Moving Beyond the BP Oil Spill

Beyond BP
Restoring the gulf will take decades. But we can start getting off oil now.
By MICHAEL BRUNE, Executive Director of the Sierra Club.

It looks a lot worse out on the water than it does on TV. The Gulf of Mexico is literally a sea of oil, with countless orange-brown waves of sludge washing into its beautiful salt marshes. We passed oil-drenched pelicans and dolphins, with no rescue crews anywhere nearby. It was heartbreaking.

If we can find ways to get from Point A to Point B without financing terrorism and cooking the planet, there's no reason we can't finally move—as BP's 2000 corporate rebranding effort put it—"beyond petroleum."

Here's the good news: When the Exxon Valdez ran aground 21 years ago, we didn't have the wealth of alternatives to oil that are available today. For example, we could save more than 25 percent of the oil that's extracted from the Gulf of Mexico if we used alternate energy sources for home heating and electricity production. We could save more than the total amount of oil produced in the gulf (or all the oil we import from the entire Persian Gulf) by moving freight from highways to railways and repowering commercial vehicles with cleaner fuels.

As individuals, there is much that we can and must do to cut oil consumption, starting with walking, biking, and riding transit whenever possible. The single most effective thing we can do as a country to get off oil, however, is to electrify transportation. The days of tinkering around with tiny increases in fuel economy should be long gone.

The full article is here.

BP Oil Spill: Is 75% of the Oil Really GONE?

An estimated 5 million barrels (~200 million gallons!) of oil gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon well. White House advisor on energy and climate change, Carol Browner, announced that "more than three-quarters of the oil is gone". This estimate was called overly optimistic, to say the least, by experts.

Here is how a pelican on the gulf coast reacted to the initial "good news" from the Administration in Washington about the BP oil spill cleanup:

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But where did all of the unrecovered oil go?

Bill Lehr, a senior scientist in NOAA's Office of Response and Restoration, later testified before the Energy and Environment Subcommittee in Washington that in reality about three-fourths of the oil is "still in the environment" -- dispersed or dissolved at or below the water surface, and evaporated into the air. Read more here.

Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation and affiliated with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have detected a plume of hydrocarbons at least 22 miles long and more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a residue of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Read more here.

Questions still remain about the possible long-term environmental effects of the oil that remains in the gulf.

We have only One Environment -- the water, air, land -- there is no backup plan. We have got to end our addiction to oil!

British Petroleum claimed originally that its initials stood for "Beyond Petroleum". According to an Editorial in the journal, Science, "Beyond Petroleum" could be the right slogan for the Policy Changes needed to end the U.S. national addiction to oil. That outcome will require a mix of solutions involving the Congress, the American public, businesses, the Administration, and environmental organizations — all driven by passionate conviction about the need for change. Read more here.

How BP Execs handle a Spill

The tragedy of the BP oil spill, and the multiple failures to contain and stop it, beg for some comic relief. Watch a video showing how BP executives deal with a different type of spill.

Oil Spill: What are We Thinking?

Excerpts from the article:

Missing the real drama of the Deepwater Horizon blowout
By Bill McKibben

Let’s think about the stories that are suggested by this trouble.

One has something to do with Peak Oil. BP has gone to all this trouble for a well that taps into what they now think may be 100 million barrels of oil. And that’s…5 days supply for the U.S? Does that give you any sense of the precariousness of the arrangements undergirding our economy right at the moment?

Another -- even more important -- has to do with global warming. Let’s assume that the oil from the Deepwater Horizon made it safely onshore and was refined and then burned in the gas tank of your car. What then? Well, the CO2 in the atmosphere would be doing at least as much damage as the oil spreading across the Gulf.

People are sad and bitter only in part because they see those pelicans oiled; mostly, they sense correctly that our leaders have yet to deal with what is clearly the biggest problem we face, the transition off of fossil fuel.

How out of balance with the natural world are we? And what would it require to get back in balance?

BP’s great victory will come if it need merely confess to technical overreach and pay a few billion in fines -- if that happens, it can get back to making serious money, and the planet can get back to burning.

Editorial Cartoon by Tom Toles:

Are we out of our minds?

Oil Spill: Obama's chance to Lead on Energy

Mr. President, lead now on fossil fuels
The gulf oil spill is Obama's chance to take bold steps on climate change.
By Bill McKibben

Which one is the real Obama? Has he really been transformed by the oil spill in the gulf, or is he merely trying to ride out the public reaction with stronger words? I think the answer is as murky as the water off Mobile. We don't know because so far it's all words; the closest he's come to specifics is that pledge that we won't be off oil in a decade.

