Obama Nominates Fossil Fuel Funded Ernest Moniz to Energy

March 5th, 2013 | Posted by The Green Man in Barack Obama | Environment - (2 Comments)

More bad news for environmentalist Democrats came from the Obama Administration yesterday, as President Barack Obama announced that he had nominated Ernest Moniz to become the next Secretary of Energy.

Moniz is currently the head of the MIT Energy Initiative, which promotes the continued use of fossil fuels, and takes money from the following fossil fuels companies:

secretary of energy- Saudi Aramco (an oil company owned by the government of Saudi Arabia)
- BP
- Shell Oil
- Total petroleum company
- Duke Energy
- Eni
- Chevron
- Hess Corporation
- Constellation Energy
- Osaka Gas Company
- Petra Energia

Moniz does not possess the political independence from the fossil fuels industry that we need from our Secretary of Energy. Courtney Abrams, the federal clean energy advocate for Environment America, notes that Moniz “has a history of supporting dirty and dangerous energy sources”. Michael Brune, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, commented that ““We would stress to Mr. Moniz that an ‘all of the above’ energy policy only means ‘more of the same’.” The “All Of The Above” energy policy promoted by Republicans and the Obama Administration has meant extreme increases in drilling for crude oil and natural gas, with small amounts of funding for renewable energy sources as window dressing.

The MIT Energy Initiative operated by Moniz isn’t only financially indebted to fossil fuels companies that profit from pollution and contribute to climate change. The Institute also takes money from Hogan Lovells, a lobbying firm working for oil companies including Anadarko Petroleum, Anschutz Corporation, Denbury Resources, DTE Energy, Occidental Petroleum, SandRidge Energy, and the Tellus Operating Group.

Another lobbying firm that pays money to the MIT Energy Initiative is Steptoe & Johnson. Steptoe & Johnson represents the fossil fuels industry as well, with the American Gas Association, Chemtex International, and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America on its list of clients.

If Ernest Moniz becomes the head of the U.S. Department of Energy, his financial connections to oil and gas corporations make it highly unlikely that he’ll support any policies that end the political and economic dominance of the fossil fuels industry. Barack Obama’s choice of Moniz as Secretary of Energy suggests that his idealistic comments about fighting climate change, in the State of the Union Address and his inaugural speech this year, were just more empty promises.

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Obama Fridays The Environment

January 14th, 2013 | Posted by The Green Man in Barack Obama | Environment | Science - (2 Comments)

You might have heard the news on Friday – which is precisely why I did not write about the news on Friday. Friday is the day of the week that people choose to release news that they want to quickly die away. Most people don’t read the news on Friday, because they’re preparing for the weekend, focusing on deadlines or planning ahead for their time off. Even when people do read the news on Friday, they usually forget about the Friday news by the time Monday comes around. Politicians know this, and so, when they are compelled to share information with the public, but don’t want the public to pay much attention to it, they release it at the end of the week, on Thursday afternoon or Friday.

Look at the news that a politician releases at the end of the week, and you can find the shadow side of that politician. You can see what that politician is trying to hide.

antienvironment presidentIt’s bad news for the environmental movement, then, to see the news that the Obama Administration chose to release and end of last week.

As President, Barack Obama has refused to support serious legislation to deal with the growing problem of climate change, and has failed to take comprehensive executive action to deal with the environmental crisis. In the meanwhile, Obama has supported policies to encourage the increased extraction and burning fossil fuels such as coal, crude oil and natural gas. In spite of his anti-environmental record, however, Obama keeps on promising that sometime, somewhere, he will do something to stop the global crisis of ecological degradation of which climate change is just one part. Many environmentalists keep expressing their support for Obama too, because of these promises.

Maybe that’s why Obama chose the end of last week to release a report showing that climate change is getting worse under his watch. The National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee released its Draft Climate Assessment Report on Friday. It’s a peer-reviewed collaborative summary, compiled by a team of over 240 experts, of the latest information about climate change.

The report begins: “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. This report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee concludes that the evidence for a changing climate has strengthened considerably since the last National Climate Assessment report, written in 2009. Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed. Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington State, and maple syrup producers in Vermont have observed changes in their local climate that are outside of their experience. So, too, have coastal planners from Florida to Maine, water managers in the arid Southwest and parts of the Southeast, and Native Americans on tribal lands across the nation.

Americans are noticing changes all around them. Summers are longer and hotter, and periods of extreme heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. Winters are generally shorter and warmer. Rain comes in heavier downpours, though in many regions there are longer dry spells in between.

