I have been meaning to post, but it's just been so busy lately. And not in a good way. My cat, Cokey, got very sick a few days ago, and the continuing complications have mounted to the point where his life is threatened and he needs surgery to survive.
I try to exercise some restraint when blogging here, because this is a news commentary blog. But in keeping with the double meaning of the blog's intent (trying to write as a way to survive), I think it deserves a place here. There are literal levels of survival: needing water, air, food, medical treatment when necessary, etc.. Then there is figurative survival: being able to pay the bills to keep you clothed and sheltered, to salvage some sanity and kindness in an often chaotic and cruel world.
Cokey now needs surgery to survive, literally, and I need him in my life to salvage a bit of solace in a world and a life situation that has not been too kind to me. I admit my selfishness. There are far worse off things in this world than a fatally ill cat. But in my small universe, his love keeps me sane and his very existence is one thing that keeps pushing me to create a more humane and sustainable world.
Animals matter. Their collective presence forms a complex web of life, a natural system of checks and balances that we humans, even if in our persistent hubris deny, allow us to survive as a species. We often extract ourselves from nature. We acknowledge the aesthetic value of an animal: the gracious flight of a heron, a cute kitten getting its belly scratched on youtube, a puppy we cross paths with on the sidewalk. But we often fail to take that to the next level, to see the ways in which animals lay out an evolutionary path from us to them. We also fail to understand and truly live as though, WE NEED THEM.
But we do. In some cases for food, in others for companionship. We need them to continue their roles in the food chain we depend on. And yes, we need them for their companionship, and even for their beauty. Animals are a living art form, but they're also so much more than that. Without them, we are left with only oil spills and the computers that give us carpal tunnel. We are left only with the cars we drive and leave in their wake the casualties of our greedy need to move fast through our lives to places we don't even need to go or see places we don't even really need to see. I am guilty of this, too, and I am sorry.
After receiving my B.A. in Literature and Journalism, I went back to school to study Wildlife Conservation. This was prompted by reading a volume of books on wolves, and my horror at the things we've done to these animals whom have close-knit family units that so closely resemble our own. I couldn't keep reading the stories of shooting them from helicopters, or gassing dens of wolf pups, without doing something. Anything.
In school, I studied animal behavior. Earlier last century, experiments were conducted where Rhesus monkey babies were removed from their mother and placed with mechanical monkeys and no other form of contact with the living for weeks at a time. The babies weren't stupid. They knew the robot was not alive, nor their mother, though they still clung to them desperately, the way an abandoned child would grip a stuffed animal while still knowing it's not alive. These monkey matured to become hostile, even cruel. Much like humans in similar situations will. But to me, this outcome would seem apparent, and the irony implicit in the cruelty of its being conducted haunts me. The poet Anne Sexton has a line in one of her poems, "Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much, it knows nothing." These words seem applicable here.
And this line can also be applied to the situation in the Gulf. The recent news reports now figure we have well over 300 birds and 200 sea turtles (which are highly endangered) dead as a result of the spill in the Gulf. These numbers will continue to grow. And yet, government and industry continues to assert that we can continue offshore drilling...as though these deaths, though sad, don't rock the depth of our delicate chains.
Wildlife conservation has often been depicted at being put at odds with the human causes of industry and employment. And, in a way, this is true. But this is because our enterprises and economy are built on foundations that are inherently unsustainable. We have become so entrenched in these systems, we feel they are our only option as a species or society, even as they degrade and destroy the fabric of our natural world. Even as it threatens us all with extinction.
Just as we had to rip down the institution of slavery (which our country actually heavily relied on economically) to recreated a new paradigm, so we need to do this now. This isn't just about the sadness of seeing dead bird slick with black oil and floating face-down in murky waters.
They deserve the dignity of being able to spread their wings and fly, just as the sea turtles deserve our respect as our elders, to deposit their eggs in the sand and live out their lifetime.
And I guess this is the main idea of this post. Animals deserve to be treated with dignity by us. This is a strong sentiment of mine. It is why I do not eat meat (due to the ubiquity of factory farms), use personal products that conduct experiments or testing on animals, and why I try to work against the mass culls of companion animals (between 6 and 12 MILLION perfectly adoptable animals are euthanized every year because they are often surrendered by their owners for frivolous reasons).