We need someone to stand up and tell it the way it is, and in language so compelling and dramatic it sets us on a new path.

Read the full article here.

Brown Pelican on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP photo)

Veterans for Clean American Power

Cut our dependence on oil -- switch to Clean, American Power.

Obama's Crude Awakening

US set to hit BP retrospectively with increased fines
The White House has expressed its frustration at the lack of progress on stopping the Gulf of Mexico oil leak and its intention to introduce retrospective legislation to lift the cap on compensation that BP could be liable to pay -- from millions to Billions of dollars. This comes as bosses from BP and other companies involved in the spill have been grilled by US lawmakers. Watch a short BBC News video report, ending with a clip at the White House showing 'Obama’s Crude Awakening'.

Obama’s Crude Awakening at the White House
by Phil Aroneanu
We marched to the White House to send Obama a message that fossil fuels are not worth the cost in lives and livelihoods, and that this moment must be a crude awakening for our politicians: It’s time for President Obama to lead on clean energy, to end offshore drilling and to solve the climate crisis. Read more in the article here.

Obama 'angry and frustrated' by oil leak
President Obama has criticised what he called the "ridiculous spectacle" of oil companies blaming each other for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.Three weeks after the disaster began, some experts are warning that the quantity of oil released, may be many times larger than current estimates. BP insists it's doing everything it can. Watch a short BBC News video report showing that Obama is beginning to stir from his oil-lobby-induced sleep, but he's still not quite awake.


Take Action at Crude Awakening Events
Starting on May 20th -- the one-month anniversary of the disaster -- Energy Action Coalition is kicking off events across the country.
Sign up to host a Crude Awakening event in your community.

These events are simple and important. All it takes is everyday citizens out on street corners, at symbolic locations, or in front of our elected officials offices to get the message across.

Oil Spill: Are we Doomed to Repeat it?

Never again will we take the environment for granted or abuse it. Never again will we be held hostage to foreign oil. The words have been repeated, president after president, oil spill after oil spill, explosion after explosion, for four decades.

Rachel Maddow, reporting from Louisiana, provides an excellent summary looking at present and past oil spills. She poses the question: Are we Doomed to Repeat it?

Steven Colbert on the BP Oil Spill

Steven Colbert illustrates methods used to try to stop the BP Oil Spill.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
BP's Undersea Dome
www.colbertnation.com

Oil Spill: Look, Learn and Change

I recently posted photos of the tragedy at the offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico and some of the initial impacts of oil spill on the environment.

The catastrophic oil spill is something that all can see. It's visibility offers an opportunity for change, as described in The NY Times opinion article entitled "Drilling, Disaster, Denial". Some excerpts appear below:

Environmentalism began as a response to pollution that everyone could see. The spill in the gulf recalls the 1969 blowout that coated the beaches of Santa Barbara in oil. But 1969 was also the year the Cuyahoga River, which flows through Cleveland, caught fire. Meanwhile, Lake Erie was widely declared “dead,” its waters contaminated by algal blooms. And major U.S. cities — especially, but by no means only, Los Angeles — were often cloaked in thick, acrid smog.

It wasn’t that hard, under the circumstances, to mobilize political support for action. The Environmental Protection Agency was founded, the Clean Water Act was enacted, and America began making headway against its most visible environmental problems.

Greenhouse gases pose a greater threat than smog or burning rivers ever did. But it’s hard to get the public focused on a form of pollution that’s invisible, and whose effects unfold over decades rather than days.

Then came the gulf disaster. Suddenly, environmental destruction was photogenic again.

In particular, President Obama needs to seize the moment; he needs to take on the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd, telling America that courting irreversible environmental disaster for the sake of a few barrels of oil, an amount that will hardly affect our dependence on imports, is a terrible bargain.

The catastrophe in the gulf offers an opportunity, a chance to recapture some of the spirit of the original Earth Day. And if that happens, some good may yet come of this ecological nightmare.

The full text of the article is here.

BP Oil Spill - Map & Editorial Cartoons

Map of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and editorial cartoons, each worth a thousand words, by Adam Zyglis of The Buffalo News.

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Photos: Costs of BP Oil Spill

The Costs of the BP Oil Spill - human lives, water pollution, air pollution, wildlife, fishing industry, tourism. Monetary estimates for cleanup are pegged at more than $4.6 Billion. Clean Energy NOW!

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