American Trash Redux

Wow. Last week I wrote a post called “American Trash” where I said our culture does not value people.

And one week later I see this amazing TED talk connecting our throw-away consumer society to the way our culture devalues people. This Van Jones talk just blew me away. DO watch the whole thing:

Gov. Haslam: Who Do You Work For?

Pilot Oil or the people of Tennessee?

It’s a fair question in light of his decision to keep his Pilot Oil holdings out of the blind trust and now, THIS:

NASHVILLE -- Gov. Bill Haslam says he didn't know his freeze on new state regulations delayed a proposed environmental rule affecting his family's convenience stores and truck stops.

The would-be rule directs businesses and local governments to replace single-walled underground fuel storage tanks installed before July 2007 with double-walled tanks if they are used to dispense fuel blends with more than 10 percent ethanol.

Haslam announced the 45-day freeze on new regulations four days after taking office Jan. 15, part of his promised "top to bottom review" of state government. The freeze affects dozens of proposed rules.

I find it really hard to believe that Haslam didn’t know about a new state environmental rule requiring new fuel storage tanks at his Flying J Truck Stops. That just defies belief -- just as I’m sure he knows about a gazillion other new rules or proposed rules that could affect the bottom line at the family business.

More:

Haslam said in the interview he didn't think the rule affected Pilot a great deal because the company already has been double-walling its tanks. But the governor stressed he wasn't entirely certain that was the case.

On Friday, TDEC provided figures showing that at Pilot Flying J, 80 tanks are double-walled while 62 are single-walled.

At Pilot's convenience stores, 63 tanks are double-walled while 87 are single-walled, according to TDEC.

Nothing to see here, move along ....

This is why I’ve never understood the argument that having someone from the business community in elected office is better than, say, having a lawyer or scientist or community organizer. I happen to think clean groundwater is pretty freaking awesome, maybe even more awesome than the Haslam family fortune. Call me crazy, that’s just how I roll. That's why government makes regulations, after all -- even regulations that are unpopular with people who own truck stops and convenience stores. Because Tennessee's water resources belong to us all, and polluted ground water affects us all.

Anyway. I’m sure this is just the first of many future decisions our newly-minted governor will be making that benefit the family business at the expense of Tennesseeans.

Nobody could have anticipated ...

Shocking

Well, clearly the solution to this problem is more deregulation:

As early as February, oil-field service giant Halliburton was getting poor results in lab tests of the recipe for the cement it was planning to use, according to evidence collected by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

Three separate tests suggested that the mixture would be "unstable," according to a commission staff letter released Thursday.

Halliburton notified BP by e-mail about only one of the tests before the well explosion, according to the commission. The two companies went ahead with the cementing job anyway. Its failure became the first in a cascade of factors leading to the accident.

The results of a fourth Halliburton test - the only one indicating that the cement slurry might have been able to contain the high-pressure pool of oil and gas at the bottom of the Macondo well - were not available until the night of April 19 at the earliest and perhaps not until after the cement was poured, the commission staff said.

[...]

At the commission's request, Chevron recently carried out independent lab tests of a cement slurry that Halliburton said was the same as that used in the Macondo well. The commission staff said Chevron reported that "its lab personnel were unable to generate stable foam cement in the laboratory using the materials provided by Halliburton."

The commission staff said in the letter Thursday that the Halliburton tests before the Macondo well blowout and the new lab tests conducted by Chevron show that "Halliburton (and perhaps BP) should have considered redesigning the foam slurry before pumping it at the Macondo well."

Well, I’m sure the free hand of the market will take care of that. I mean, this is Halliburton, y’all! The company which fleeced taxpayers with its Iraq reconstruciton corruption, overcharged the U.S. government for fuel, tried to cover up a female employee’s alleged gang rape. The company which got fat off U.S. government warmongering then moved to Dubai to avoid paying taxes. Such a patriotic group of people.

So now BP can share some of the liability for the country’s worst oil spill with Dick Cheney’s old company. This should be fun to watch.

Yet ANOTHER Reason To Regulate Carbon Emmissions

Suck on this, Sen. Bob Corker:

"We found a link between post-menopausal breast cancer and exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is a 'marker' for traffic-related air pollution," says Dr. Goldberg. "Across Montreal, levels of NO2 varied between 5 ppb to over 30 ppb. We found that risk increased by about 25 per cent with every increase of NO2 of five parts per billion. Another way of saying this is that women living in the areas with the highest levels of pollution were almost twice as likely to develop breast cancer as those living in the least polluted areas."

[...]

