Big Oil Spoils North Dakota

Big oil companies in North Dakota said their impact on the environment would be minimal. They lied.  The citizens of Tioga witnessed the largest land oil spill in recent American history in September, 2013.  Also in 2013, the locomotive of an oil train derailed and exploded in a collision near Casselton.  This year North Dakotans discovered illegally dumped oil filter socks, a source of hazardous radiation. A landfill with waste from oil fields is near the banks of the Missouri River.  Some families experienced dirty drinking water.  “One company, in fact, sued three activist landowners in 2011, seeking damages for trespassing after the men tried to document what they believed was the cover-up of a saltwater spill.”  Federal wildlife agents asked the oil companies to cover their waste pits as migratory birds sometimes dived in.  They were refused.  Thirty percent of the natural gas produced in the state was being treated as a byproduct and burned off, spoiling the air for neighbors.

      The oil drillers are lightly regulated by the three-member North Dakota Industrial Commission composed of the Governor, Attorney General, and the Agricultural Commissioner.  In their eagerness to gain great wealth, the state largely let the oil companies police themselves.  The oil companies made contributions to the governor’s campaign in 2012, a total of $550,000 from oil-related executives.

         A family signed a lease and saw their first well drilled in 2008.  Then June, 2011, they were informed that Burlington Resources intended to create a 30,883 acre oil production unit that would override their lease agreement.  Instead of receiving royalties for their land, the revenues would be split by all owners in the mega-unit. The mega-unit would include part of the Little Missouri State Park (three storage tank batteries inside park boundaries). The family learned that their consent was not required.  Only 60 percent of the unit’s owners were needed, and Burlington together with the Federal government land already amounted to 60%.  This freed Conoco Phillips, successor to Burlington, from boundary lines that required 200-foot set-backs from the borders of each production unit.  The companies would not have to negotiate easements or rights of way for pads, roads, and pipelines.  Dec 20, 2013, the commission approved the mega-unit.  This amounts to private eminent domain—taking of land by private companies for their own benefit.

             Source: New York Times, Nov. 23, 2014

Virunga, Congo

Oil companies are circling Virunga National Park in the Congo, home to several endangered wildlife species such as mountain gorillas.  The oil company thugs stoop to bribery and murder.  The Government is silent saying they must support anything that will lift their people out of poverty.  One could be more impressed if they were putting a large part of their royalties into a trust fund for all its citizens, such as Alaska did.  
 The Congo has been home to natural resource exploitation by the Belgians for generations and where are the jobs it was supposed to create?  Any natural resource eventually runs out and the people who get rich are government officials and foreign companies.
Source: NYT 16 Nov 2014

Chemical Spills in West Virginia

It is ironical that Freedom Enterprises stored a chemical that leaked into the Elk River.  Whose freedom did they have in mind?  Not the thousands who can't even take a bath or wash their clothes. 

Global Warming

After reviewing the evidence, Paul Krugman despairs of meaningful policy--
"there's  a strong streak in modern American conservatism that rejects not just climate science, but the scientific method in general.  Polling suggests, for example, that a large majority of Republicans reject the theory of evolution.  For people with this mind-set, laying out the extent of scientific consensus on an issue isn't persuasive --if anything, it just gets their backs up, and feeds fantasies about vast egghead conspiricies." New York Review of Books, Nov. 17, 2013
     Is this the way our world ends?

Flood Damage Relief

After natural disasters like Nemo (Sandy), compassion for the unfortunate brings out piles of Federal dollars."Americans spend too much energy and capital on emergency relief and recovery after disasters have already struck, and not nearly enough on anticipating and mitigating trouble" as does the Dutch who have a multi-year plan to put flood-prone areas into public space. (NYT Feb 17)  The Dutch project is called Room for the River.  Yes, it needs room for it will eventually flatten human attempts to to put flimsy building in its way. My compassion is running out for the relatively wealthy who build and rebuild to enjoy the view of the ocean. 

Bottles at Grand Canyon

The National Park Service had announced the ban of disposable water bottles in the park as they constitute 30 percent of the trash there. A similar ban is in place at Zion. Coca-Cola objected and the proposed ban was put on hold. Coke has political influence because it contributed $13 million to the park. This is another example of the interpenetration of private interests into government. Corporations get what they want via contributions to election campaigns and by making so-called gifts to government programs. Beware of corporations bearing gifts!

