Posts tagged energy
Why Should Taxpayers Pay for Toxic Cleanups?
Mar 2nd
WE SHOULDN’T! Let the profiteers who cause the problems pay.
JACQUELINE MARCUS
FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
CopperPollution
(Photo: Cls 14)
If an oil or coal firm releases toxic chemicals that poisons every living thing it touches (Freedom Industries) and sends thousands of residents to the hospital from lethal exposure, (read Truthout’s Editor William Rivers Pitt’s recent pieces Diary of a Dying Country and The Poisoner’s Reckoning), U.S. government officials not only will pat the oil-coal thugs on the back, they’ll hand over a check worth millions of tax dollars for cleanup fees. And if that isn’t insulting enough for you, the insurance companies will also allegedly pay the dirty energy oligarchs again for the same amount.
No criminal charges, no one goes to jail, and to add insult to injury, they’re actually paid twice for contaminating our drinking water, for putting thousands of Americans in the hospital from toxic poisoning, and for turning communities into real estate nightmares.
The insurance settlements represent a drop in the bucket to oil companies that receive close to a trillion dollars a year combined in profits, but those extra millions that the oil firms pocket can make a significant difference for cash-strapped states. It’s like stealing a tiny piece of candy from a baby when your store is spilling over with tons of sweets.
Why are we, the taxpayers, paying for the oil oligarchs’ hazardous toxic messes in the first place?
By and large, the fossil fuel industry owns the U.S. government. You will never see oil-coal executives arrested for the environmental crimes they’ve committed even when Americans have died from their toxic explosions and disasters. That’s why when President Obama boasts about how he increased drilling, fracking, and the construction of oil pipelines beyond George W. Bush’s wildest dreams, which means more disasters are bound to happen, it makes you question Obama’s motives, especially when we’re heading full speed ahead to mass extinction from carbon emissions produced from oil and coal.
Federal regulations for sale: Why disasters keep happening
When Republicans rage about federal environmental protection regulations, think about how we’re rapidly heading towards mass extinction. Instead of increasing regulations, Republicans want to gut the Endangered Species Act, and they’re determined to blow up the Environmental Protection Agency so that big polluters can continue to rapidly push us beyond our ability to survive.
Buzzflash and Truthout don’t take corporate funding – that means we’re accountable to our readers, not big business or billionaire sponsors. Please support our work by making a tax-deductible donation today – just click here to donate.
As they’re shredding the last of the public safety regulations, think of the perpetual oil, fracking and coal disasters, and you’ll get the picture of what “deregulation” looks like. Americans pay the consequences for a government that’s been paid to look the other way.
Federal oversight of eroding equipment is not taken seriously. The feds rarely inspect the fossil fuel industry’s equipment whether it be fuel storage tanks, drilling rigs, pipelines, and most importantly, aging equipment at refineries.
For all the brouhaha the President and elected officials make about protecting the public, the fact that oil-chemical disasters continue to happen demonstrate that they could care less about protecting the general public’s welfare. The oil industry is notorious for putting workers at risk. Should petroleum engineers, manual laborers, or if an honest federal inspector complains, they’re threatened and told by the industry’s supervisors that they’ll lose their jobs.
A friend that formerly worked for a major oil company spoke about the federal inspection process, and if what he says is generally true, it explains why these disasters continue to happen: “The federal inspectors are easily bribed, boxes are checked off based on the word of the oil management team, and then permits are stamped for approval.” In short, U.S. federal inspections of antiquated equipment for the protection of workers, the public, and the environment are a joke.
You would think that the petroleum executives would want to maintain and upgrade their equipment to prevent potential disasters. But thanks to our oil-soaked elected officials, oil execs don’t have to worry about the disasters they create from gross negligence. We, the taxpayers, pick up the tab—while the petro-thugs get paid twice for the cleanup and make off with the profits. Oh and speaking of taxes, Big Oil hardly pays any U.S. taxes, if at all.
These recurring disasters are far from being “leaks” and “spills”: those are Big Oil euphemisms that are used by the media and politicians in the attempt to deceive the public. Think of BP’s Gulf catastrophe. There is no clear evidence of a recovery. On the contrary, it’s been over three years after the explosion and enormous dead zones are spreading throughout the Gulf. As Truthout reporter Dahr Jamail noted, thousands of Gulf residents have been suffering from the toxic exposure. Nevertheless, President Obama still refers to BP’s worst oil disaster in history as a “leak”.
Who’s to blame?
