The Gulf Spill

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[Jana]

I wonder if people will be making claims for getting cancer 10 years from now...how about child deformity rates. Yea who ever thought of the dispersing idea is GD crazy.

Perhaps it is because humanity still has a criminal mind in general that we can't get it straight even on this vast scale event. Perhaps if we had high morality and naturally thought in LONGTERM  consequences then the sane proceedures would naturally be followed. There was a breach in the chain of command starting with Bush-Cheney...so these are the guys we should lynch first.

[Daniel]

High morality and considering long term consequences is way too expensive! There's just too much money to be made and pocketed. Besides, it's not as fun  Sex and power drives a huge percentage of much of mankinds lower moral behavior. I am not saying sex is immoral, no. I am saying the desire for these things drives people to do what they do to get what they want and make it look collectively acceptable. Follow the money, follow the authority, follow the sex lives. They screwed up part of their food chain though. The means to an end to get theirs. If they did what was right and considered the long term consequences then they may not get what they want. "Sacrifice" and "Selflessness" are two words they hate to hear.

Return on investment, ROI baby. What's in it for them?

[Jana]

Looks like things will shift with this incident.
Personally I think we should outlaw sex, have laws against greed and teach Native American spirituality in US schools.
Consider that in 20 years the US is going to be Mexican. With GM, pollutants and Nukes...it an't going to be worth having babies anyway.

[Jana]

Any "accident" or happenstance can be looked at archetypally, like dream analysis. Spiral dynamics may help reduce hysteria and responses that are not conducive to solutions...but shadow/unconsciousness vs. light/consciousness is the cross on which this event is hung.
We cannot blame the drug pushers for the plague of drug addicts. Similarly we cannot blame the oil companies for the inability of new nonhydrocarbon technologies taking hold yet...even thou the oil companies have been killing off the alternatives one by one. What arises from this unprecedented circumstance is that it puts the ball in each of our corners to take total responsibility for what technology and what culture we BUY into, and to start living by our higher values above and beyond what is handed out to us by the culture at large.

By building up sovereignty and maturing the species we can stop the causes/circumstances/conditions that lead of degenerative diseases, pollution, overpopulation, resource depletion and genetic decay. This is why enhancing the power of the humanizing principle and growing the sovereign brain is the primary task of the species. If we simply focus on the trillions of symptoms rather than the cause itself we will not be able to see the elephant for what it is, and we will be undone by our inability to plan longterm and think in big picture mode. Lost in left-brain problem details, while the right-brain holistic solutions go untapped.

[Daniel]

...we cannot blame the oil companies for the inability of new nonhydrocarbon technologies taking hold yet...
...it puts the ball in each of our corners to take total responsibility for what technology and what culture we BUY into, and to start living by our higher values above and beyond what is handed out to us by the culture at large.... 

I've had these plans since 1981, still have them in a box.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/shopping/detail.aspx?itemnumber=1764

I didn't have the money or a garage to do this back then. Since 2006 I've been driving a Prius.
The intent and spirit was there at least. 

Back then who gave a damn about a building a hybrid car? Gas was dirt cheap.
Only crazy people like me and Mother Earth News.

Didn't get any girlfriends out of it either LOL. Needed that garage and some Craftsman tools. 

[Francis]

Kind of ironic that the only real fix is to drill more wells ; the so-called 'relief' wells. Catchy moniker too. Anyway this is like the old saying; 'fighting fire with fire.' That is, prevent the spread of uncontrolled forest fires by starting up contolled forest fires and thereby starving the uncontrolled fires of fuel.

That means that all off-shore rigs should perhaps have these types of relief wells in-place, in order to operate safely. I never heard of a valve that was failsafe. The party's over for these hacks. I want a full investigation!

 

[Jana]

Full investigation, you mean like 911.
Basically BP rushed it and didn't head the warning signs. They probably didn't consult external sources...eg: other oil companies with regards to an unprecedented type of well.

