Climate Sunday: Don Blankenship Edition

Greetings and Happy Sunday to you all, and thanks for tuning in to my semi-regular environmental musings. This week's round-up is brought to us by Don Blankenship, who was recently told by a judge to shut his flapping yap up about how politically persecuted he was. It might very well be true that under the Obama Administration, investigators spent more time inspecting his mines and pointing out the very tragically wrong things that led to the deaths of miners at his mines. But this might have been for a lot of reasons, such as, the pattern emerging that Blankenship was awful, the Obama Administration being less likely to ignore these kinds of abuses, and, I don't know--the deaths of 29 miners in a preventable accident due to Blankenship's pathological management? (Not a big fan of Blankenship, this blogger right here.)

But this individual's beef with the government over what he considers to have been job-killing regulations versus what appear to have been employee-killing violations, sets the tone for this week's rumination on--what about the fossil fuel industries, anyway? For example, it looks like Exxon, who apparently knew enough about global warming science in the 1970s and 1980s to have considerable private information on it, basically "gamed" the Bush Administration to sow doubt and confusion. (Although don't let the big bad oil company take the total blame for that--the Bush Administration was very willing to be had. I mean, leave it to these pricks to have a "Safe Water Drinking Act" that lets frackers screw up drinking water however they want.)

But this conflict in knowing full well climate change was real, and also working to sow doubt, is pretty unnerving. They could only act like that if profits entirely outweighed any sense that they should be responsible corporate and global citizens, and exposes a real weakness of the capitalist system.

Climate Tuesday: Remember The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill?

Well, I can't forget it, and you know what? I'm pretty sure the lawyers of Halliburton will not forget to defend their client by saying they at least had the unmitigated gall to admit after a couple of years that they were probably negligent and maybe destroyed some evidence, paid a freaking pittance and made a donation to a wee fund, like they are responsible corporate citizens just trying to live the only way they know how. Because that kind of shallow shit-show always looks good even if it's nakedly a tap-dance around how they got caught out this time over it being a disaster this time, and if they don't learn this time, well, next time it'll just be a huge disaster again, m'kay?

But don't you go worrying about the lost tourism dollars or the spent fishing industry or any of that. (Or, like, the lost health of clean-up workers or any of those human angles.) Because you know who the real victim is? BP, because everyone ends up picking on them for some reason like their culpability.  The nerve, you know?

It's almost enough to make you stop crying over the eyeless shrimp. Which they caused.

(But since all involved are also involved with the rising oceanic temps because global warming is a real thing, can I still also blame them for the flesh-eating bacteria? Because I will, probably, anyway. )

Axis of Evil Mad Libs with Liz Cheney

I could get all into why she's silly, but I'll just link to Steve Benen. And point out that I'm a little surprised to find Iran, Syria, and Turkey mentioned in the same breath, although, I did grow up with the phrase "Speak of the devil..." (I see her kind of rhetoric as encouraging the incorrigible.)



Anyway, I was also a little (un)surprised to see her exchange with Arianna Huffington on ABC's This Week blaming the Obama Administration while deflecting the influence of a) her father and b) Halliburton by trying to float the red herring about a) the result of the 2000 election being responsible for the Gore marriage breaking up (ten years later?) b) and the suggestion that Halliburton was being accused of fraud (!) instead of just cutting corners and being a dodgy big-ass company that benefitted very well from the Bush (CHENEY!) Administration's energy policies (and no-bid war-time contracts....)

What planet is Arianna living on? Hah! Um, whose life is Liz Cheney living if she isn't aware of this stuff?

But no--Liz Cheney knows. She was just trying to do her Jedi mind-trick.



Halliburton (Daddy) is not the villian you want.

All I have is anger about this.

Well, disappointment and disgust, too. This Gulf of Mexico disaster is going to have a tremendous negative impact on the wildlife, on the eco-system, on employment, on the economy. What it will do to fishing and tourism, and even the lives of people who live along the coast is just devastating, and the clean-up will not be easy with the sheer volume of crude they are talking about.



Document: BP didn't plan for major oil spill

MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER — British Petroleum once downplayed the possibility of a catastrophic accident at an offshore rig that exploded, causing the worst U.S. spill in decades along the Gulf coast and endangering shoreline habitat.

In its 2009 exploration plan and environmental impact analysis for the well, BP suggested it was unlikely, or virtually impossible, for an accident to occur that would lead to a giant crude oil spill and serious damage to beaches, fish and mammals.

At least 1.6 million gallons of oil have spilled so far since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers, according to Coast Guard estimates. One expert said Friday that the volume of oil leaking from the well nearly 5,000 feet below the surface could actually be much higher, and that even more may escape if the drilling equipment continues to erode.

"The sort of occurrence that we've seen on the Deepwater Horizon is clearly unprecedented," BP spokesman David Nicholas told The Associated Press on Friday. "It's something that we have not experienced before ... a blowout at this depth."

Amid increased fingerpointing Friday, efforts sputtered to hold back the giant oil spill seeping into Louisiana's rich fishing grounds and nesting areas, while the government desperately cast about for new ideas for dealing with the growing environmental crisis. President Barack Obama halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.

10 Animals Most at Risk from Gulf Oil Spill

(Just click on the link for the list and photos of the magnificent species that are at risk. It's just heartbreaking.)



Louisiana shrimpers sue BP over oil spill

The suit was filed on behalf of two commercial shrimp fishermen named in the suit, and all other coastal Louisiana residents whose livelihoods are threatened by the spill.

The Coast Guard estimates that 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) of crude oil a day is gushing from the sea floor where the blowout occurred, and authorities have said it could take weeks to cap the leak as BP mounts what it calls the largest oil spill containment operation in history.

The suit names as defendants BP, which holds the lease to the offshore well; Swiss-based Transocean Ltd (RIGN.S) (RIG.N), owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform that exploded in flames on April 20 and collapsed two days later; and Halliburton Energy Services Inc (HAL.N), which the suit says was engaging in cementing operations of the well and well cap.

The complaint says Halliburton "improperly and negligently performed these duties, increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill."

Anyone who wants to still put forward "Drill, baby, drill" is just mining an empty hole. Eleven oil riggers lost their lives in the pursuit of oceanic black gold--and a whole lot of damage will be done before this is over. It always was overly-simplistic. It was always a joke--oil is fungible. It can be sold to anyone, whether it was drilled here or not, because the companies doing it are international, so it doesn't really even benefit the US, especially. The process isn't entirely safe, and it isn't especially clean. And the effort that goes into extracting it from difficult and dangerous areas would probably be better put into something that doesn't screw with our environment in the long term with global warming, or fuck (and I strongly mean fuck) up our ecology and economy with careless disasters. The alleged "profit" from drilling is absolutely bullshit when weighed against the cost of something like this.