My cat Cokey also deserves a life of dignity and one relatively free from pain. That is why I balk when I am asked if want to put him to sleep instead of getting him the surgery he needs to live a long and healthy life. I told the hospital I will get the money somehow (again, this blog is about trying to scrape by as a scribe, and being a writer means I don't have the funds to pay thousands of dollars on demand out of pocket). I told them I would sell my car, though it's a 13 year-old beater, so I doubt its sale would put a dent in the expenses of Cokey's surgery.
I will always choose my cat over my car. Come to think of it, giving up my car would be me choosing the wildlife in the Gulf over oil. So again, I think the choice is clear. The pragmatists like to argue that if we can't drill offshore, we can't drive our cars.
You know what I say? Good. Let all the oil wells and refineries shut down. Then we'd actually have to really change our grid and how we live. Then we wouldn't have to choose between oil and wildlife....
Because extinction shouldn't be an option!
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Friday, May 28, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
The American Power Act Comes to Congress
Okay, so I am going to make this post relatively brief. This past Wednesday, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts unveiled his new climate bill, the American Power Act, which he collaborated on with Senators Lieberman and Graham. The bill is somewhat more progressive than I thought it would be, and it derives some of the dividend model of the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR Act that I have been supporting. You can view Kerry's own description of the bill on Grist here.
Though it is too soon to make a complete judgement of the bill, based on what I've read so far, and based on a teleconference I partook in with environmental leaders in D.C. yesterday spearheaded by 1Sky, I am not convinced this bill will effectively address climate change.
Though Kerry claims that the EPA will still be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from some of the oldest and dirtiest coal-powered plants, the bill would still essentially strip it of a great amount of its Supreme-Court mandated authority over carbon. If I am understanding it correctly, the bill would also dismantle regional and state regulations, such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, here in the Northeast. Again, if I am understanding it correctly, the Clean Air Act sets certain baseline national limits for criteria pollutants that are regulated under its National Ambient Air Quality Standards. All states must adhere to the minimum standards of the federal law; however, states have autonomy under the CAA to pass more stringent laws than the national mandates. I believe as it is currently written, this bill might be undermining state autonomy to pass tougher climate laws than those proposed in the Kerry bill.
The Kerry bill also still heavily relies on offsets to achieve many of its emission targets. Offsets programs are not a valid source of emission cuts--there is no way to monitor them, and the emission decreases they are intended to achieve could take decades to a half-century to reach. We do not have that time. Also, quite frankly, a vast majority of offset programs are usually proven to be scams. Furthermore, APA would designate authority of overseeing offset distribution to the U.S. Department of Agriculture as opposed to the EPA, setting up a fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario.
On the issue of adaptation for poor communities both here and overseas, the Kerry bill offers a pittance of an amount, esimated to be lower than that promised by Secretary Clinton during the Copenhagan talks. Additionally, this adaptation assistance would not kick in until 2019. Though the Oxfam representative who spoke about the funding, denounced it as a "day late and a dollar short," she still declared that Oxfam ultimately supports the bill.
The Kerry bill makes the mistep of still allowing expansion of offshore drilling (though states will have the option of getting an exemption), and offers obscene giveaways to the industry, particularly for coal and nuclear. Imagine what is happening right now in the Gulf. Now imagine that was a nuclear blast instead of an oil rig explosion. We should not be enabling the perpetuation of dirty and dangerous energy sources. If we wouldn't want to live near such facilities for fear of our safety, then we should not force others to, to satiate our gluttonous demands for energy (coal and nuclear plants will inevitably be zoned in proximity to poor communities).