Dr. Labrèche adds "Some studies published in the US have also shown possible links between cancer and air pollution. At the moment, we are not in a position to say with assurance that air pollution causes breast cancer. However, we can say that the possible link merits serious investigation. From a public health standpoint, this possible link also argues for actions aimed at reducing traffic-related air pollution in residential areas."

The study was a collaborative effort by researchers from the Research Institute of the MUHC, McGill University and Université de Montreal. It was funded by a research grant from the Canadian Cancer Society and another one from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

So, scientists have linked traffic-related air pollution to breast cancer. Yes, there needs to be more study, blabbedy blah. But traffic-related air pollution has already been linked to a host of other diseases: from cancer and leukemia to asthma and other upper respiratory diseases. All the more reason why we should dump polluting internal combustion engines in favor of EVs, light rail, and other non-polluting transportation.

And why my dig at Bob Corker? Because this was a Canadian study, of course. I can’t forget how last year, during the height of the healthcare debate, Sen. Corker embarrassed not just Tennessee but all of America by chastising Canada’s former Health Minister for sponging off of American innovation, technology and scientific breakthroughs.

Totally, completely, ridiculously false.

Yes On The Right To Hunt & Fish Amendment

[UPDATE]:

I did early voting this week. The language of this constitutional amendment, which talks about how it won't interfere with private property rights and economic activity, tells me it can't be used for any real environmental preservation. That and my usual antipathy for stupid rednecky bullshit legislation like this led me to say, "meh." Ultimately I voted no.

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R. Neal is on to something:

In order to exercise our constitutional right to hunt and fish there must be sustainable habitat for fish and game. Therefore, any action that threatens fish and wildlife habitat is unconstitutional.

That means stormwater runoff and agricultural waste that degrade water quality would be unconstitutional. So would coal-fired power plant emissions that degrade air and water quality and impact forest growth and sustainable fisheries. Mountaintop removal mining, clear cutting, and ridgetop development that destroy natural wildlife habitat would be a violation of your constitutional rights.

Wow that’s brilliant. He’s absolutely, 100% correct.

Ironically enough, similar state constitutional amendments are on the ballot in Arizona, Arkansas and South Carolina. Don’t you wonder how these things crop up all of a sudden at the same time?

The New Spiritual Work

Pastor John Shuck has posted another of his amazing sermons. One of these days Mr. Beale and I will make the long trek to Elizabethton (perhaps in my new all-electric vehicle) to hear him preach.

Here’s a taste, but do go and read the whole thing:

As a globalized industrial society we are going to be letting go of a way of living that extracts and exploits and destroys our home. At some point we will let it go. It is happening now. We will be relating to Earth and to one another in a new way. We are needing to learn to live with Earth rather than against it. It will be better for us if we are pro-active and conscious about it, rather than just letting it happen.

[...]

Those of us with conscience, those of us who see the need for systemic change have our work cut out for us. All of us need to be involved in peace and sustainability movements at many different levels based on our own sense of what we want to do and can do.

Whether we are taking on mountain top removal mining, or supporting local food growers, finding ways to help ourselves and others reduce consumption, or learning and teaching about what life will be like post-peak oil, now is the time to see this work as spiritual work.

Growing a garden is a subversive, spiritual act.

Not everyone can do that.

Not everything is for everyone.

We find our own way.

I’ve said this before, like a thousand gazillion times, but this idea that we all have to live in tents and churn our own butter to save the world is not just unrealistic, it’s not accurate. On top of which, it’s intellectually dishonest, since it’s the favorite argument of right wingers whose true agenda is to make sure we don’t change anything at all! So no, you people who think it’s so cute to point fingers at Al Gore’s electric bill, your argument amounts to nothing.

We can’t all do everything but we can each of us do something. It’s just as simple as that. If you want to ride around on a bicycle and live as a freegan in a zero-emmissions tent, that is great! Good for you. But the rest of the world is not going to join you in that endeavor. That is reality. And the thing is, they don’t need to. A tremendous impact could be had if everyone just did one thing. And it’s not going to be the same thing for everyone. Not everyone can plant a garden, but I bet everyone can close the blinds on their windows in the summer to keep the heat out. Or turn the thermostat down (or up, depending on the season). You get my drift here.

If you’re a legislator, you can start by initiating policies that encourage green technologies, such as this one. As Pastor Shuck says:

As Americans, we consume 18-20 million barrels of oil each day.

We extract 6-8 million barrels.

We need to import 10-14 million barrels.

Everyday.

We are five percent of the population and we consume 25% of the world's oil.

