environment Politics: British Petroleum criminal irresponsibility criminality Deepwater Horizon Ed Markey Henry Waxman offshore oil sociopathy
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Month 6, Day 15: Don’t Get Mad, Get Madder!
I have a houseguest & I’m really tired. I just opened up this piece on Daily Kos, read it, got outraged, and wrote Ed Markey and Henry Waxman a letter asking them to get a little tougher on the gang of criminals who are obviously in charge of British Petroleum.
You should read that piece, too. It’ll make you mad. Maybe you should get mad — and write a letter to someone!
Dear Representatives Markey and Waxman,
We need to understand a few things about what’s going on in the Gulf of Mexico right now. It is absolutely crucial that congressional hearings bring up some of the following questions:
1. Why is British Petroleum apparently giving orders to the Coast Guard — and why is the Coast Guard taking orders from BP? A recent CBS News clip documented an incident of local television journalists being turned away from taking photographs of dead and dying sea life, saying: “A boat of BP Contractors, with 2 Coast Guard officials on board, told us turn around under threat of arrest — explaining ‘This is BP’s rules — it’s not ours’ ” In my naivete, I had the impression that the Coast Guard worked for the people of this country, not a British-owned oil company.
2. Why is BP failing to do genuine cleanup work in threatened areas? Booms have been put in place in wildlife protection areas, but no follow-up or monitoring has been instituted. The result? The only thing actually being contained is bad publicity for BP. The oil, meanwhile, is killing birds, sea turtles, fish and dolphins, and it’s only going to get worse. Frankly, we need more bad publicity for British Petroleum.
3. Why is BP making cleanup contractors sign agreements not to talk to the media? This company blatantly ignored safety regulations, gamed the system to its benefit for decades, and now (through its own negligence and carelessness) poised to wipe out both unique local ecologies and unique local economies. They should not be in a position to dictate terms to their contract employees.
Reporters from the New York Daily News interviewed BP contractors, who took them to locations where dolphin carcasses were dead and rotting. The contractor interviewed said, “When we found this dolphin it was filled with oil. Oil was just pouring out of it. It was the saddest darn thing to look at. There is a lot of cover-up for BP. They specifically informed us that they don’t want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It’s important to me that people know the truth about what’s going on here. The things I’ve seen… They just aren’t right. All the life out here is just full of oil.”
4. Why is BP unable to handle calls from Gulf area residents? Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster happened, BP set up call centers to handle questions and concerns. But according to a Houston television station, they’ve over 200,000 phone calls have been received…but they go nowhere. People whose lives and communities are under terrible threat are made to think their messages are being formally documented when in fact they are not even written down by call center operators.
The overall impression of BP is one of a malicious and often criminal incompetence made possible by a feeble regulatory environment. While congressional hearings cannot get the oil back into the earth, they can be a big step towards ensuring that such a disastrous failure of regulation never happens again.
I’m hoping to see British Petroleum executives testifying under oath, with jail sentences available for any who are in contempt or who are proven to have perjured themselves. There is no need to be nice to these people; they’ve destroyed one of our country’s most important natural resources, and the full extent of the damage they’ve caused won’t be understood for years.
Their incompetence and criminality are yet another set of very good reasons to end our national dependence on oil; it makes these people wealthy and powerful, and they don’t deserve wealth or power — they deserve jail time.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
humor India Indian music: typographical error
by Warren
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The Great Vowel Shift
The Best Typographical Error in the World…
…is on page 111 of Najma Perveen Ahmed’s book, “Hindustani Music.”
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:
environment: Cape Cod Lobsters oceanic warming
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Month 6, Day 14: Insert Crustacean Headline Here
A piece at Daily Kos linked to a story about a proposed halt on lobster fishing in southern New England. On a hunch, I checked the Boston Globe website to see if they had a piece about it…and lo and behold, there it was.
Lobstermen and some scientists assert that warming waters, possibly due to climate change, have allowed disease and infections to overtake lobster populations off southern New England, killing many and pushing others farther offshore into deeper, cooler waters.
