environment

What explanation is there for being so lenient on BP after the spill?  Why are we accepting the 5000 barrels/day figure?  Why are we not forcing them to do testing and monitoring, funding university scientists, and making all data publicly available?  The only reason I can see is that BP doesn't want information collected that could be used against it in court, but why is that the American People's problem?

Another hidden subsidy of oil... of course wind and solar are going to be more expensive as long as oil companies aren't forced to buy insurance and pay for the inherent risks of what they're doing - why should BP not be allowed to be sued into oblivion to compensate the fishermen and tourism workers who will be losing their jobs and livelihoods because of BP's screwup?  I bet the people along that coast wish they'd installed "expensive" wind farms and solar all along that area instead of "cheap" oil rigs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/us/03spill.html

I wonder whether the economic impact of this will approach that of Hurrican Katrina...

"Everywhere you find environmentalism and anti-americanism and anti-capitalism you must stamp them out!!!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3xa30onBVU

"After nine years of regulatory review, the federal government gave the green light Wednesday to the nation’s first offshore wind farm, a highly contested project off the coast of Cape Cod.

Who are the stupid anti-business environmentalists, now?  I hope that Obama is able to use this as he did the 40% rate increase in healthcare, and the SEC investigation of Goldman Sachs for finance reform... if this is what people need to wake up and start subsidizing wind farms instead of oil rigs, it's all good.

"Louis Skrmetta, 54, runs a company called Ship Island Excursions that takes tourists to the Gulf Islands National Seashore, where white-sand beaches and green water create an idyllic landscape.

Part of me hopes it makes landfall... maybe having Mississippi and Louisianna coasts covered in oil would change the tea-partier's tunes...

"Coast Guard officials are considering setting the Gulf of Mexico oil slick on fire as it moved Tuesday to within 20 miles of sensitive ecological areas in the Mississippi River Delta.

"Officials say it could become one of worst spills in U.S. history."

http://money.cnn.com/2010/04/27/news/economy/oil_rig_gulf/index.htm?hpt=T2

"Australian police on Wednesday arrested two senior crew members in charge of the Chinese coal vessel that ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef last week, causing serious damage to one of the world’s most famous coral outcroppings.

"The Chinese captain and chief officer on watch during the April 3 accident were charged with damaging a protected marine environment after an investigation found that the freighter, Shen Neng 1, had strayed from its intended course.

This just makes me mad... if you were trying to damage the great barrier reef it'd be hard to do better than these asses, and it all happened out of stupidity, laziness, and greed.  "You want me to take my tanker full of coal and oil AROUND your nature preserve?  Screw that, hippy!  That's expensive and slow, I'm just gonna go right through!"  I'm suprised they don't have GPS tags on all ships like that by now, and just automatically track them, and fine them to oblivion if they go off course.

It makes me sad that when we're facing huge global and local environmental challenges (climate change, pollution, smog, water usage, electricity generation, oil, etc...), that people with creative solutions get shot-down for being outside the norm.  In this article, a family in LA got sick of wasting 300,000 gallons of water a year on their lawn, so they replaced it with drought-resistant plants, wood chips, and creeping vines.  From the pictures, I think it looks nice, and their household water usage was cut 80%...