And here is where I am reaching an unprecedented point of frustration with the environmental movement. I understand that compromise is an intrinsic part of politics. I worked as an intern in D.C. for the environmental coalition, where I worked on campaigns through lobbying and grassroots outreach. However, the level of compromise the coalition has submitted to has become so large as to completely undermine (or even counteract) their efforts. When dealing with the issue of endangered land or species, sometimes it makes sense to allow the sacrifice of some parcels of land, or X amount of species in a certain region to save it from overall extinction. This logic does not apply to climate change. We have a very short timeframe with which to make the cuts necessary to avert catasrophic climate change. We cannot compromise with the hard laws of the physical universe, but we think we can. I have been called naive for pushing for a harder bill...I have been told that I do not understand the "reality" of this. Because we have reached a point where our politics and our money is somehow more real to us that the planet and its tipping points. We do not understand that we cannot bribe or blackmail it, or meet it half-way. We do not seem to understand that it was around for billions of years before us, and will be here long after we are gone.
This isn't about saving the planet. This is about saving us. But we're too stupid to see that.
The other day I was informed by a member of the environmental lobby that though they have deep reservations with the Kerry bill, and believe that the Cantwell-Collins bill is superior in terms of achieving more realistic progress on addressing climate change, that they will still support the Kerry bill. The reasoning for this support is this: the fossil fuel and agribusiness industries (the sectors largely accountable for anthropogenic climate change), do not support the CLEAR Act because they don't have influence in it. The politicians do not want to offend the corporations, and most amazingly, the environmental movement does not want to pressure the politicians to thumb their noses at the corporations. The environmental coalition that we have entrusted with protecting and advocating us is basically abandoning its (our) ideals to compromise with corporations. This movement has forgotten its roots. No important paradigm shift in our civilization has occurred if not from the bottom up. But the movement now works from the top down, allowing industries to decide our future instead of putting them in their places.
I see this move as a direct result of January's Supreme Court ruling that audaciously declared that corporations should be afforded the rights of individuals and their money equated with speech. The American people have been outspent because they don't speak in dollar signs.
Surely, surely, we must see the problem here?
We cannot let corporations write our climate bills. By doing so, they are writing our death certificate as a species. The same day Kerry released his bill, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) released a report that declared that unless the world takes quick, "radical and creative action" to conserve our planet's biodiversity, that the ecosystems that support human populations are at risk of a complete, collective collapse. The Kerry bill distracts us from such action with the same old tired politics.
So, where is the hope here? My time working with the environmental lobby overlapped with one of the most rabidly anti-environmental administrations and Congresses in recent history (2005-2006: During the heydays of the Bush Administration and when the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate). During that time, we had a number of large environmental victories even when mainstream environmental reporters smugly stated our efforts were in vain. This shows that the environmental coalition, if and when it decides to stick to its guns and dig in its heels, is capable of performing political miracles.
Yet, ironically, with Democratic control of both Congressional Houses and a Democratic President who is relatively amendable to environmental progress, we find our political and environmental leaders rendered almost impotent. They can't get it up to meet the challenge of climate change.
I would argue that it's because we feel we need to play nice with the Dems. And, of course, the Democrats have always been soft-spined. Well, I don't think this is the time for that.
We need to remind the environmental coalition that it is responsible for protecting our interests, not that of the politicians', and certainly not that of the corporate sector. They need to be holding Congress' feet to the fire on this, instead of giving them ego strokes. We cannot broker deals with the bad guys in this case--what would today's nation be like if we let our politicians sit down with segregationalists and broker a deal on civil rights? Too much is at stake here.
If they cannot come around, those of us consumed with concern about our warming world will need to part ways with our environmental coalition, which may simply be too entrenched in the political atmosphere to understand whose side they are on.
For more on the American Power Act, please check out:
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/05/12/12climatewire-kerry-lieberman-to-end-the-suspense-with-cli-19936.html
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/13-5
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2010/2010-05-12-01.html
Though it is too soon to make a complete judgement of the bill, based on what I've read so far, and based on a teleconference I partook in with environmental leaders in D.C. yesterday spearheaded by 1Sky, I am not convinced this bill will effectively address climate change.