It’s welcome to have once or twice a week when I’m not just composing responses to the latest idiocy in Washington. The lobster story seemed like a good hook on which to hang a “Yo! Media! Pay some attention to this, okay?” approach.
The proposed moratorium on lobster fishing in the waters south of Cape Cod is a necessary response to a painful reality. As climate change warms the waters, lobsters have grown more susceptible to disease, and their numbers have dwindled significantly. Shrinking lobster populations affect local economies; moratorium or no, it’s the fishermen who’ll take it on the chin.
What’s happening to Cape Cod’s lobstermen is a strong indicator of what to expect over the next decades, as the changing climate cripples indigenous ecosystems in unpredictable ways. All over the world, people whose lives and incomes depend on natural resources will find themselves under significant and unanticipated threat. This is yet another reason to take the threat of catastrophic global warming seriously; the difficulties of the Cape’s lobstermen are a harbinger of disaster. What will it take for our media figures and politicians to pay attention?
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots Ken Salazar minerals management service offshore drilling
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Month 6, Day 13: I’m Told That Fish Rot From The Head.
Crooks and Liars had a very depressing piece about our Interior Secretary and his continued enabling of a Bush-style culture of corruption. Grrrrrr.
Their piece links to Rolling Stone magazine, which is the original source. I haven’t read the full RS piece yet, because I’ve been dealing with the benefit concert (which went fabulously, by the way).
Anyway, this goes off to the President tomorrow.
Dear President Obama,
When you announced a “moratorium” on offshore drilling, I was delighted. But as the details emerged, it began to look less and less like a really robust piece of environmental policy. What we need is a way to prevent future disasters; what we get is a halt of exploratory drilling at thirty-three deepwater rigs. Total number of deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico? Five hundred and ninety-one. Total offshore drilling rigs? Over fifty-one hundred. Thirty-three is a very small number — less than one percent. It should be the job of the Interior Secretary to regulate and control the oil industry, but Secretary Salazar is on record that the moratorium won’t affect production.
The culture of corruption at the Minerals Management Service has continued; Secretary Salazar has long been an advocate of offshore drilling (going back to his time as a senator), and he is abusing his position in multiple ways. The BP Atlantis rig is located in waters 2,000 feet deeper than the Deepwater Horizon, only 150 miles from the Louisiana coastline. Congressional documents reveal that the Atlantis lacks required engineering certification for almost every one of its underwater components; British Petroleum’s own internal documents suggest that this failure of certification could lead to “catastrophic” errors. Why has the Atlantis not been shut down? Why has the MMS failed to address the safety risks of this platform since the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe?
According to the executive director of PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility), workers in many agencies inside the Department of the Interior (not just the Minerals Management Service) describe the culture as the “third Bush term.” The same managers are implementing the same policies. Is that the environmental legacy we need from the Obama Administration?
I recognize that much of this is not, strictly speaking, your fault. President Bush and his cronies have planted many of their ideological allies in key bureaucratic positions throughout the government, and it is difficult to root these people out and to transform the bureaucratic culture appropriately. But it is increasingly clear that Ken Salazar isn’t interested in effecting this transformation at all.
At a time when we urgently need a genuine climate and energy policy that builds the infrastructure of the future, the last thing we need is a relentless advocate of big oil, a proponent of offshore drilling, an ethically challenged enabler of corruption. Ken Salazar needs to go, and the Minerals Management Service needs to be dissolved.
This is no time or place for compromise.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: EPA Howie Carr idiots Lisa Murkowski Scott Brown
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Month 6, Day 12: Upper-Class Twit of the Year!
My junior Senator is an idiot. The Boston Herald had a piece about the efforts of us Liberals to convince him to vote No on the Murkowski abomination. I used that as a hook for this letter, which is largely based on the Think Progress piece.