You don't keep up that level of disparity without massive bullying. I don’t say that to intentionally offend. I'm just calling it as I see it. That is why we spend more on our military than the next 20 or so nations combined.

We all have a part to play in changing that. The empire is going to be overturned, whether you take part in it or not -- some day the dead dinosaurs will have fueled their last generator and it will no longer be cost effective to devote our military to protecting the oil empire. My sense is that day is coming sooner than anyone expected.

On Sunday Tom Friedman wrote:

In essence, China Inc. just named its dream team of 16-state-owned enterprises to move China off oil and into the next industrial growth engine: electric cars.

Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan.

Friedman is right that our national priorities are supremely messed up. We’d prefer to fight wars and spend our grandchildren’s future on a massive military build-up in the Middle East to protect our access to oil. This is incredibly stupid, and the joke’s on us, since we financed all of this with the Chinese credit card. What fools we are. China has played a massive game of “gotcha” with America, letting us go off to sink our treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan and -- next up, Iran! -- while they are quietly getting off the oil tit.

But Friedman is wrong, because change is happening -- even (and most tellingly) in places where you’d think it doesn’t need to.

So we still have time to change our ways. And we are. Everyone can do something. One thing.

Whether you’re a suburban housewife deciding what to feed the family for dinner or city councilman or United States Senator or a book author, everyone can do one thing.

And that is all it’s going to take.

Turning A New Leaf

[UPDATE]: Just in the nick of time, too.

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Sorry, the headline is lame, I’m still on my first cup of coffee (which is how most of my posts are written), but I find this very exciting news:

State officials hope to give a boost to electric car sales with a $2,500 incentive to early buyers of the Nissan Leaf in Tennessee via a program that could later be extended to buyers of other alternative fuel vehicles.

Gov. Phil Bredesen, speaking during a TVA conference on electric vehicles Wednesday, said the state plans to tap a petroleum escrow fund marked for energy projects to provide rebates of $2,500 to the first 1,000 buyers of the new Nissan Leaf electric car later this year.

"There's no reason Tennessee can't take the lead … in the development of electric vehicles," the governor said. "We want their components to be made here and sold worldwide with a 'Made in Tennessee' label."

The $2.5 million state program, which provides perks on purchases in addition to generous federal incentives to buyers of electric cars, makes Tennessee at least the second state with such extra benefits. California has a $5,000 incentive for buyers of all-electric, plug-in vehicles.

I might as well ‘fess up and let everyone know I’ve been on the waiting list for the Nissan Leaf for the past five months. I work from home so it’s perfect for someone like me: My driving is mostly around town doing errands, going to hockey and football games, shopping, etc. I have solar panels on my roof so I won’t have to feel too guilty about the electricity I’m using for fuel. And our garage is perfect for installation of a home charger. Mr. Beale already drives a Nissan but his car was getting some mileage on it. So we’ll trade it in for a Leaf, and we’ve got the hybrid if we need to drive further than 100 miles, which is maybe eight times a year.

Anyway, I’m excited about the new incentives. There’s so much right about this program, not the least of which is the fact that these cars are made right here in Tennessee. I love that I'm creating jobs for my neighbors and also helping the environment.

I know our state gets a bum rap for a lot of the silly stuff we do, but the Tennessee EV program is actually quite advanced. We’re actually way ahead of states like Vermont and Oregon and whatnot, states one usually assumes to be green and progressive. We’ll have a network of charging stations so I could, actually, drive my EV all around the state (and perhaps I will and blog about it):

Jonathan Read, CEO of San Francisco firm ECOtality, said Tennessee would be the first state to take the electric vehicle beyond the 100-mile range that is rapidly becoming the standard for all-electric mass-production vehicles like the forthcoming Nissan LEAF and Ford Focus Electric expected next year.

He said: “With these plans completed, the state of Tennessee will emerge as a leader in EV adoption, and serve as a critical blueprint for how best to connect major population areas with EV infrastructure.

“We are thankful for the input TVA and our partners in each city have provided throughout the planning process. We are taking a smart and strategic approach to the deployment of EV infrastructure so as to best create a connected, highly functional EV charging network,” added Mr Read.

Kim Greene, president of Strategy and External Relations at TVA, said there was a “groundswell of enthusiasm” already growing in the TVA area and the entire state as a result of The EV Project.

I’m just so proud of our state for being leaders in this critically important area. I’m proud of TVA and I’m proud of Gov. Bredesen.

And I’m worried. Just a teensy weensy bit worried. Because here’s the thing that’s so radical about EVs: no internal combustion engine! Wrap your head around that one for a minute. That means no tailpipe. That means no gas station stops -- ever. No need for fill-ups. No need for oil changes. Nada.

