s first mass-produced all-electric car of this century. And where are American utilities buying the latest generation of “clean coal” power stations? China.

You know, it’s bad enough that we get our cheap plastic Wal Mart crap from China. But the last thing we need to do is become dependent on China for our energy. That’s trading one bad apple for another.

The sun shines and the wind blows in America. We should be making the components to harness this green energy here at home, too.

Al Gore Is Still Fat

By now everyone has weighed in on Nate Silver’s challenge to global warming skeptics. So I guess it's my turn.

It just goes without saying that if there’s a week of unusually cool weather, the flat-earthers use this as proof that global warming doesn’t exist. Or, as our own Glen Dean likes to say,

You would have to be an idiot to actually believe that man has any effect on the climate.

One man, perhaps. But there are more than six billion of us right now. Personally, I think you have to be an idiot to actually believe that more than six billion human beings wouldn’t affect the climate.

Yes, it’s been a gorgeous weekend throughout pretty much the entire country. We’ve got our windows open and the A/C off in the house right now -- proof that Al Gore is fat, global warming is a hoax, and there’s a cabal of environmentalists with the gleam of one-world government in their eyes who have turned scientists around the world into their minions.

You know, as Glenn Greenwald Tweeted earlier today,

Many obituaries in my morning paper: proof that world population is decreasing

Hah.

Nate Silver’s post got a lot of attention because he threw down the gauntlet, with real money involved (and as of my last look, no one has taken his bet--not even Sen. Inhofe, who has all that Big Oil money to play with.)

But the point of Silver’s post is that one cold weekend does not make for science. Folks like Hinderaker and Drudge who scream “Al Gore is fat!” every time the temperatures dip below normal are silent when we have early hot spells, like the one that hit Nashville this April. It was so hot during the Country Music Marathon this year that the women’s winner vomited several times after finishing the race, and one runner died.

But I’m not going to say that is proof of global warming’s existence any more than a cool July proves it isn’t real. For that I’m going to look at the changes in my garden over the past few years, the work of real scientists looking at global warming over the past 30 years, and some real number crunching from statisticians like Nate Silver.

And I'll repeat what I've said before, which is that even if you don't believe global warming is real, you cannot deny that:

•  air pollution is responsible for diseases like asthma;
• coal power destroys our environment and has resulted in disasters like what happened in Kingston, TN, last December;
• dependence on foreign oil has made our country vulnerable to the whims of unstable foreign regimes and forced us to compromise our moral authority as we do business with regimes like Saudi Arabia who practice intolerance.

With all that going for it, I can't imagine why anyone would stick to the old way of doing things. You know, there's a reason they call it fossil fuels. It's for dinosaurs.

Comedy Gold

What do you get when you combine Russian energy giant Gazprom with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company?

The new firm, to be called Nigaz, is set to build refineries, pipelines and gas power stations in Nigeria.

I didn’t realize the TNGOP was farming out its messaging to international conglomerates.

*Rimshot*

Poison Ponds Everywhere & No One Minding The Store

Thanks, “clean coal”! Apparently the clean coal propagandists and their de-regulating, anti-environmental minions in Washington have left hundreds of potential coal sludge disasters all across the country. Count me not shocked.

Reports the New York Times on today’s front page:

The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States — most of them unregulated and unmonitored — that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal.

Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment.

In fact, coal ash is used throughout the country for construction fill, mine reclamation and other “beneficial uses.” In 2007, according to a coal industry estimate, 50 tons of fly ash even went to agricultural uses, like improving soil’s ability to hold water, despite a 1999 E.P.A. warning about high levels of arsenic. The industry has promoted the reuse of coal combustion products because of the growing amount of them being produced each year — 131 million tons in 2007, up from less than 90 million tons in 1990.

I don’t understand why the EPA keeps issuing all of these warnings about the dangerous toxicity of coal ash, and these warnings are ignored or downplayed in the face of industry and political pressure.

Look, people, this isn’t hard. Facts are facts, science is science. If the science shows dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste is bad for the soil, air and water that people use, then quit doing it. And by all means, don’t peddle this toxic sludge as some kind of new miracle fertilizer. That’s the kind of shit they pull in China.

Now we get to the meat of the matter:

The amount of coal ash has ballooned in part because of increased demand for electricity, but more because air pollution controls have improved. Contaminants and waste products that once spewed through the coal plants’ smokestacks are increasingly captured in the form of solid waste, held in huge piles in 46 states, near cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Tampa, Fla., and on the shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

I’ve said this from day one: “clean coal” is a farce. You can put scrubbers on smokestacks, but that just means the waste comes in a different form. You cannot repeal the laws of thermodynamics. You do not “create” energy, you can only change its form, and when you do that there is always, always, always a waste product. Whether you change that waste product from belching smoke and acid rain to toxic sludge, it’s still a hazard and still needs to be handled carefully.

