Accidents on Oil Rigs? Business as Usual

My email accounts, Twitter feeds, and RSS alerts have been blowing up all morning with the news that an offshore oil production platform in the Gulf of Mexico exploded earlier today. Thirteen workers were evacuated off the platform, which is operated by Mariner Energy, and according to the most recent reports, a 100-feet-wide and one-mile-long oil sheen has been spotted not far from the accident site. Feels like déjà vu all over again.

Yet I have to wonder: Would this incident have even registered a blip on the national media’s radar screen had it not been for all of the attention directed at the Gulf oil industry because of the BP disaster?

Sure, this incident is frightening, and in that sense it’s newsworthy. But the fact is that fires, explosions, spills, and blowouts aren’t all that uncommon in the Gulf’s industrial archipelago, where some 4,000 oil and gas platforms clutter the seas.

In his ill-fated (and poorly considered) March speech announcing an expansion of off-shore drilling, President Obama …more

by Jason Mark – September 2, 2010

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Solar Panels: The Next eWaste?

In recent years the electronics industry has gained notoriety for creating an endless stream of disposable products that make their way at life’s end to developing countries, where poor people without safety gear cut and burn out valuable materials, spilling contaminants into their water, air, and lungs.

Solar modules contain some of the same potentially dangerous materials as electronics, including silicon tetrachloride, cadmium, selenium, and sulfur hexafluoride, a potent greenhouse gas. So as solar moves from the fringe to the mainstream, insiders and watchdog groups are beginning to talk about producer responsibility and recycling in an attempt to sidestep the pitfalls of electronic waste and retain the industry’s green credibility.

Solar modules have an expected lifespan of at least 20 years so most have not yet reached the end of their useful lives. But now, before a significant number of dead panels pile up, is the perfect time to implement a responsible program, according to Sheila Davis, executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics …more

by Erica Gies – September 2, 2010

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Choose Your Friends Wisely

Radical eco-activist imprisoned for “friending” Mike Roselle

For years, Rod Coronado was the unofficial bad boy of the radical environmental movement. As a teenager he cut his teeth with the now well known Sea Shepherd Society and, in 1986, participated in a risky act of eco-sabotage: taking aim at Iceland’s refusal to conform to an international ban on whaling, Coronado and a partner destroyed the Hvalfjordur whaling station and sank two of the country’s whaling vessels, causing some $2 million in damage. Coronado went on to wage an underground war against the fur industry, targeting research facilities and fur farms across North America. (His story, and the story of the modern American environmental movement, is told in Dean Kuipers recent book, Operation Bite Back: Rod Coronado’s War to Save American Wilderness). Coronado was a divisive figure: his use of arson and increasingly radical stance alienated even those who sympathized with his views.

In 1995, Coronado was arrested for his role in an arson attack on research facilities at Michigan State University. Since then he has moved back and …more

by Adam Federman – August 31, 2010

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Big Banks Pull Away from Dirty Businesses

Good News Shows Potential for Progress Outside of Washington

Today’s New York Times has a front page story delivering some sorely needed good news: Many of the world’s biggest banks — including giants like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Credit Suisse, and HSBC — are voluntarily reducing their investments in environmentally destructive practices such as mountaintop removal coal mining and tar sands extraction in Canada.

Times reporter Tom Zeller Jr. writes:

“ … The rise of murkier issues like global warming, along with increasing scrutiny by environmental groups of banks’ investments in many other industries — like oil and gas development, nuclear power, coal-fired electricity generation, oil sands, fuel pipeline construction, dam building, forestry and even certain types of agriculture — are nudging lenders into new territory.

‘We’re taking a much closer look at a much broader variety of issues, not all of which are captured under state and local laws,’ said Stephanie Rico, a spokeswoman for the environmental affairs group at Wells Fargo.”

Some of the banks that shifted their policies have …more

by Jason Mark – August 31, 2010

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Why Conservatives Are Bad on Energy

By Tom Rooney, CEO of SPG Solar

Conservatives, take a breath. Let’s talk about energy. And why so many conservatives are so wrong — so liberal, even — on wind and solar energy.

Let’s start with a recent editorial from the home of ‘free markets and free people,” the Wall Street Journal. Photovoltaic solar energy, quoth the mavens, is a “speculative and immature technology that costs far more than ordinary power.”

So few words, so many misconceptions. It pains me to say that because, like many business leaders, I grew up on the Wall Street Journal and still depend on it.

But I cannot figure out why people who call themselves “conservatives” would say solar or wind power is “speculative.” Conservatives know that word is usually reserved to criticize free-market activity that is not approved by well, you-know-who.

Today, around the world, more than a million people work in the wind and solar business. Many more receive their power from solar.

Solar is not a cause, it is …more

by GuestBlogger – August 31, 2010

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In Russia, A Victory For Civil Society

Khimki Highway Construction On Hold

A long running battle over the construction of a highway through Moscow’s Khimki forest has taken a surprising turn. Earlier this week I wrote about the broad based campaign to save one of Moscow’s few remaining green belts and old growth oak forests.

Environmentalists and activists have been working since 2007 to halt the construction of a highway through the 2,500-acre forest, which many viewed as inevitable. Just a couple of weeks ago one of the organizers, Yevgenia Chirikova, told the Washington Post that, “The next step is probably that they will start building. We are ready. It is going to be very loud.”

For now, however, the construction of the highway has been put on hold. In a video blog posted Thursday, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev ordered the government to, “halt the implementation” of the highway pending “further civic and expert discussions.” It is a rare victory for environmentalists or opposition activists of any kind in Russia. Perhaps not since Vladimir Putin’s 2006 decision to reroute an oil …more

by Adam Federman – August 27, 2010

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Where’s the Deepwater Horizon Oil?

Microbes are busy, and oil is dispersed but far from gone

The BP/Deepwater Horizon well is now capped but it will be sometime before we understand where the nearly 5 million barrels of oil that gushed from the ruptured well have gone. On August 2nd, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its "BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget," the agency's assessment of what's happened to the oil. But the report came under stiff questioning last week at the August 17th House Energy and Commerce, Energy and the Environment Subcommittee Hearing on "The BP Oil SPill: Accounting for the Spilled Oil and ensuring the Safety of Seafood From the Gulf." Since then two scientific studies of the underwater oil plume have been released that document the size and persistence of the plume and attest to how much has yet to be learned about the behavior of such a large quantity of oil released as such great depth.

According to NOAA, approximately 25 percent of the oil released was collected or destroyed through skimming and burning; 25 percent evaporated naturally …more

by Elizabeth Grossman – August 25, 2010

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