Other changes are even more dramatic. Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acreage. In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation.

Scientists studying climate change confirm that these observations are consistent with Earth’s climatic trends…”

This is grave news, showing that climate change is acting as a rapidly expanding drag on the American economy. Yet, President Obama isn’t talking about the report. Instead, in a speech today, Barack Obama will be characterizing an upcoming debate about an increase to the debt ceiling, a routine event, as if it is at the center of our nation’s economic troubles.

Another matter that will not be addressed in today’s speech by President Obama will be the revelation late last week that Shell Oil’s Artic oil drilling vessels repeatedly violated the pollution limits Shell Oil agreed to in exchange for permission to drill for fossil fuels in Arctic waters. Barack Obama had personally given his strong support to the Arctic oil drilling, and has called for drilling on land and in the Arctic Ocean to expand even further and faster. Although the EPA has apparently known about the pollution violations by Shell Oil for many months, the agency chose late Thursday as the time to acknowledge the problem, so that reporting on the environmental problems in Shell’s Arctic drilling operations began only late Thursday night. What’s more, the EPA declined to release details of the violations, and refused to answer questions from reporters about the matter. The story was doomed, therefore, to become a small Friday news blip.

The Obama Administration’s decision to minimize these new stories about the environmental crisis shows that Barack Obama is aware of what’s going on, but doesn’t want the American people to pay attention to the problem. Just as in his first term in the White House, Barack Obama is serving the interests of fossil fuels corporations, and ignoring the welfare of the nation as a whole in order to do so.

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Shell Oil Unready To Drill For Oil In The Arctic

September 18th, 2012 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment - (0 Comments)

For years now, Shell Oil has been pushing the United States to hurry up plans to open up drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean. It has brushed off concerns that a large oil spill could cause significant ecological damage in the biologically rich Arctic Ocean, saying that it’s prepared for any problems that might take place.

The Obama Administration agreed that everything was in order, and approved Shell Oil to begin drilling for oil this year.

Now, Shell Oil has been forced to delay its planned drilling, because a major safety device to be used in the eventuality of an oil spill like the Deepwater Horizon isn’t functioning properly. The oil spill containment dome Shell planned to use in the Arctic was unable to survive a simple test without significant damage.

arctic ocean oil drilling accident“If you can’t even test your safety systems in calm waters without damaging them, you’ve got no business drilling for oil in the Arctic. Shell is proving it is the gang that can’t drill straight,” comments Niel Lawrence of the National Resources Defense Council.

In a press release, Shell Oil stated that “Shell continues to demonstrate the strength and extent of its Arctic preparations.” In a sense, that statement is true. Shell Oil has demonstrated the strength and extent of its Arctic preparations, and shown that they are pathetic.

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Arctic Sea Ice Coverage Lurches Downward

June 11th, 2012 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment | Science - (2 Comments)

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported data yesterday that show a sudden drop in the extent of ice coverage on the Arctic Ocean. The surface area of marine Arctic waters with at least 15 percent sea ice coverage has taken a sudden dip over the last week. Sea ice coverage in the Arctic is now at a record low for this date.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center staff predicted this rapid decline a couple of weeks ago, noting that although surface area of Arctic sea ice over the winter had been closer to normal than we’ve seen in recent years, that ice tended to be much thinner than normal, so that the total amount of ice was lower than it appeared to be from a distant, top-down view.

national snow and ice data center

In related news, scientists working as part of the ICESCAPE (Impacts of Climate on EcoSystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific) research project have discovered massive blooms of diatoms, growing under the thinning arctic ice, in places phytoplankton has never been seen growing before. In some locations, the diatom blooms are 30 feet thick, and extend for many miles, just under the ice and out into open water.

In a move that will accelerate the warming of the Arctic, and the rest of the Earth, Shell Oil has now sent its ships out into Arctic waters to begin exploring for sites to drill for oil. The Greenpeace ship, Esperanza, has been ordered by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason to stay at least a kilometer away from Shell’s drilling vessels. Risking massive pollution in clean ocean waters is legal in the Arctic, but protest ships, it seems, are not.

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Obama Approves Offshore Drilling With Untested Technology

March 31st, 2012 | Posted by The Green Man in Barack Obama | Bumper Stickers | Election 2012 | Environment - (6 Comments)

Back in 2008, when Barack Obama reversed course and voted in favor of expanded offshore drilling, many environmentalists made excuses for him. They said that this decision was only made because there was an election on. They said that, after the election, Obama would surely pursue a policy to restrain oil drilling.