This is environmental science 101.

Something else that bears remembering is that coal ash is radioactive. I’d love to know why we are spreading this stuff around on agricultural fields and construction sites.

Someone at the EPA needs to be doing their job and digging into this stuff. Clearly the EPA bows too easily to political and industry pressure in general. The Bush years have been the worst as far as gutting the EPA is concerned, but this stuff has gone on in other administrations, too.

We need a huge sea change in this country, one which puts the health and well-being of people over the profits of industry, one which acts like responisble adults not greedy children who think they can eat ice cream and cupcakes and not feel sick afterwards.

It's time to grow up, America.

After The Deluge

[UPDATE]:

Christian Grantham has more ....
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What happens when 300 million gallons of toxic coal sludge roars through your town? About what you’d expect:

Holly Schean, a waitress whose home, which she shared with her parents, was swept off its foundation when millions of cubic yards of ash breached a retaining wall early Monday morning, said, “They’re giving their apologies, which don’t mean very much.”

The T.V.A., Ms. Schean said, has not yet declared the house uninhabitable. But, she said: “I don’t need your apologies. I need information.”

Even as the authority played down the risks, the spill reignited a debate over whether the federal government should regulate coal ash as a hazardous material. Similar ponds and mounds of ash exist at hundreds of coal plants around the nation.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has issued no warnings about the potential chemical dangers of the spill, saying there was as yet no evidence of toxic substances. “Most of that material is inert,” said Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the authority. “It does have some heavy metals within it, but it’s not toxic or anything.”

Oh, I feel so much better now. Thanks, Mr. Francis.

I would not expect the federal government to give you accurate information at this point, Ms. Schean. These are the same people who lied about the air quality at Ground Zero because it was more important that we reopen the New York Stock Exchange.

It’s no great stretch to imagine the government putting the needs of the coal industry above the health and well being of a few Appalachian communities. In fact, it’s already been done:

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed stricter federal controls of coal ash, but backed away in the face of fierce opposition from utilities, the coal industry, and Clinton administration officials. At the time, the Edison Electric Institute, an association of power utilities, estimated that the industry would have to spend up to $5 billion in additional cleanup costs if the substance were declared hazardous. Since then, environmentalists have urged tighter federal standards, and the E.P.A. is reconsidering its decision not to classify the waste as hazardous.

Better late than never. Well, except for people like Holly Schean.

Here’s a sobering thought:

United States coal plants produce 129 million tons of postcombustion byproducts a year, the second-largest waste stream in the country, after municipal solid waste. That is enough to fill more than a million railroad coal cars, according to the National Research Council.

Another 2007 E.P.A. report said that over about a decade, 67 towns in 26 states had their groundwater contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps.

Here’s the thing. The coal ash is what’s “scrubbed” out of smokestacks at coal-fired electrical plants. It seems when burning fossil fuels one can spew this stuff into the air, causing all sorts of related environmental problems, or “scrub” it out of smokestacks, which causes related disposal problems.

Alternately, we could decide not to burn coal at all and focus our, er, energies on cleaner technologies. Just a thought.

This is not just a Tennessee problem. This is not just a Kentucky or West Virginia problem. This is happening all over the country. This affects you.

Do something about it.

Lying About Energy

Remember when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin’s so-called energy expertise as an asset? Remember when he said she “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America”?

Ah, good times, good times.

Turns out the Governor of Alaska knows so little about energy, she wildly exaggerated her own state’s energy production in that now-regrettable interview with Charlie Gibson. Palin claimed that Alaska "produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." But the most recent figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show the figure is more like 3.4 percent.

Palin wasn’t even close. Not even in the ballpark.

The AP suggests that the McCain-Palin campaign got that figure from the Resource Development Council for Alaska’s website, in which it states

"Alaska's oil and gas industry has produced more than 16 billion barrels of oil and 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas, accounting for an average of 20 percent of the entire nation's domestic production."

But they failed to read the fine print. That figure

is an average for what the state was producing throughout the 1980s and 1990s — long before Palin became governor at the end of 2006 — and production has steadily declined in recent years.

Good grief. Do these people not check any of their facts?

Apparently not:

To repeat: This assertion from the McCain/Palin campaign is demonstrably false, based on U.S. government sources. It's been debunked several times. And yet they keep repeating it.

Why repeat lies? McCain spokesman Brian Rogers offered some insight in a quote to Politico: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it."

Geez. Put team McCain-Palin in charge and who knows: we might even invade the wrong country.