I've had it with oil spills. Please, people, get us some safe, clean energy and let's step on it.
My NRDC colleague, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, writes here: "What is going on with Big Oil this year? The Gulf. Spills in Minnesota and Salt Lake City. And now, very bad news from Michigan, where crews are cleaning up after yet another major oil infrastructure failure. According to the Detroit Free-Press, an estimated 840,000 gallons of tar sands oil has spilled from a pipeline into the Kalamazoo River and a nearby creek." (Actually over 100 spills or leaking pipes are reported every year).
Tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada are a gooey mixture of earth and oil that has long been difficult to develop profitably, but is now being mined from the earth (in a fashion that rivals Mountain Top Removal in its destructiveness) and piped by TransCanada, a Calgary-based pipeline and energy company, into the Great Lakes Region to refine. And if they get permission, tar sands oil will be piped all the way to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. Unbelievable.
Fortunately, the State Department said it would delay its decision on the permit until a full environmental impact assessment and inter-agency consultation could occur.
It's not hard to imagine the environmental and health impacts associated with TransCanada's tar sands project. A "pollution delivery system that threatens our air and water quality, as well as human health in the region" is how researchers at the University of Toronto describe the network of transcontinental pipelines connecting the tar sands in Alberta with the massive refineries in the heartland of the U.S. according to Josh Mogerman's blog post here. The more carbon-rich tar sands "are responsible for 3 times more greenhouse gas pollution as conventional crude oil," Mogerman writes, and their extraction "is destroying vast swaths of Canada." "If you live near one of the massive refineries that are being retooled to deal with this stuff, you are going to be seeing more asthma and respiratory problems in your community." And don't forget the water, Mogerman warns: "if we let nasty pollutants go up into the air all around the Great Lakes---well, what goes up, must come down---and it will come down, into the drinking water source for ore than 30 million Americans (and plenty of Canadians too)."
What do we want with all that? That's what the U.S. Conference of Mayors asked in 2008 and why they approved a resolution saying that they did not want to use high carbon fuels such as tar sands, liquid coal and oil shale in their cities and asked for help from state and federal authorities to better track fuels.
Determined to do whatever they can to combat climate change, mayors across America are working hard to move their cities forward toward clean, renewable energy sources and not backwards which is where tar sands will take us. According to a new report from NRDC Smarter Cities, 22 US cities are leading the way in green power, energy efficiency, and conservation, Chicago, Ill, a Great Lakes city, among them. Chicago is moving aggressively to make its buildings energy efficient, including through vegetated rooftops, to encourage conservation among its citizens and to advance a "smarter power grid" that provides energy to businesses and residents through a local source rather than through the power plants, what is known in the industry as "distributed generation."
I'm disillusioned with our U.S. Senate for not taking up the most modest of energy and climate bills that would have encouraged investment in job-creating clean energy and reduce our dependence on dirty fuels. I'm further dismayed that there are some in Congress that would like to see the Clean Air Act weakened in order to avoid tough controls on global warming gases emitted from the burning of dirty fuels.
Please people! Listen to average American voters. As this recent poll shows, we want action now. If Congress doesn't get it, this administration must. We've got to treat heat-trapping gases like the pollutants that they are; toughen up the regulations of dirty fuels; help our cities and towns become more energy efficient; and invest in companies that are developing clean renewable energy.
This isn't about politics, it's about people, livelihoods and quality of life here in the U.S. So let's just get to it, in our cities and towns, in our schools and homes and office buildings. Let's wean ourselves of fossil fuels and put America on a competitive path to the future. That's why Smarter Cities is next looking at transportation, as it is the second largest source of CO2 emissions in the U.S., with cars and trucks accounting for almost 2/3 of emissions from the sector.
Oil Company Offers to Buy Homes Near River Spill
BP Starts 'Static Kill' on Gulf Well That Caused Record Spill
Senate postpones action on oil spill bill
Navy Secretary to talk about oil spill in St. Pete
Pamela Anderson Adopts...Two Oil Spill-Affected Dogs!
A plane releases chemical dispersant over the Gulf oil spill. Photograph: Reuters
Oil Spill: Tracking BP's Problematic Claims Process
US Said to Probe BP Disclosures, Stock Trading After Spill
Investors See Petrobras Peril of Ignoring BP Oil Drilling Spill
Fact: the IEA estimates that just to offset global production declines a new Saudi Arabia MUST be put online averaging every 5 years and 3 1/2 years if you want to expected demand http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2008/11/iea-world-energy-outlook-2008.html
Nat Geo put it at "a new Kuwait's worth of output every year" http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/03/energy-challenge/mckibben-text
Fact: as per the Pentagon http://oildepletiondebate.blogspot.com/2010/04/united-states-joint-forces-command-us.html “By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” The US consumes 10 M/bbl per day to supply its auto fuel needs.
You want to go to clean energy? What do you plan to replace asphalt with? Not counting city streets and parking lots there are over 3 million miles of highway in the US alone. Since asphalt is less then 2% of a barrel you still need to produce the other 98%. But that oil is depleting...
Because it all depends upon CO2's est. lifetime. Climatologist believe CO2's atmospheric lifetime is 50-200 years. What that means is, if you were using algae as your primary fuel you'd need to grow 50-200 time the volume being burned year to suck up the alga being burned. If you don't do that then atmospheric CO2 levels will keep on rising.
Your future isn't going to be green, it's going to be an economic and societal hell with increasing crime and war as economies fail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHr8OzaloLM
http://www.financialsensenewshour.com/broadcast/fsn2010-0605-2.mp3
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
http://media.globalpublicmedia.com/RAM/2005/10/bartlett.10-17-05vid.ram
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-665674869982904386#
The Long Emergency – James Howard Kunstler
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4878856748297910182
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel
We can meet 100% of our energy needs using 10,000 square miles of non-arable land surrounding the Salton Sea. It is a net carbon extractor as the waste byproducts can be carbonized in solar ovens and the carbon buried in old coal mines.
The problem with algae is that it is impossible to monopolize the resource and companies like BP only understand how to operate in an enviroment where a few massive companies monopolize all of the availabe resources.
You can grow algae in photobioreactors in your back yard. Any farmer can add it as a year-round cash crop.
It will destroy big oil, big coal, and big gas. That is why you never hear about it.
Bill Gates and others are investing in it, however, and there is a large movement that somehow totally escapes the notice of the MSM, but it's there and it's getting bigger every year.
400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could conceivably endanger us all. We are approaching 390ppm and adding 2ppm each year. The safe limit is 350ppm.
At 450ppm a study released yesterday stated we must begin winding down carbon no later than 2015. At 400ppm we seem to have an immediate emergency!
According to one scientist, a very thin oil film on the surface of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans could threaten to accelerate temperatures toward the catastrophic Tipping Point.
There may still be time for a monumental effort to confine the oil to the Gulf.
Renewable energy systems that can be deployed rapidly should now be produced on a 24/7 basis. The White House and Congress should do whatever is necessary to make that possible.
See A 5 Point Emergency Program at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
Little known and hard to fathom breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies can help to supersede fossil fuels much more rapidly than conventional wisdom suggests might be possible.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
The immediate need is to find practical ways to initiate emergency actions that avoid a catastrophic loss of life.
Ironically, if adequately confronted, the emergency might result in lots of new employment. See Millions of Jobs, on the www.aesopinstitute.org website.