LEARNING (OR NOT) FROM THE GULF OIL DISASTER
Gaining perspective on the oil spill
A review of Carl Safina's Book A Sea In Flames that concludes: "
Safina argues that the smartest way to respond to the Gulf disaster shouldn't have been cleaning birds or picking up turtles or spraying 1.84 million gallons of Corexit 9500. Instead, an infuriated citizenry should have pulled the subsidies out from under Big Petroleum. Tax the oil conglomerates out of business. It's still not too late. Better to be, as Safina puts it, "shocked at the pump" than dead in the water."
Lessons Not Learned
OIL/ENERGY POLICY
More U.S. Oil Drilling Won't Lower Gas Prices, Experts Say
The Return of 'Drill, Baby, Drill'
"With the country again facing $4-a-gallon gasoline, the time would seem ripe for a grown-up conversation on energy. What we are getting instead is a mindless rerun of the drill-baby-drill operatics of the 2008 campaign, when gas was also at $4 a gallon. Then, as now, opportunistic politicians insisted that vastly expanded oil drilling would bring relief at the pump and reduced dependence on foreign oil. Then, as now, these arguments were bogus."
OIL DRILLING - COMING TO A BEACH NEAR YOU?
U.S. House passes bill to open Va. coast for drilling
GOP bill calls for oil drilling off North Coast (CA)
"A Republican move to expedite offshore oil drilling in response to $4-a-gallon gasoline includes a bill, scheduled for a House vote this week, that could bring oil wells to the Sonoma and Mendocino coast."
NOT CLEAR ON THE CONCEPT
GOP Rep. Burgess Claims Oil Prices Fell Because 'The House Passed A Bill'
There was no word on when Rep. Burgess will be enrolling in Remedial Economics 101.
ALTERNATIVES TO OIL
House members introduce technology-neutral Open Fuel Standard Act
"The OFS requires that 50 percent of automobiles made in 2014, 80 percent in 2016, and 95 percent in 2017, would be manufactured and warranted to operate on non-petroleum-based fuels. Alternative fuel options include existing technologies such as flex fuel, natural gas, hydrogen, biodiesel, plug-in electric and fuel cell, as well a catch-all category of "emerging fuels.""
Climate change panel: renewable energy to be key
"The world's top scientific body concluded that renewable energy in the coming decades will be widespread and could one day represent the dominant source for powering factories and lighting homes, according to a draft report obtained by The Associated Press Thursday."