If we don't pay taxes to support public functions, we become dependent on corporations to keep them going.

Climate Change & Stupidity

“Here is the Texas governor (Perry) rejecting the science of climate change while his own state is on fire — ” Thomas Friedman, NYT, Sept.14.
Maybe he is suffering from heat stroke!
CNN reported on Sept. 9 that “Texas had the distinction of experiencing the warmest summer on record of any state in America, with an average of 86.8 degrees. Dallas residents sweltered for 40 consecutive days of grueling 100-plus degree temperatures.

Clean Air and Breathers Lose

Our spineless President has caved in on proposed EPA clean air regulations, even though the U.S. has the dirtiest air in the developed world. The old law preventing EPA from considering cost in formulating regulations affecting public health is ill-concieved, but Republican rants about job losses is also over blown. Coal-burning electric power companies would shift to other energy sources, not close their doors.

Energy-- Good News

Automakers are not protesting Obama's increase in fuel standards to 54.5 MPG from the current 27 corporate average by 2025. The president calls for five percent a year improvement from 2017 to 2025.
This is a different posture from that taken by the automakers four years ago. Apparently the companies thought it would be bad form to oppose the new standards after the goverment saved their butts with bailouts.

Light Goes On?

The ban on the sale of incandescent light bulbs set to be phased in January 1 is being opposed by some in the name of freedom. Whose freedom? Usually we say that people should be free to do as they wish if they do not affect others. But if some buy incandescent bulbs and thereby use more electricity and require more coal-burning generaton, they most certainly affect me. In an interdependent world, no honest argument may be made for freedom in general. The honest statement is that one person's freedem to use incandescent bulbs is a non-freedom for others.

Big Oil Gouges Bib

The Senate continues the unconsionable tax breaks for big oil. Last quarter profits for Exxon of $10.7 billion and 30 billion for 2010 are apparently not enough to keep them in business! The Big 5 gouged us for $35 billion in the first quarter.
The political power of oil makes a mockery of democracy! I am pleased that Michigan's Senators voted against continuing the tax breaks.
And Big Oil is using high prices to exploit the environment by lobbying for permission to drill off shore, etc. all in the face of the recent blowout in the Gulf.

Catastrophe- Part 7 of series-- Mississippi floods

After weeks of rain, the Mississippi River crested at Cairo, Illinois—an all-time high, exceeding the 1937 record by two feet. The Army Corps of Engineers breeched a levee to reduce the level at Cairo. The water has to go somewhere, flooding the town of Pinhook, Missouri and acres of farm land, a kind of triage. The same thing was done in 1937. Cairo is probably the most poorly situated city in the country on a narrow strip of land between the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers. As Isabel Wilkerson writing for the New York Times in 1993 pointed out, “For generations, some farmers figured floods and droughts into the cost of doing business. But then the country’s big plumbing system of levees and dams, made better after every flood, was supposed to keep the rivers in their place and maintain the comfortable paradox of living on a floodplain.”
Just because our ancestors ignored nature and put a city in harm’s way does not mean we need to perpetuate the mistake. There will be heavy rains and hurricanes, and the flood waters will reclaim their own ancestral haunts. The truth of floods is that despite huge investments in flood control, the long term damage is unchanged. Why? Because we keep adding people and structures to the flood plain so that when the protections inevitably fail, the damage is higher.

Catastrophe-- Part 5 of a series

Lester Brown draws our attention to three factors contributing to a possible catastrophe in world food supply. See Journey to Planet Earth, PBS.
1. World population continues to grow, even with some population planning bright spots in Bangladesh, etc.
2. As income rises in places like China and India, the demand for animal products grows that literally takes bread out of the mouths of the remaining poor.
3. Conversion of food crops (especially corn) to ethanol.
This adds up to higher food prices that we are already seeing, which is particularly ominous for the poor of the world. We are already seeing some failed nation states where inadequate and more costly food is part of the problem—Chad, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, D.R. Congo, and Haiti.