Though Kerry claims that the EPA will still be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from some of the oldest and dirtiest coal-powered plants, the bill would still essentially strip it of a great amount of its Supreme-Court mandated authority over carbon. If I am understanding it correctly, the bill would also dismantle regional and state regulations, such as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, here in the Northeast. Again, if I am understanding it correctly, the Clean Air Act sets certain baseline national limits for criteria pollutants that are regulated under its National Ambient Air Quality Standards. All states must adhere to the minimum standards of the federal law; however, states have autonomy under the CAA to pass more stringent laws than the national mandates. I believe as it is currently written, this bill might be undermining state autonomy to pass tougher climate laws than those proposed in the Kerry bill.
The Kerry bill also still heavily relies on offsets to achieve many of its emission targets. Offsets programs are not a valid source of emission cuts--there is no way to monitor them, and the emission decreases they are intended to achieve could take decades to a half-century to reach. We do not have that time. Also, quite frankly, a vast majority of offset programs are usually proven to be scams. Furthermore, APA would designate authority of overseeing offset distribution to the U.S. Department of Agriculture as opposed to the EPA, setting up a fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario.
On the issue of adaptation for poor communities both here and overseas, the Kerry bill offers a pittance of an amount, esimated to be lower than that promised by Secretary Clinton during the Copenhagan talks. Additionally, this adaptation assistance would not kick in until 2019. Though the Oxfam representative who spoke about the funding, denounced it as a "day late and a dollar short," she still declared that Oxfam ultimately supports the bill.
The Kerry bill makes the mistep of still allowing expansion of offshore drilling (though states will have the option of getting an exemption), and offers obscene giveaways to the industry, particularly for coal and nuclear. Imagine what is happening right now in the Gulf. Now imagine that was a nuclear blast instead of an oil rig explosion. We should not be enabling the perpetuation of dirty and dangerous energy sources. If we wouldn't want to live near such facilities for fear of our safety, then we should not force others to, to satiate our gluttonous demands for energy (coal and nuclear plants will inevitably be zoned in proximity to poor communities).
And here is where I am reaching an unprecedented point of frustration with the environmental movement. I understand that compromise is an intrinsic part of politics. I worked as an intern in D.C. for the environmental coalition, where I worked on campaigns through lobbying and grassroots outreach. However, the level of compromise the coalition has submitted to has become so large as to completely undermine (or even counteract) their efforts. When dealing with the issue of endangered land or species, sometimes it makes sense to allow the sacrifice of some parcels of land, or X amount of species in a certain region to save it from overall extinction. This logic does not apply to climate change. We have a very short timeframe with which to make the cuts necessary to avert catasrophic climate change. We cannot compromise with the hard laws of the physical universe, but we think we can. I have been called naive for pushing for a harder bill...I have been told that I do not understand the "reality" of this. Because we have reached a point where our politics and our money is somehow more real to us that the planet and its tipping points. We do not understand that we cannot bribe or blackmail it, or meet it half-way. We do not seem to understand that it was around for billions of years before us, and will be here long after we are gone.
This isn't about saving the planet. This is about saving us. But we're too stupid to see that.
The other day I was informed by a member of the environmental lobby that though they have deep reservations with the Kerry bill, and believe that the Cantwell-Collins bill is superior in terms of achieving more realistic progress on addressing climate change, that they will still support the Kerry bill. The reasoning for this support is this: the fossil fuel and agribusiness industries (the sectors largely accountable for anthropogenic climate change), do not support the CLEAR Act because they don't have influence in it. The politicians do not want to offend the corporations, and most amazingly, the environmental movement does not want to pressure the politicians to thumb their noses at the corporations. The environmental coalition that we have entrusted with protecting and advocating us is basically abandoning its (our) ideals to compromise with corporations. This movement has forgotten its roots. No important paradigm shift in our civilization has occurred if not from the bottom up. But the movement now works from the top down, allowing industries to decide our future instead of putting them in their places.
I see this move as a direct result of January's Supreme Court ruling that audaciously declared that corporations should be afforded the rights of individuals and their money equated with speech. The American people have been outspent because they don't speak in dollar signs.
Surely, surely, we must see the problem here?
We cannot let corporations write our climate bills. By doing so, they are writing our death certificate as a species. The same day Kerry released his bill, the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) released a report that declared that unless the world takes quick, "radical and creative action" to conserve our planet's biodiversity, that the ecosystems that support human populations are at risk of a complete, collective collapse. The Kerry bill distracts us from such action with the same old tired politics.