[Jana]

It could have been a Haliburton trick to take over BP for all we know.
Hey contemplate how far inland the atmospheric benzine and hydrosulphuric acid is going to go...probably over most of the eastern states right up to Canada...acid rain increase, cancer, respiratory problems...possibly even weaken forests...I dunno

[feral]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/14-1

Published on Monday, June 14, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Greenwashing the Pentagon

by Joseph Nevins
As oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, just one of many manifestations of perilous ecological degradation across the planet, the need to challenge war and militarism—especially in terms of the United States—becomes ever-more pressing. The U.S. military is the world’s single biggest consumer of fossil fuels, and the single entity most responsible for destabilizing the Earth’s climate.

The costs of U.S. militarism and war are high and many. In addition to the growing civilian and military death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, total monies appropriated by Congress for the two wars surpassed the one-trillion-dollar mark on May 30th. Among other would-be purchases, such an enormous sum could provide 294,734,961 people with health care for one year, according to the Northampton, Massachusetts-based national Priorities Project.(1) Instead, the monies are dedicated to death and destruction—all in the name of “national security”—greatly enriching military contractors in the process.

The costs that one rarely hears about—at least here in the United States—are the associated environmental damages that regularly and systematically occur. Indeed, it is far more common to learn of the Pentagon’s efforts to “go green.”

In March, the Center for American Progress, for instance, reported on the Pentagon building’s “big green renovation.” When completed in 2011, “the Pentagon’s 25,000 military and civilian personnel will not only work in one of the biggest office buildings in the world,” the article gushed, “but one of the most energy efficient and environmentally sustainable.”(2)

Beyond the Pentagon building itself, the U.S. military is “stepping forward to combat climate change,” asserts the subtitle of a 2010 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.(3) Meanwhile, President Obama recently extolled the military’s endeavors to reduce its fuel consumption via biofuel-using technologies, specifically the Navy’s FA/18 fighter jet, nicknamed the Green Hornet due to its putative eco credentials, and the Marine Corp’s Light Armored Vehicle.(4)

Such “greenwashing” helps to mask the fact that the Pentagon devours about 330,000 barrels of oil per day (a barrel has 42 gallons), more than the vast majority of the world’s countries. If the U.S. military were a nation-state, it would be ranked number 37 in terms of oil consumption—ahead of the likes of the Philippines, Portugal, and Nigeria—according to the CIA Factbook.

And although much of the military’s technology has become far more fuel-efficient over the last few decades, the amount of oil consumed per soldier per day in war-time has increased by 175 percent since Vietnam, given the Pentagon’s increasing use and number of motorized vehicles. A 2010 study by Deloitte, the financial services company, reports that the Pentagon uses 22 gallons of oil per soldier per day deployed in its wars, a figure that is expected to grow 1.5 percent annually though 2017.(5)

The worst offender is the Air Force, which consumes 2.5 billion gallons of aviation fuel a year, and accounts for more than half of the Pentagon’s energy use. Under normal flight conditions, a F-16 fighter jet burns up to 2,000 gallons of fuel per flight hour. The resulting detrimental impact on the Earth’s climate system is much greater per mile traveled than motorized ground transport due to the height at which planes fly combined with the mixture of gases and particles they emit.(6)

Among the ironies of all this, given that a central goal of U.S. military strategy is to ensure the smooth flow of oil to the United States, is that the Pentagon’s voracious appetite for energy helps to justify its very existence and seemingly never-ending growth.