Catastrophe-- Part 4 of a series

The people who object to an energy policy for the U.S. and reject the Kyoto agreement, argue that it is too costly. The environmentalists say that the costs are not fully accounted for. They point to failures in the market. But the problem is not inherent in markets, but rather in the property rights that are prior the market. A steel plant would not pay for labor if slavery were legal. And, it would not pay for iron ore if the pits were not owned. The question is who owns.
If the distribtion of rights is acceptable, there is little need for regulatory/administrative rules. This may sound like the familiar "markets are superior to regulation," But, it is quite different. There is no way that market processes can change property rights to those that we might like. Rights are anteceent to the market.

Catastrophe-- Part 3 of a series

After you Alphonse: The western nations are embroiled in a fruitless debate with the developing world like China over who should reduce their carbon emissions. The growth in emissions will be in China and India, as they want to be like us. It is my observation that arguments over equity often result in everyone going down together. It is like an argument over who should bail as the boat sinks. Perhaps for every percentage that the US cuts its present emissions, China could reduce its growth in emissions by a similar amount.

Catastrophe-- second in a series

The major catastrophe facing the world today is not natural, but human induced climate change. The problem for acting on it is the fact that it is slower than a tsunami. Carbon emissions from coal burning and autos are threatening the polar ice caps and glaciers. Do I care if the problem is only the polar bears? A big problem would be slackened flow of India’s rivers used for irrigation and thus food production. And, perhaps rising sea levels flooding heavily populated coastal low lands. Acid rain released with burning coal is destroying our forests.
No more coal-burning electric generation? Could we do it Now? In World War II we turned our industrial capacity to the production of planes, tanks, etc. We simply said, no more production of private cars. The prohibition lasted almost three years. When we saw a clear and present danger to world survival, we acted. Instead of present danger, catastrophe is a few years off. But, if we are to reverse present trends in time to avert catastrophe, we need to act now.
1. No new coal-burning power plants.
2. No more cars with less than 50 m.p.g.
3. No more additions to the inter-state highway system, but rather a massive building of high-speed rail.
4. Massive and immediate development of a national electric grid to carry electricity from areas of solar and wind energy to populations centers.

Catastrophe-- Part 1 of a series

The movement of the tectonic plates and subsequent tsunami off the coast of Japan reminds us that we live on a thin crust subject to the whims of nature. In 2004, a similar event in the Indian Ocean killed 230,000 people in dozens of countries. Devastating as these tsunamis were, they had little effect on the atmosphere, unlike that of volcanoes. I am reminded of Krakatoa between Sumatra and Java, Indonesia in 1883, which killed 36,000 people. In the same area, Tambora, in 1816 produced an ash cloud that resulted in a year without a summer, and stunted harvests and created hunger in Europe and Russia.
David Keys in his book, Catastrophe, presents evidence of a much larger eruption in 835 that blew away the island upon which it sat. He associates the major climatic change to follow (floods and drought) with the disintegration of the Roman Empire, waves of bubonic plague, westward movement of the Avars out of Mongolia, and the rapid rise of Islam. When food sources change dramatically, political and social changes follow.

Caretaker of Indonesia's Mt. Merapi Killed by Eruption

quote from AP:
"He was the keeper of Mount Merapi, an 83-year-old man entrusted to watch over the volcano's spirits, believing it could be appeased by offerings of rice, chickens and flowers. When the eruption came, Maridjan was among those who died, along with dozens of villagers who believed him, not seismologists or government officials. .... Maridjan was believed by many to have the ability to speak directly to the volcano, and fellow villagers considered him a hero, trusting his word over local authorities when it came to determining danger levels."
Do you see any parallels with some GOP tirades against climate scientists?

Republicans Attack EPA

Republicans plan to attack the EPA and scientists who link air pollution to climate change. They argue that EPA hurts the nation's economy. Do we really have to destroy our natural resources and our health to have jobs? This sounds a lot like the Easter Islanders who chopped down every tree on their island to have fires for their gods, and then watched their top soil wash away and food production plummet.

One would think that saving our natural resources would create more jobs as labor is substituted for less use of our resource bank.

British Petroleum

BP execs say spill was an aberration, as if that excuses their ineptitude and lack of preparation. These things are what one author calls Black Swans, rare events that if they happen have disastrous consequences. What one learns from them is that you need a back up plan if it happens.