So, where is the hope here? My time working with the environmental lobby overlapped with one of the most rabidly anti-environmental administrations and Congresses in recent history (2005-2006: During the heydays of the Bush Administration and when the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate). During that time, we had a number of large environmental victories even when mainstream environmental reporters smugly stated our efforts were in vain. This shows that the environmental coalition, if and when it decides to stick to its guns and dig in its heels, is capable of performing political miracles.
Yet, ironically, with Democratic control of both Congressional Houses and a Democratic President who is relatively amendable to environmental progress, we find our political and environmental leaders rendered almost impotent. They can't get it up to meet the challenge of climate change.
I would argue that it's because we feel we need to play nice with the Dems. And, of course, the Democrats have always been soft-spined. Well, I don't think this is the time for that.
We need to remind the environmental coalition that it is responsible for protecting our interests, not that of the politicians', and certainly not that of the corporate sector. They need to be holding Congress' feet to the fire on this, instead of giving them ego strokes. We cannot broker deals with the bad guys in this case--what would today's nation be like if we let our politicians sit down with segregationalists and broker a deal on civil rights? Too much is at stake here.
If they cannot come around, those of us consumed with concern about our warming world will need to part ways with our environmental coalition, which may simply be too entrenched in the political atmosphere to understand whose side they are on.
For more on the American Power Act, please check out:
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/05/12/12climatewire-kerry-lieberman-to-end-the-suspense-with-cli-19936.html
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/13-5
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2010/2010-05-12-01.html
Friday, May 7, 2010
OF OIL SPILLS AND MINE BLASTS
During his State of the Union Address at the end of this past February, President Barack Obama stated that, "...to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America." That night I posted as my Facebook status update something along the lines of, "Mr. Obama, you could have had me at 'climate bill,' but don't you know that there is no such thing as 'clean' coal, 'safe' nuclear or responsible offshore drilling'?" I posted similar tweets and grumbled for several more weeks about his claims, especially as he gave the green light for licensing one of the first new nuclear plants to be built in approximately three decades (basically, in my lifetime), and reversed bans on offshore drilling in most of the coastal waters of the U.S. this past March.
It seems cruelly ironic that less then two months after reversing this ban, that the fossil fuel industry was beset by two tragic explosions that occurred within weeks of each other, the latter incident of which we are still experiencing the repercussions of, and may for several decades. I am of course, first referring to an underground mine blast that occured in early April in the greater Charleston area of West Virginia that claimed the lives of 29 miners.
The mine in question is owned and operated by Massey Energy, a company partly (and in fact, largely) culpable for destroying vast swaths Appalachian moutain ranges through a practice of coal extraction known as Mountain-Top Removal (MTR), as well as devastating local towns and communities. In the wake of the tragedy, which is now considered the worst underground mine accident in nearly 40 years, news of multiple safety violations and fines incurred by the hundreds on the part of Massey were reported in the national news. This included reports of dangerous methane build-up, which can catalyze explosions, and which is currently thought to have occurred with this particular incident.
But hey, when you are a multi-billion dollar industry, what is a few fines here and there of a few thousand dollars? And what is a few lives? Of course, Massey CEO Doug Blakenship was quoted as saying in the Christian Science Monitor (see last hyperlink), that their company cares more about its workers than "black rock." But actions do speak louder than words, and just a few days later, Massey refused to let other miners on their employee roll have a day off of work to attend the funeral of their dead co-workers, refused to let workers or residents hang wreaths or put candles at the site of the accident, and threatened several workers with termination if they spoke to the press. I often complain about our dirty energy and the risks we have to take to get it, as an argument to start banning or quickly phasing it out. On a smaller scale, though, knowing that my energy is tied to this type of company, which treats human lives like fodder or simply eggs to be broken to make their million dollar omelets, bothers me in a deeply more personal way. It makes me feel like everytime I turn on a light switch, I am staining my hands with blood only I can see.
I think it's important to hold Massey's feet to the fire on this one--contact the company and let them know you don't agree with their blatant disregard for human life and our fragile ecosystems.