In a direct sense, war and militarism produce landscapes and ecosystems of violence—and violated bodies. In Laos, unexploded ordnance from Washington’s illegal and covert bombing litters the countryside, and has killed and maimed thousands since the war’s end, and continues to do so at the rate of almost one person per day. In Vietnam, about 500,000 Vietnamese children have been born since the mid-1970s with birth defects believed to be related to the defoliant Agent Orange that the Pentagon dumped on the country. And in war-torn Fallujah, the aftermath of two U.S. sieges of the Iraqi city in 2004 has seen a huge rise in the number of chronic deformities among infants and a spike in early-age cancer.(7)

Beyond locations directly targeted by war, the ill effects of military consumption of environmental resources do not respect territorial boundaries. They exacerbate a growing environmental crisis on a global scale. From the degradation of the world’s oceans, to a steep decline in biodiversity and intensifying climate destabilization, war and militarism threaten humanity and life more broadly in unprecedented ways.

Such ecological “costs” are certainly not limited to the activities of the U.S. military. But given its engagement in multiple wars, a network of hundreds of military bases around the world and dozens more in the United States, and a budget now roughly the equivalent of all of the rest of the world’s militaries combined, the Pentagon must be the central focus of efforts to protect the biosphere by challenging war and militarism. More than ever, humanity—and Mother Earth—can no long afford them.


(1) http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home
(2) http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/03/ebg031010.html
(3) http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_report_detail.aspx?id=58542&category=919
(4) http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=e5958550-b227-43be-a55d-b0ed7c8d2153
(5) http://www.deloitte.com/us/aerospacedefense/energysecurity
(6) http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/sep/21/travelsenvironmentalimpact.ethicalliving
(7) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/13/falluja-cancer-children-birth-defects
Joseph Nevins teaches geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Among his books are "Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid" (City Lights Books), and "Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on ‘Illegals' and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary" (Routledge).

[feral]

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[Jana]

Maybe we should put ibogaine in the water supply at the pentagon and white house, and wall street...and the Federal Reserve, and Goldman Sacks and Deutsche Bank. In fact why don't we iboga the entire planet and rectify the moral backbone of the species...since our opiate system seems to be set on being focused on that which is harmful to life.


http://www.erikblaire.info  —Orwell's Warning: The Greatest Amerikan Paradox by Erik Blaire
http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com  —#075 - Orwell's Warning: An Interview with Erik Blaire


http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com   —#076 - Clean, Ibogaine Clean: An Interview with Dr. Deborah Mash

[Daniel]

I try to stay away from drugs, however severe pain is no fun.


More comedy for a grave situation 

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-june-10-2010/the-spilling-fields---bp-ad-campaign

[Francis]

Timeline: How Dick Cheney caused the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history

2001:
Cheney’s secret energy task force crafts national energy policy. The Bush administration released the National Energy Policy Report on May 16. President Bush appoints Dick Cheney, who was the Chief Financial Officer of Haliburton before taking the VP spot. But he was officially still on Haliburton’s payroll and kept about 430,000 shares in Haliburton stock.

The task force report was based on recommendations provided to Cheney from coal, oil, and nuclear companies and related trade groups—many of which were major contributors to Bush’s presidential campaign and to the Republican Party. The Oil companies— including BP, the National Mining Association, and the American Petroleum Institute—secretly met with the Cheney and his staff.

Only 7 of the 105 recommendations in the plan involved renewable energy. Cheney’s task force report proposed funding the development of “clean energy technologies” by opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling and earmarking $1.2 billion of bid bonuses from leases in ANWR.

2002:
Renewable energy budget cuts. Bush released the fiscal year 2002 budget on April 9 and severly cut clean energy research and development. Solar and renewable energy R&D would drop by more than a third; nuclear energy R&D would be almost halved; and energy conservation R&D would fall by nearly 25 percent.

House energy bill includes $33.5 billion in tax breaks for dirty energy. The House of Representatives on August 2 passed the Securing America’s Future Energy Act, H.R. 4. It included $33.5 billion in tax breaks and other incentives over 10 years for the power industry aimed at increasing oil and gas exploration.

In 2002, Senate clean energy bill fails with a Republican-led Congress.

2003:
Republican-led Congress backs a House energy bill that includes $23.5 billion in tax breaks for big energy companies. The legislation would hand out $23.5 billion over 10 years in tax breaks to increase oil and gas production and $5.4 billion in subsidies and loan guarantees.