They were wrong.

The Obama Administration failed to create new regulations on offshore drilling, and so we saw the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, and the biggest oil spill in American history. The American people were outraged, but President Obama refused to institute a moratorium on the expansion of offshore drilling. Instead, Barack Obama responded to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico by agreeing to expand deepwater offshore drilling even further, without any new safety regulations in place!

anti-obama bumper sticker

This week, the Obama White House has made the problem even worse. In the Arctic, the Obama Administration has approved a plan by Shell Oil to drill for oil in the Beaufort Sea, even though Shell Oil’s response plan for an oil spill in the Arctic waters relies upon untested technology.

On the very same day, the Obama Administration has opened up a large new area just off the coast of Virginia for exploration for offshore drilling. Imagine black sludge from these new oil wells brought on a high tide into the Chesapeake Bay.

If George W. Bush had made these decisions, environmentalists would be in an uproar. Will environmental organizations now let these dangerous favors to Big Oil slide, just because it’s Barack Obama who’s responsible?

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Shell Oil Brings Oil Spills to North Sea and Niger Delta

August 14th, 2011 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment | Outside the USA - (0 Comments)

Politicians who take money from oil company executives keep on feeding us the same lie: They tell us that drilling for oil is safe, with fabulous technology that prevents oil spills. Yet, month after month, there is evidence to the contrary, as oil spills take place all over our planet.

nigeria oil spillLast month, British Petroleum struck Alaska with three oil spills in one week. Five days ago, I wrote of an oil spill off the coast of Mumbai, India.

Today, one company, Shell Oil, is scrambling to deal with two oil spills at once. In the North Sea, a Shell Oil pipeline has burst, sending a 50 square mile oil slick toward to coast of Britain.

In Nigeria, just one day after the United Nations issued a report detailing how it will take Shell Oil 30 years to clean up the pollution already troubling the country from oil spills there, a new oil spill took place there, from two separate Shell Oil wells. The oil has covered the Niger Delta, the primary source of drinking water for the tens of millions of people living in the area.

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Shell Oil Company President Pretends Timor Sea Oil Spill Never Happened

November 19th, 2009 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment - (1 Comments)

Marvin Odum, the President of Shell Oil Company, just testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. During that testimony, Odum said of OCS [Outer Continental Shelf] offshore oil drilling, “There are those who promote a ‘do nothing’ approach to OCS development. Perhaps they have an outdated view of how the oil and gas industry operates today. I appreciate the opportunity to provide the facts because the facts show that environmental stewardship and oil and gas activity are not mutually exclusive.”

offshore oil drilling platformOffshore drilling for oil and environmental stewardship are not mutually exclusive? How did Mr. Odum explain, then, the compatibility of environmental stewardship with the recent oil spill from an offshore drilling platform in the Timor Sea – an oil spill that continued, unchecked, for two and a half months before the platform finally burst into flames raging hundreds of feet high for two days straight until the disaster was finally stopped?

Nothing. Mr. Odum didn’t have a thing to say in his testimony about the Timor Sea oil spill. He just pretended that the environmental disaster never happened. Neither did Odum have anything to say about an incident this July in which 63,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from a cracked pipeline in the Gulf of Mexico – a pipeline set up by his own company.

Shell Oil’s policy for dealing with environmental problems associated related to offshore oil drilling seems to be to pretend that the problems don’t exist.

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Shell Oil Gains New Drilling In Alaska As It Evades Cleanup In Africa

October 20th, 2009 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment - (1 Comments)

Shell Oil has gained approval from the U.S. Minerals Management Service to place two new offshore drilling platforms in the Beaufort Sea to the north of Alaska. Ironically, the drilling operations will be made easier because of reductions in Arctic sea ice due to global warming, which has been caused to some extent by the burning of oil.

The Center for Biological Diversity has pointed out that there isn’t any technology to clean up an oil spill in the icy conditions of the Beaufort Sea. The U.S. Minerals Management Service decision comes as an unprecedented oil spill in Australian waters, coming from a rig that was supposed to have environmentally safe new technology, enters its second month.

Also, while it is granted new drilling rights in Alaska, Shell Oil is evading the clean up of oil spills it has caused in Africa. The United Nations Environmental Program is being forced to pick up the bill for the mess left behind by Shell Oil’s profiteering in Nigeria. Will the company try to do the same when its new Alaskan drilling operations spill oil into Arctic waters?

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