At this point, news of the mine blast investigations has all but drifted in obscurity, as an oil rig in the Gulf region, known as the Deepwater Horizon rig, exploded a few weeks later on April 20th. The explosion has presumably claimed the lives of 11 workers who have yet to be found since the incident, and was immediately followed by what is reportedly shaping up to be the worst oil spill in our nation's history, potentially even eclipsing the infamous Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. In terms of the quantity of the spill, the figures being reported keep changing. What began as modest estimates of barely a 1,000 barrels a day by British Petroleum quickly escalated as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contended that the spill may be leaking up to 5,000 barrels a day. Another independent group called SkyTruth, which makes estimates based on access to satellite imagery data, has gone on record to report that the spill is more likely leaking in the 20-25,000 per day range, as estimate also relayed recently by the Wall Street Journal.
As with the Massey mine blast, it took a tragedy to spotlight that safety precautions and provisions were overlooked and the danger was vastly underestimated by government officials and the industry. Specifically, the Mineral Management Service (MMS), switched methods to adopt a hands-off approach to monitoring offshore oil rigs under the preceding presidential administration . For instance, in 2003, the MMS reversed an ealier rule which required that offshore oil rigs be equipped with something called an "acoustic switch," which is essentially a remote-controlled back up system that would automatically shut off underwater wells during an emergency. More recently, the MMS filed its Environmental Impact Statement of the site in 2007, declaring that an oil spill was highly "unlikely," and just last year declared that BP was well-equipped to deal effectively and efficiently with a worst-case scenario spill. These are just a few of the shortcomings that led to this disaster, as reported this week in a scathing article by Mother Jones.
Luckily, so far, there have been no reports of mass mortalities of ocean-dependent wildlife species, though it is still too early to tell. Even if we do manage to escape an oil-slicked mass cull of our wildlife along the Gulf Coast, effects on species will be felt for years to come in ways not visible to us yet. The region is already host to one of the hemisphere's largest "dead zones," which stretches about 7,000 square miles, and the recent spill most likely will increase it. Also, the oil spill threatens to contribute to excerbating the acidification of the ocean, a phenomenon instigated by climate change that is guilty of threatening our shell fish and coral reefs, both key species of the ocean ecosystem, with extinction.
Though the incident did spur the Obama Administration to temporarily suspend its plans to expand offshore drilling, it is currently only until supposed safety provisions are reviewed and rectified. Unfortunately, the nature of the system makes it probably that such an incident will occur again. Dealing with innately volatile and incendiary substances such as oil, coal and nuclear waste, deems that it will always be vulnerable (and what if this had been a nuclear explosion?) to such disasters. And yes, though better MMS monitoring and stricter guidelines could have prevented this case, the nature of the business, which bows to financial interests, has proven time and again that safety, human and animal lives and the environment are just some of the casualities that come with making money. This is even in the case of ventures such as offshore drilling, which would only serve to meet our energy need by less than 1%.
But there is good news. As with the first Earth Day, that coincided with the creation the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the implementation of the Clean Water and Air Acts, visible calamities often inspire much-needed paradigm shifts. This past Wednesday, National Public Radio's OnPoint welcomed Steve Chu, the Administration's Secretary of Energy. who defended the Administration's position on keeping offshore drilling on the table for a long-term energy plan. The heartening aspect, is that not one caller, or e-mailer into the show agreed with him, and all responders called for a new energy plan and climate bill that was truly radical by emphasizing conservation and renewable energy.
Getting personal here: as the daughter of a drug addict, I understand the language of addicts. I have heard the spiel from an addict who insists s/he can "manage," the addition, using just enough to feed a basic need, and looking for alternatives elsewhere. It never works...and the language used by Chu and Obama smack of old-fashioned addict-denial rhetoric that distracts from seeking genuine rehabilitation.