The only reason you will ever need to stop at a gas station is to buy a soft drink. And think about how Mr. Haslam’s family makes its money: gas stations. So, if Bill Haslam is our next governor (and it's looking likely) I do have a concern that he will self-servingly try to obstruct this program. It’s mostly a federal program and he can’t mess with it too much, I don’t think, and it looks like it may be too far along for him to screw it up even if he wanted to, but I think it’s a fair question.

Having seen the excellent documentary “Who Killed The Electric Car?” and seen how politics can destroy a pilot program (especially when the corporation behind it isn’t fully on board) I think my fears are justified.

In California, people literally were trying to hide their EV’s from GM. The auto maker went around and repossessed every car it could find when Bush's EPA challenged the state's air quality law which created the market for EVs. Eventually every EV was crushed. Stupidly, of course, but they did it. It was about politics, nothing more, and GM paid for its stupidity and short-sightedness. Let’s hope they learned a lesson because the EV ain’t dead, it’s alive and well and the wave of the future.

And I am just putting Nissan and Bill Haslam and the oil lobby on notice: not again. From my cold, dead hands, people.

Ain’t No Stopping The Green Train

NOTE: Blogger is being hiccupy again today, esp. in regards to comments. They have 10 minutes to get their shit together before I move this blog to WordPress. Sick of the BS.

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Via the awesome mistermix at Balloon Juice comes some good news for a change.

Namely: Suck it Big Oil and King Coal. We don’t need your lying cheating cold deadbeating, two timing double dealing mean mistreating polluting energy source!

Analysts at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore Labs have run the numbers on the US energy use in 2009, and come up with similar results to those obtained when examining the country's carbon emissions: energy use is dropping at a pace that is faster than would be expected based on the slowing economy alone. Even better, the growth in renewable energy, coupled with increased use of natural gas, is displacing significant amounts of coal.

[...]

According to the Livermore analysts, both economics and higher-efficiency appliances and vehicles helped push down the energy use last year, dropping consumption from 2008's 99 Quads. Coal and petroleum use both declined significantly (coal was down by 10 percent), with more efficient vehicles accounting for much of the latter. Lowered electricity use accounted for much of coal's drop, as did displacement by natural gas. But total natural gas use also dropped, at least in part because solar, hydro, and geothermal power all increased slightly, and wind power increased significantly. It's now at 0.7 Quads, and on pace to clear a full Quad within the next couple of years.

Renewables and nuclear are now supplying nearly 17 percent of the country's annual supply of energy, a fraction that's likely to grow if current trends continue. And most indications are that the trends will continue. The US auto fleet's fuel efficiency is slated to rise over the next several years, and the Obama administration is pushing to approve further wind and solar projects.

Sluggish demand for oil is prompting oil companies to sell or shutter their refineries, as well. The energy transformation is happening, Cap and Trade or no.

I've been meaning to do an update on the Beale household's great solar experiment. Haven't had time to pour pore through the numbers but I will say this: during the hottest most miserable summer I can remember, at a time when we had two extra people living in our house (our friends from India), we still have not paid an electric bill since March. And March's bill was, if I recall correctly, something in the neighborhood of $30.

(Tip of the cowboy hat to the late great Harlan Howard and his cowriter Kostas and the amazing Patty Loveless, who is a coal country girl and is actively trying to end the heinous practice of mountaintop removal mining from whence we get coal).

Big Oil Will Get Right On That

I’m sure this effort will be about as successful as this one was. Meaning, squat.

But at least people are trying. I don't think these corporations give a shit, but so what else is new.

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.

Declaration Of Interdependence

Steve McCallion has a great little read up at Fast Company, and has issued a challenge. He writes:

America has mortgaged its future to maintain the symbols of personal freedom (the house, the car, the big screen TV) at the expense of real freedom. We owe China almost one trillion dollars; our public education system is approaching collapse; and, we rank number one globally for our obesity rate, with more than a third of our adult population being technically obese. America’s current understanding of freedom is unsustainable and raises the question, “Are we really free?”

McCallion says what's needed is a new vision to move America forward, one that can be summarzied in a "Declaration of Interdependence." And he challenges us to articulate this vision and develop a movement to promote it, one which he writes will “awaken a new collective spirit.”