Yet More renewable energy budget cuts. President Bush’s FY 2004 budget once again reduced funding for solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass totaling more than $25 million in cuts.

In 2004, the Republican-led House passes a bill allowing companies to build oil refineries in minority communities. The United States Refinery Revitalization Act passed the House on June 16, but was never made into law.

2005:
Yet even more renewable energy budget cuts. President Bush’s FY 2006 budget once again cut energy efficiency and renewable energy programs at the Department of Energy by about 4 percent; cuts totaled nearly $50 million.

Energy bill includes $27 billion for dirty energy. President Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 on August 8. The bill closely resembled Cheney’s 2001 plan and gave $27 billion to coal, oil and gas, and nuclear, and only $6.4 billion for renewable energy. Amendments in the House and Senate to raise fuel efficiency standards for vehicles failed.

These regulations permit oil and gas industry to regulate itself!

The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service—the agency responsible for managing oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf and collecting royalties from companies—decided in 2005 that oil companies, rather than the government, were in the best position to determining their operations’ environmental impacts. This meant that there was no longer any need for an environmental impact analysis for deepwater drilling, though an earlier draft stated that such drilling experience was limited.

2006:
A House-passed bill allows drilling in Arctic Refuge. The House passed the American-Made Energy and Good Jobs Act on May 25, which would open oil leases on the coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—an area of 1.5 million acres.
More budget cuts for renewable energy. President Bush’s 2007 FY budget cut funding for energy conservation by 6.3 percent to $289 million and stopped funding for the geothermal program—although Congress later restored some of this geothermal funding.

2007:
Government agency failed to collect more than $865 million in revenues. Investigators from the Interior Department determined that a “top Interior Department official was told nearly three years ago about a legal blunder that allowed drilling companies to avoid billions of dollars in payments for oil and gas pumped from publicly owned waters.”

Yet, still, more budget cuts for renewable energy. President Bush’s fiscal year 2008 budget proposed to cut research funds for efficiency and renewable energy by 16 percent, eliminate them for geothermal energy, and leave funding for solar stagnant.
Bush administration opposes expansion of renewable energy.

President Bush also threatened to veto the Energy Independence and Security Act because it included a renewable electricity standard and renewable energy tax credits funded by the elimination of many tax subsidies for major oil companies totaling approximately $13 billion.

2008:
More budget cuts for renewable energy. President Bush proposes a 27 percent cut for Department of Energy efficiency and renewable energy programs in the FY 2008 budget.

Bush administration opposes expansion of renewable energy. President Bush opposed House passage of the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act, H.R. 5351, as advised on February 28.

Bush lifts moratorium on offshore drilling. Bush lifted the executive moratorium on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts on July 14. This moratorium was put in place in 1990 by Pres. George H.W. Bush. Bush then called on Congress to lift its own annual ban on drilling, as John McCain embraced “drill, baby, drill” that year.

Government agency accepted gifts and engaged in fraternizing and illicit activities. A June 2008 interior general report found that Minerals Management Service officials accepted gifts, engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees from energy firms, and showed favoritism in handling contracts.

http://theloop21.com/politics/timeline-how-dick-cheney-caused-the-bp-oil-spill

[Francis]

Stand up and support President Obama in his efforts to change energy policy. Add your name to the list:

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
 

[Jana]

Plus Bush-Cheney probably instigated the commodities trading hiking of the oil prices in 2008 to justify increased access to more obscure fields in fragile/protected areas, and suck more money out of the public to fund their illegal wars.
And Bush-Cheney supposedly deregulated safety restrictions on drilling in the US...perhaps even directly vetoing the need to employ the acoustic valve.

Which directly make them responsible for both 911 and the spill.

http://theloop21.com/politics/timeline-how-dick-cheney-caused-the-bp-oil-spill