I think the American people are ready for real change, with real answers. And so, I offer options to engage in that change, instead of just reading the computer screen helplessly. There is work to be done here! First, 350.org has a petition on its website to the Obama Administration to permanently ban offshore drilling. The organization has also created a Facebook page to support a ban on offshore oil drilling expansion, which you can join here if you have an account. If you live near the Gulf Coast, you can register to volunteer with the blockade and clean-up efforts by going to this link. You can also donate to Tri-State Bird Rescue, which will be overseeing bird rescues from the spill, or donate to other wildlife rescuse crews or groups that are part of the effort. Interestingly, human hair and pet fur are used to clean up oil spills, as they are absorbent and gentle on the environment, so if you or your doggy friend are due for a trim, consider packaging up the trimmings and mailing it out. For more information about this, check out this link.
On a larger scale, though, the most important thing you can do, is write, call or visit your Congressional Representatives and State Senators and let them know you support a ban to dirty and dangerous energy ike new coal-fired power plants and offshore oil rigs, and instead support a progressive climate bill that will help propel clean energy into the mainstream, like the cap-and-dividend bill I described in my last post. Go to Congress.org to find the contact info for your elected representatives.
Stay tuned next week when I cover the goings on here in Massachusetts regarding Cape Wind. To stay up to date with the latest postings, please consider joining Writing for Survival's Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter.
It seems cruelly ironic that less then two months after reversing this ban, that the fossil fuel industry was beset by two tragic explosions that occurred within weeks of each other, the latter incident of which we are still experiencing the repercussions of, and may for several decades. I am of course, first referring to an underground mine blast that occured in early April in the greater Charleston area of West Virginia that claimed the lives of 29 miners.
The mine in question is owned and operated by Massey Energy, a company partly (and in fact, largely) culpable for destroying vast swaths Appalachian moutain ranges through a practice of coal extraction known as Mountain-Top Removal (MTR), as well as devastating local towns and communities. In the wake of the tragedy, which is now considered the worst underground mine accident in nearly 40 years, news of multiple safety violations and fines incurred by the hundreds on the part of Massey were reported in the national news. This included reports of dangerous methane build-up, which can catalyze explosions, and which is currently thought to have occurred with this particular incident.
But hey, when you are a multi-billion dollar industry, what is a few fines here and there of a few thousand dollars? And what is a few lives? Of course, Massey CEO Doug Blakenship was quoted as saying in the Christian Science Monitor (see last hyperlink), that their company cares more about its workers than "black rock." But actions do speak louder than words, and just a few days later, Massey refused to let other miners on their employee roll have a day off of work to attend the funeral of their dead co-workers, refused to let workers or residents hang wreaths or put candles at the site of the accident, and threatened several workers with termination if they spoke to the press. I often complain about our dirty energy and the risks we have to take to get it, as an argument to start banning or quickly phasing it out. On a smaller scale, though, knowing that my energy is tied to this type of company, which treats human lives like fodder or simply eggs to be broken to make their million dollar omelets, bothers me in a deeply more personal way. It makes me feel like everytime I turn on a light switch, I am staining my hands with blood only I can see.
I think it's important to hold Massey's feet to the fire on this one--contact the company and let them know you don't agree with their blatant disregard for human life and our fragile ecosystems.
At this point, news of the mine blast investigations has all but drifted in obscurity, as an oil rig in the Gulf region, known as the Deepwater Horizon rig, exploded a few weeks later on April 20th. The explosion has presumably claimed the lives of 11 workers who have yet to be found since the incident, and was immediately followed by what is reportedly shaping up to be the worst oil spill in our nation's history, potentially even eclipsing the infamous Exxon Valdez spill of 1989. In terms of the quantity of the spill, the figures being reported keep changing. What began as modest estimates of barely a 1,000 barrels a day by British Petroleum quickly escalated as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) contended that the spill may be leaking up to 5,000 barrels a day. Another independent group called SkyTruth, which makes estimates based on access to satellite imagery data, has gone on record to report that the spill is more likely leaking in the 20-25,000 per day range, as estimate also relayed recently by the Wall Street Journal.