I agree with McCallion completely, and have written many times about our need not just for "reform" but a complete and total reinvention of how we do things and how we look at things. With this in mind I stumbled upon Gus Speth’s excellent piece from the May issue of Solutions, "Towards a New Economy and a New Politics.” It’s long and maybe a little wonky but it picks up where McCallion leaves off. There are some great ideas here, articulated clearly. In particular I like this:

Before it is too late, America should begin to move to a post-growth society where working life, the natural environment, our communities, and the public sector are no longer sacrificed for the sake of mere GDP growth; where the illusory promises of continuous growth no longer provide an excuse for neglecting to deal generously with compelling social needs; and where citizen democracy is no longer held hostage to the growth imperative.

That’s a great Declaration of Interdependence if I’ve ever heard one. I’ve written about this before (notably here and here) but it bears repeating: what ails the nation and indeed the entire world is that all of our metrics, institutions and barometers of success no longer serve us. This has become abundantly clear as one institution after another has failed and we stand powerless in the face of enormous challenges. The world is a different place now, bearing 7 billion humans, all of whom are more interdependent than ever. The conventional wisdom, the generally accepted modus operandi, our entire structure must change. We need a complete transformation at our deepest levels.

This is great news, because Americans are really good at reinventing themselves. However, it’s bad news because there are established institutions with a very powerful interest in maintaining the status quo.

Speth outlines some very clear policies that are required to bring about this reinvention, many of them we’ve discussed here: policies like making the things we buy reflect their true cost. He also recognizes a need for political reforms (campaign finance, regulating lobbyists, etc.). It’s a great read and I urge everyone to head over to Solutions to give it a look.

As it relates to the McCallion piece, I think Speth actually articulates a great vision for the future:

Americans now face a great imperative to build a new economy—a sustaining economy. Sustaining people, communities, and nature must henceforth be seen as the core goals of economic activity, not hoped-for byproducts of market success, growth for its own sake, and modest regulation. The watchword of the sustaining economy is caring: caring for each other, for the natural world, and for the future.

I’m sure this will sound like typical liberal unicorns and lollipops to the craven Glenn Beck types but I think it’s important to remember that these voices are simply the amplified protests of the established interests trying to protect their turf. The reality is, the status quo no longer works for the majority of people. Something has to change, and we can either be thoughtful and deliberate about that change now or we can see it take shape inside the maelstrom and chaos that is civil unrest. Because what we have now is unsustainable and change will happen.

Endangered Fireflies

I thought it was just our yard but sadly, no: fireflies are disappearing, going the way of bumble honeybees and Gulf Coast oysters. Yet another thing we humans have screwed up.

When I was a kid fireflies were ubiquitous, a staple of summer. My sister and I would collect them in mayonnaise jars and try to make lanterns. I’m sure everyone has a memory like that.

This summer I’ve seen precious few of them blinking away. I thought maybe it was our unusually harsh winter, or perhaps the flood. Now I remember that NES came through last year and cleared out the hedge separating our yard from our neighbors’ -- the place where we always saw the most fireflies. I suspect that destroyed their nesting area.

Endangered fireflies? Say it ain’t so, folks! Isn't there one species we can keep from destroying? We're like Midas in reverse, everything we touch turns to shit. This makes me very, very depressed.

The Boston Museum of Science is asking people around the country to help track fireflies in their yards. You can join Firefly Watch here.

How We Wrecked The Ocean

This TED lecture from ecologist Jeremy Jackson explains really well what I've been saying about the importance of understanding resources not just economically but as living systems. When "tree huggers" mobilize to save an endangered snail darter, it's not because everyone is so enamored of a little fish. It's because they understand that every living organism plays an important role in that system. Get rid of one component and you throw the whole thing out of balance. No one thought sea urchins were a big deal until they were gone, the seaweed took over the coral reef, and now there's no fish.

It's almost 20 minutes long but well worth it.

Upside Down

Nearly two weeks ago Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski defeated a bill that would increase BP’s liability cap to clean up the mess it made in the Gulf of Mexico. Her stated reasons (looking out for the oil industry’s “little guys”: all together now, awwwwwww!) were completely bogus, as I explained in my post here. It was basically a big fat kiss to the multinational corporations which keep Alaska’s economy running. Why not just say it and be done with it? You’re not fooling anyone.

And now Murkowski has another gift for her friends at Big Oil: it’s called the Murkowski Resolution. This would basically gut the Clean Air Act by making it illegal for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Yes, you read that right. The Clean Air Act would no longer allow the EPA to regulate the crap that keeps our air from being clean.

While you’re trying to wrap your head around that legislative oxymoron, here’s another one for you: The Murkowski Resolution will come up for a vote on June 10 and three of the Democratic Party’s worst offenders are supporting it:

Murkowski's resolution would need 51 votes to clear the chamber. She already has 41 co-sponsors, including three Democrats: Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Well, isn’t that special. These three names are familiar burrs in progressive knickers, and I would just love to see them squirm on this one. Especially Lincoln, who is facing a tough primary race.