Well, despite the efforts of thousands of Massachusetts citizens (including this writer) to persuade him to move away from Republican lockstep, Scott Brown voted for Lisa Murkowski’s resolution to strip power from the Environmental Protection Agency. His reasons for voting against the wishes of his constituents became clear when he appeared on Howie Carr’s radio program and called the EPA a “non-governmental agency.” Now, the EPA can be called many things, but “non-governmental” is not one of them. Brown further claimed the Agency has the ability to “regulate churches and restaurants…the very smallest emitters…,” ignoring the fact that the EPA has so-called “tailoring rules” that limit regulations to amounts over 75,000 tons of greenhouse gases a year. Churches generally emit quite a bit less — about 100 tons. Fortunately, the Murkowski resolution failed. Unfortunately, Scott Brown is an embarrassment to the Senate and to the Commonwealth.
Warren Senders
environment: glaciers washington post
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Month 6, Day 11: Well, Now We Can Breathe A Great Big Sigh Of Relief.
Desperately hunting for something that isn’t about the Gulf of Mexico…found this article from the AP in the Washington Post. Some Dutch scientists think the original predictions of the impacts of glacial shrinkage were too severe. It is always fun to write the WaPo, because they’ve had such a terrible record on climate issues, and I get to mock them a bit.
What a relief! Only sixty million people (give or take a few hundred thousand) may be affected by droughts, water failures, and food shortages, as opposed to the hundreds of millions originally described in the IPCC study. Those of us who are paying attention to climate change must take our good news where we can, for there isn’t much of it. And the fact that a phrase like “only sixty million people may be affected” is somehow “good news” is bad news indeed. It is long past time for our politicians and our media to stop playing rhetorical games on climate issues, and start confronting the facts with clarity and respect for science. When the debate is whether climate change will destroy the livelihoods of sixty million vs. two hundred million people — that’s no longer a debate. We can no longer afford to remain ignorant of the facts.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots Lisa Murkowski Scott Brown
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Month 6, Day 10: Our Descendants Will Be Too Busy Ducking Catastrophic Storms To Spit On Our Graves…But They Would If They Could, You Betcha!
Lisa Murkowski’s appalling amendment is coming up for a vote on the Senate floor tomorrow. John Kerry is leading the charge against this breathtakingly stupid piece of legislation. Scott Brown?
Dear Senator Brown,
I write to urge you to vote against the “petition of disapproval” introduced by Senator Lisa Murkowski. Despite what the voices of Fox News say, the climate crisis is very real and very dangerous. At this point in our nation’s history, do we really need head-in-the-sand denial of something that’s been overwhelmingly affirmed by scientific research, over and over again?
The proposal to reverse the EPA’s Endangerment Finding with
respect to greenhouse gases would essentially bar further EPA
regulation on climate change. What we need is stronger climate legislation; what we need is to transform our economy so that we’re no longer burning fossil fuels and pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Senator Murkowski’s amendment is a cynical piece of short-term political self-gratification that serves the needs of no one save the energy industry.Senator Brown, I am not a corporation. I am a human being. Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, there is a difference. I am a human being and one of your constituents; although I know that many Republican politicians feel responsible only to those who agree with their positions, the fact remains that you are my Senator.
Let’s say you’re buying a house, and ninety-seven home inspectors tell you it’s a dangerous property, while three tell you that they’re not quite sure. Would you buy? Let’s say you’re choosing a restaurant, and ninety-seven food inspectors tell you it’s unsafe, while three tell you they’re not quite sure. Would you eat there? Let’s say you find a lump, and ninety-seven oncologists advise you to start chemotherapy immediately, while three think you should wait and do some more tests. Would you wait?
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is real, it’s dangerous, and it’s caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Three percent of climate scientists aren’t quite sure yet. Somehow it doesn’t strike me as a coincidence that the smaller group includes scientists who are on the payroll of the American Petroleum Institute.
The last thing we need is to eliminate one of our last remaining regulatory authorities in the face of a planetary crisis. Vote against the Murkowski amendment — for all our sakes.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Harry Reid idiots Kerry-Lieberman
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Month 6, Day 9: Rightly Is They Called Idiots.
When Harry Reid became Minority leader back when Democrats were in the minority, I knew he was trouble. It’s unbelievable how regularly he manages to snatch policy defeat from the jaws of legislative victory.