As with the Massey mine blast, it took a tragedy to spotlight that safety precautions and provisions were overlooked and the danger was vastly underestimated by government officials and the industry. Specifically, the Mineral Management Service (MMS), switched methods to adopt a hands-off approach to monitoring offshore oil rigs under the preceding presidential administration . For instance, in 2003, the MMS reversed an ealier rule which required that offshore oil rigs be equipped with something called an "acoustic switch," which is essentially a remote-controlled back up system that would automatically shut off underwater wells during an emergency. More recently, the MMS filed its Environmental Impact Statement of the site in 2007, declaring that an oil spill was highly "unlikely," and just last year declared that BP was well-equipped to deal effectively and efficiently with a worst-case scenario spill. These are just a few of the shortcomings that led to this disaster, as reported this week in a scathing article by Mother Jones.
Luckily, so far, there have been no reports of mass mortalities of ocean-dependent wildlife species, though it is still too early to tell. Even if we do manage to escape an oil-slicked mass cull of our wildlife along the Gulf Coast, effects on species will be felt for years to come in ways not visible to us yet. The region is already host to one of the hemisphere's largest "dead zones," which stretches about 7,000 square miles, and the recent spill most likely will increase it. Also, the oil spill threatens to contribute to excerbating the acidification of the ocean, a phenomenon instigated by climate change that is guilty of threatening our shell fish and coral reefs, both key species of the ocean ecosystem, with extinction.
Though the incident did spur the Obama Administration to temporarily suspend its plans to expand offshore drilling, it is currently only until supposed safety provisions are reviewed and rectified. Unfortunately, the nature of the system makes it probably that such an incident will occur again. Dealing with innately volatile and incendiary substances such as oil, coal and nuclear waste, deems that it will always be vulnerable (and what if this had been a nuclear explosion?) to such disasters. And yes, though better MMS monitoring and stricter guidelines could have prevented this case, the nature of the business, which bows to financial interests, has proven time and again that safety, human and animal lives and the environment are just some of the casualities that come with making money. This is even in the case of ventures such as offshore drilling, which would only serve to meet our energy need by less than 1%.
But there is good news. As with the first Earth Day, that coincided with the creation the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the implementation of the Clean Water and Air Acts, visible calamities often inspire much-needed paradigm shifts. This past Wednesday, National Public Radio's OnPoint welcomed Steve Chu, the Administration's Secretary of Energy. who defended the Administration's position on keeping offshore drilling on the table for a long-term energy plan. The heartening aspect, is that not one caller, or e-mailer into the show agreed with him, and all responders called for a new energy plan and climate bill that was truly radical by emphasizing conservation and renewable energy.
Getting personal here: as the daughter of a drug addict, I understand the language of addicts. I have heard the spiel from an addict who insists s/he can "manage," the addition, using just enough to feed a basic need, and looking for alternatives elsewhere. It never works...and the language used by Chu and Obama smack of old-fashioned addict-denial rhetoric that distracts from seeking genuine rehabilitation.
I think the American people are ready for real change, with real answers. And so, I offer options to engage in that change, instead of just reading the computer screen helplessly. There is work to be done here! First, 350.org has a petition on its website to the Obama Administration to permanently ban offshore drilling. The organization has also created a Facebook page to support a ban on offshore oil drilling expansion, which you can join here if you have an account. If you live near the Gulf Coast, you can register to volunteer with the blockade and clean-up efforts by going to this link. You can also donate to Tri-State Bird Rescue, which will be overseeing bird rescues from the spill, or donate to other wildlife rescuse crews or groups that are part of the effort. Interestingly, human hair and pet fur are used to clean up oil spills, as they are absorbent and gentle on the environment, so if you or your doggy friend are due for a trim, consider packaging up the trimmings and mailing it out. For more information about this, check out this link.
On a larger scale, though, the most important thing you can do, is write, call or visit your Congressional Representatives and State Senators and let them know you support a ban to dirty and dangerous energy ike new coal-fired power plants and offshore oil rigs, and instead support a progressive climate bill that will help propel clean energy into the mainstream, like the cap-and-dividend bill I described in my last post. Go to Congress.org to find the contact info for your elected representatives.
Stay tuned next week when I cover the goings on here in Massachusetts regarding Cape Wind. To stay up to date with the latest postings, please consider joining Writing for Survival's Facebook page and/or follow me on Twitter.
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