The timing on this should be lost on no one. The New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert has an excellent commentary about the Gulf oil spill in this week’s issue. She takes us back to 1969 and the twin environmental disasters of the Santa Barbara oil spill and burning of the Cuyahoga River:

By the end of the year, Congress had passed the National Environmental Policy Act, known by the acronym NEPA, which requires federal agencies to file impact statements for all actions that could have a significant ecological effect. The following spring, millions of people took to the streets for Earth Day, and by the second anniversary of the spill President Richard Nixon had created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law the Clean Air Act.

For you young kids who don’t remember: Nixon was a Republican.

So now it’s 40 years later, we have a Democrat in the White House and we’re battling an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that, as Kolbert writes, “makes the Santa Barbara spill look like a puddle.”

We’ve had coal miners die in West Virginia and Kentucky, and we’ve had 1.1 billion gallons of coal sludge cover 300 acres of Roane County, Tennessee. And instead of a massive call to action to stop our polluting ways, we have Republicans and a handful of Democrats voting to gut the Clean Air Act and tie the EPA’s hands on regulating air pollutants.

Crazy.

I really hope everyone gets on the phone and calls their senators about this, pronto. Because if this Murkowski Resolution passes in the wake of a massive oil spill, then what that’s going to tell Washington and the rest of the world is that we really just don’t give a crap about the planet.

First Admit You Have A Problem

As all we continue to watch the unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico let's all remember the rest of the world's oceans and the creatures who live in it. Here, this video might help:

All In The Family

Apparently what’s most important to BP in this oil spill disaster is helping out their corporate cronies, not trying to minimize the toxic soup brewing in the Gulf:

BP PLC continues to stockpile and deploy oil-dispersing chemicals manufactured by a company with which it shares close ties, even though other U.S. EPA-approved alternatives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective.

[...]

So far, BP has told federal agencies that it has applied more than 400,000 gallons of a dispersant sold under the trade name Corexit and manufactured by Nalco Co., a company that was once part of Exxon Mobil Corp. and whose current leadership includes executives at both BP and Exxon. And another 805,000 gallons of Corexit are on order, the company said, with the possibility that hundreds of thousands of more gallons may be needed if the well continues spewing oil for weeks or months.

But according to EPA data, Corexit ranks far above dispersants made by competitors in toxicity and far below them in effectiveness in handling southern Louisiana crude.

Well, that’s unfortunate. But let’s find out more about Corexit:

Critics say Nalco, a joint partnership with Exxon Chemical that was spun off in the 1990s, boasts oil-industry insiders on its board of directors and among its executives, including an 11-year board member at BP and a top Exxon executive who spent 43 years with the oil giant.

"It's a chemical that the oil industry makes to sell to itself, basically," said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser for Defenders of Wildlife.

Well that’s certainly nice. So they make money when they drill oil and they make money when they spill it. Neat.

Of course, I’m concerned about the toxicity of this chemical, and the fact that more effective alternatives exist. It’s not just toxic to wildlife, but humans, too. Workers involved with the ExxonValdez cleanup had severe health problems some link to the toxic dispersants.

Meanwhile:

EPA has not taken a stance on whether one dispersant should be used over another, leaving that up to BP. All the company is required to do is to choose an EPA-approved chemical, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters yesterday during a conference call aimed at addressing questions about dispersants being used in efforts to contain the Gulf spill.

"Our regular responsibilities say, if it's on the list and they want to use it, then they are preauthorized to do so," Jackson said.

”Regular responsibilities”? ”Regular”?! Excuse me but there is nothing “regular” about this oil spill. We need some fucking leadership here, people. The spill is bad enough, but we’re compounding the situation with hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemical compounds we’re piling on top of the oil. We're basically poisoning the ocean food supply, destroying the economy of the coastal region, which let me add Lisa Jackson still refers to quaintly as a "way of life." No, it's not a way of life. It's our FOOD.

They don’t get it.

Imagine

Imagine an MTA bus which whirrs silently down Broadway, instead of the roar and rumble and squeaks we now associate with public transportation. Instead of belching diesel into the air, this bus doesn’t even have a tailpipe.

They already exist in Shanghai, China.

Imagine whisper-quiet police patrol cars, able to accelerate from zero to 60 in a matter of seconds. You’ll find them in Hong Kong and Japan.

Imagine grabbing a taxi at the Nashville airport after a long day’s travel. Your taxi is whisper quiet, and its electronic battery is fully charged, because it was swapped out for a fresh one between fares. They already do that in Japan.