And now he’s getting ready to do it again. I sent a copy of this letter to Chuck Schumer, as he appears to be involved in this scam, too.
(facepalm)
Dear Senator Reid,
It’s true that the Gulf of Mexico disaster strengthens the case for a new and better energy policy. But replacing the already weakened Kerry-Lieberman bill with the completely powerless American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA) is a terrible mistake.
ACELA is filled with giveaways to polluters. Some analysts believe it will actually increase carbon emissions. This may be a tiny stepping stone towards a new energy policy — but the real lesson of the Gulf catastrophe is that climate change is coming, and it’s coming faster than anyone thought (the climate for sea creatures in the waters off Louisiana has changed pretty drastically in just a few days, hasn’t it?). America needs to take this seriously.
The type of legislative sausage-making that was a source of entertainment in less critical times is no longer an option. To think that further weakening legislation that has already had all its teeth pulled will entice Republican votes is the height of naivete.
If any climate legislation (such as “cap-and-trade”) is offered as an amendment to ACELA, it will be defeated, and the narrow window of opportunity opened by the crisis in the Gulf will have been wasted — just like every other window of opportunity that has opened for Democrats in the past few years.
A climate bill must be offered as part of a linked package: climate-and-energy. There can be no compromise on this; I am asking you to look beyond political exigencies and consider the fact that the scientific evidence is overwhelming: the planet is warming, humans cause it, and everyone who is paying attention knows this to be true. What we really need is a carbon tax. If what we can get in a climate bill is cap-and-trade, we’ll start there.
But cap-and-trade is not analogous to a “public option” — something that we good progressives will eventually abandon in order to get a bill passed. We must have robust climate legislation.
If we fail, our descendants will curse us. We owe it to them to get this right. Any bill that has incentives for dirty energy and puts no price on carbon is a failure.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Civilian Conservation Corps Robert Reich
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Month 6, Day 8: Oh, Say Can You C.C.C.?
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, has an excellent idea.
Dear President Obama,
This is just a short note to express my enthusiastic approval for Robert Reich’s recent proposal that you create a new version of the Civilian Conservation Corps focused on cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico. Reich points out that there aren’t enough summer jobs for young people, and suggests that you “send them to the Gulf to clean up beaches and wetlands, and send the bill to BP.”
It’s a great idea. The original Civilian Conservation Corps did tremendously important service to the country, revitalizing parts of our nation that had been devastated by drought and erosion. A new CCC could begin work on the affected coastal areas of Louisiana and Florida, doing the physically and emotionally grueling work of cleaning up after what seems likely to be the world’s worst oil spill.
Needless to say, there are plenty of other places where such an organization could accomplish wonders. Our ecological infrastructure is seriously frayed, and there are countless areas where the hard work of conservation needs to be carried out. This would have the added benefit of educating the participants about the importance of the natural systems that sustain all of us, thereby increasing the number of people who take environmental issues seriously.
Secretary Reich’s proposal is a good one and merits your consideration. Recognize, though, that it cannot be the sole solution to our nation’s combined climate and energy crises. We will never escape these devastating catastrophes until we shut down the last oil well and the last coal mine. Ultimately, we must end our use of fossil fuels, or it will certainly end us.
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment: Bill McKibben fossil fuels LA Times Oil
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Month 6, Day 7: Adapt or Die — Choice We Can Believe In
The LA Times has a nice op-ed from Bill McKibben, who is, as usual, uncomfortably correct.
Bill McKibben has it right. The President has the opportunity to turn the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico into a sea-change for America and the world. The millions of gallons of oil now washing ashore on the coasts of Louisiana and Florida illuminate a stark choice: adapt or die. With smaller spills every day of the week around the world, the true costs of fossil fuels can’t be ignored. Are we going to continue basing our way of life on an incredibly dirty commodity, a substance that has profoundly negative effects on our atmosphere, and one which is going to become ever scarcer and costlier in the years to come? Or will America rise to the challenge? Now is the time for an energy economy that does not devastate ecosystems, shatter communities and pour millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We can no longer afford oil.
Warren Senders