The change is coming. Like it or not, it is. During the Bush years we took a huge step back, as if someone had pushed the rewind button and America shot back in time to 1982. Big Oil wants us hooked to that IV, GM didn’t really want to sell the EV1, the dealerships didn’t want to lose out on all that oil change money.

But progress happens, folks. You can’t stop it. You can’t really even slow it. We’ve picked up where we left off after the eight years we lost under the thumb of the oil barons.

Because whether we take part in it or not, the world is changing. Germany wants 1 million electric cars by 2020.

Spain aims to achieve that goal by 2014, and they are getting a hefty assist from Ford.

Change is coming. The (electric) train is leaving the station. Get on board, nation, or be left behind.

TVA is on board:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The Tennessee Valley Authority, the Electric Power Research Institute and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Friday announced that they will test and deploy solar-assisted charging stations for electric vehicles across the state of Tennessee as part of one of the largest electric transportation projects in U.S. history.

The revolution is happening. Get with it, or get rolled under the wheels of that whisper-quiet electric bus.

Ordinary Hero Philip McCrory

Things are getting hairy in the Gulf of Mexico:

Hairdressers, pet groomers and farmers worldwide are collecting hair and fur to help mop up the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The hair, stuffed into nylon tights, helps booms soak up thick oil spewing from the blown-out well off Louisiana.

About 370,000 salons are taking part, said the charity organising the massive "hair lift". Matter of Trust is largely co-ordinating its efforts via Facebook.

Some 450,000lbs (204,000kg) of hair and fur is said to being arriving each day.

Interestingly, I just read about this last month in the wonderful book Natural Capitalism: Creating The Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken & Amory Lovins. They wrote:

Nature’s design lessons can often be turned to an unexpected purpose. Watching a TV report on sea otters soaked by the 1989 ExxonValdez oil spill, Alabama hairdresser Philip McCrory noticed that otter fur soaked up oil extremely well. This was a good trait for keeping the otter dry in clean water, but for the same reason, fatal when the otter had to swim through oil. Could the characteristic be exploited to help pull oil out of the water? Could comparably oil-prone human hair do the same thing? McCrory took hair swept from his salon floor, stuffed it into a pair of tights to make a dummy otter, and threw it into a baby pool filled with water and a gallon of motor oil. In two minutes, he reported, “the water was crystal clear.” Salon clients who worked for NASA put him in touch with an expert there who ran a larger-scale test. It found that “1.4 million pounds of hair contained in mesh pillows could have soaked up the entire Exxon Valdez oil spill in a week,” saving much of the $2 billion Exxon spent to capture only 12 percent of the 11 million gallons spilled.

I love this on so many levels. I love how it shows that old fashioned American ingenuity we always brag about. I love that it was an Alabama hairdresser who thought this up and now, as oil washes ashore in Alabama, Mr. McCrory can see his invention put to use to protect his own state’s beaches.

I love that it shows how wonderful natural systems are, how we are better off when we mirror our technology to what nature has created, instead of trying to bend nature to human creations.

I love that it shows how much ordinary citizens care about this planet: enough to inspire someone to get off the sofa, test an idea, and then take that extra step to bring it NASA’s attention.

Because, perhaps the most chilling thing I read in Natural Capitalism was this:

The main obstacles are no longer technical or economic but cultural.

This is very sad. It means we have the way, but not the will. But the actions of ordinary citizens gives me hope. Maybe, as more Philip McCrories step up, people in Washington will start paying attention, too.

Oh Great Diviner Pat Robertson, What Is God Trying To Tell Us Now?

First we had a coal sludge pond disaster in Tennessee, then we had a coal mining disaster in West Virginia, followed by an oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and now we have a fucking nuclear power plant leak. For reals, y’all:

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Radioactive water that leaked from the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state’s environmental chief said Friday.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has ordered the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station to halt the spread of contaminated water underground, even as it said there was no imminent threat to drinking water supplies.

The department launched a new investigation Friday into the April 2009 spill and said the actions of plant owner Exelon Corp. have not been sufficient to contain water contaminated with tritium.

Tritium is found naturally in tiny amounts and is a product of nuclear fission. It has been linked to cancer if ingested, inhaled or absorbed through the skin in large amounts.

Yeeeearrrgh, as if the real housewives of New Jersey aren’t toxic enough. I’m sure the snooze media will ignore this story because they haven’t thoroughly flogged to death the other two stories they are covering this week. But let me just say: Holy crap.

Plus, there was this accident last year and it's already contaminated the water table?

Quick, let’s Google “Solar Power Accident” and see what we get.

I’ll wait.

Oh, and Lamar Alexander? You still think 100 of these contamination factories is a good idea? 'Cause I'm thinking, not just No but HELL NO.

Failure To Anticipate

Damn, I’m so sick of this shit:

BP suggested in a 2009 exploration plan and environmental impact analysis for the well that an accident leading to a giant crude oil spill — and serious damage to beaches, fish and mammals — was unlikely, or virtually impossible.

Where have we heard this before?

How about the failure to anticipate 9/11. The failure to anticipate post-war problems in Iraq. The failure to anticipate the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

Nobody anticipated the failure of the northeast electric grid in August 2003. Nobody anticipated that deregulating the energy market in California would make consumers vulnerable to greedy Enron energy traders manipulating the energy supply for fun and profit.

Nobody could have anticipated the breach of levees protecting New Orleans. Or the collapse of a major interstate bridge in Minneapolis. Certainly nobody anticipated big shitpile blowing up in everyone’s faces.

Locally, TVA failed to anticipate the breach of a leaky coal ash pond, spilling 1 billion gallons of toxic sludge onto East Tennessee.

And on ... and on ...

Once upon a time we were able to anticipate things. We were able to set up systems that prepared for the worst, and mostly things ran pretty well. Now we stand slack-jawed in amazement as one major fail after another rains down all around us.

What the hell is going on?

I think it’s two-fold. I think part of it is that we’ve been blessed over the past 50 years to live in a country where we did worry about infrastructure and regulatory measures. Things worked pretty smoothly, for the most part. Sure there have been problems, but mostly they were few and far between so we become comfortable--maybe even complacent. We started unraveling the oversight which had shielded us from the worst disasters, and we stopped paying attention to infrastructure. Predictably, things have started falling apart.

But there’s a larger issue at play. We live in a far more complex world than ever before. And with greater technological complexity comes a need to change how we calculate risk, how we “anticipate.”

Grist’s Peter Meyer touched on this after the Kingston Coal Ash disaster and that post is worth revisiting here. It’s an excellent post which doesn’t lend itself to pulling out easy excerpts. So I urge everyone to read it.

In a nutshell, Meyer explains that things like Environmental Impact Statements are too often wrong because they

are still based on what economists call “expected utility theory” (EUT). Based on past experience and recorded data, we project the probability of different events and use those odds in combination with the “utility” or value associated with each alternative event to arrive at an expected value for a course of action.

But in the case of the Kingston coal ash disaster,

The expected value calculation appears to have assigned a zero probability to a spill as massive as the one that occurred. That’s as if you carried an umbrella in the rain even though you might melt if you got wet, and assigned a zero probability to the possibility of high winds or hail. That’s not rational.

Assigning that zero likelihood also meant that there was no serious effort to calculate the cost of such a massive failure.

What this helps to see is that the expected value calculation—and all our NEPA-mandated Environmental Impact Statements for federal projects —depend on key assumptions that are unlikely to be true even if we make conscious allowance for normal accidents we tend to ignore.

Getting back to the B.P. oil spill, it seems we have the exact same scenario:

The plan for the Deepwater Horizon well, filed with the federal Minerals Management Service, said repeatedly that it was "unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur from the proposed activities."

The company conceded a spill would impact beaches, wildlife refuges and wilderness areas, but argued that "due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are expected."

Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs, Mississippi-based environmental lawyer and board member for the Gulf Restoration Network, said he doesn’t see anything in the document suggesting BP addressed the kind of technology needed to control a spill at that depth of water.

Just like with the TVA coal ash spill, it seems the BP plan assigned a zero probability to a spill, meaning that there was no serious effort to calculate the cost of a massive failure.

In other words: a failure to anticipate. Going into this project planners already determined that there would be no well failure, because no wells had ever failed at that depth. That’s not just unrational, it’s not factual: just as with the TVA coal ash pond, which had been leaking for years before finally bursting, this Deepwater Horizon rig had a nine-year history of spills and accidents. Still, it appears a plan for drilling the world’s deepest offshore oil well was written--and approved--with the assumption there would be no spill.

And I daresay every Environmental Impact Assessment for an offshore oil plan has that same flaw.

Planners, regulators and policy analysts need to take a look at this. There is a deep flaw in how we calculate risk. Our world is riskier but we seem to be living in a happy ignorance. Relax, don't worry, nothing could ever go wrong!

This is a dangerous attitude. We cannot afford to live in happy ignorance any longer. The old adage "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong," should be the rule when calculating environmental risks in sensitive areas.