Every other week you read about another oil catastrophe: trains exploding from the fuel they’re transporting, toxic water contamination, offshore rig explosions, pipeline ruptures and refinery explosions, on and on it goes, there’s no end to it—many of which could have been prevented if federal inspectors were doing their jobs and if the oil firms were diligent about maintaining safety equipment.
These disasters are systemic cases of gross negligence that threaten the public’s health. While our elected officials are being wined and dined by Big Oil criminals, they see the American people as merely “collateral damage” when disasters happen, and then proceed with business as usual.
Who’s to blame? The oily legislators have passed laws with the fossil fuel lobbyists that benefit the oil industry at the expense of our environment: our drinking water, our oceans, our forests, our farms and ranches—all sacrificed in exchange for campaign funding and happy-go-lucky party money. I’ve asked this before and I’ll ask it again: Can we eat and drink oil?
Executive decisions lead to ongoing disasters
If President Obama is sincere about preventing another BP Gulf disaster, as he often claims, then why did he give Shell approval to drill in Alaska’s dangerously turbulent Chukchi Sea—home to more than half the nation’s polar bears? Moreover: Shell is working with Transocean: BP’s collaborator that contributed to the unprecedented 2010 Gulf of Mexico catastrophe due to Transocean’s faulty equipment which was never properly inspected by the federal government.
President Obama is fully aware of Shell’s critical malfunctions of transporting their rig at sea, which was shoved to the shore like a bobbing toy from Alaska’s turbulent winds. To allow Shell to proceed is unconscionable when this near disaster signaled an alarming siren of warning to the White House. There’s a perfect example of why disasters keep happening.
New Laws: the American public v the U.S. federal government
Our legislators are perpetually occupied at passing new laws that benefit the fossil fuel industry at our expense.
Well maybe it’s time for us to pass a few laws against our legislators:
New Laws: The fossil fuel industry from now on must pay for cleaning up their deadly toxic disasters that they create, not the taxpayers and not the insurance companies. If the federal government fails to inspect faulty and aging equipment, then the President, and members of the legislature that receive dirty energy money, must pay for the cleanup expenses when disasters occur as a result, and they must establish a multibillion dollar fund for families and animals that are harmed, injured, killed or poisoned from the toxic chemical disasters from their dirty energy campaign money. If they (fossil fuel firms and legislators) do not pay for the cleanup expenses, and for all those who have been affected and harmed immediately after it happens, they will be held to a mandatory prison sentence of ten years in federal prison without bail or parole.
If this were to happen, oil and chemical disasters would be reduced to rare exceptions if at all.
–
Footnotes:
1. Freedom Industries, a coal-industry surrogate in West Virginia, dumped poison into the water supply known as the Elk River, waited 24 hours to tell anyone about it, waited even longer to mention that they had also dumped a second poison into the water supply, and then declared bankruptcy so as to make themselves judgment-proof in civil court against the hundreds of thousands of people who couldn’t eat or work or bathe or cook for weeks…and this was all before the stuff they dumped into the river evaporated into formaldehyde, which it does, so everyone who couldn’t eat or bathe or cook for weeks was suddenly eating and cooking and bathing in a whole different poison, this one being a known carcinogen…but they’re bankrupt now, so screw you and your tumors. (William Rivers Pitt: “The Poisoner’s Reckoning”)
2.
Tran Pacific Partnership like NAFTA on Steroids
Feb 20th
Tell Rep. Polis to Stop the TPP! At Rep. Jared Polis’ office, 4770 Baseline Rd., #220, Boulder 11:00 AM
What’s not to like under free trade? How about a staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada and the related loss of 1 million net U.S. jobs under NAFTA, growing income inequality, displacement of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico, and more than $360 million paid to corporations after “investor-state” tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies.
Now the Obama administration–so concerned with “good jobs” for Americans, wants trade deals with East and Southeast Asian countries, where wages are as little as $ .25/hr. And he wants it fast. A broad coalition
of Congress isn’t supporting the TPP, but good ol’ liberal Rep. Jared Polis, D-CO isn’t one of them.
We need to pressure Representative Jared Polis to commit publicly himself to vote no on a TPP fast track. He has not made public statements vowing to vote no on the fast track and we consider his vote critical, especially since the Republicans are targeting newer representatives to urge them to approve it. We have a couple great weapons in our arsenal – signatures on a SignOn petition asking him to reject the fast track and our physical presence in his office while he is are home- so let’s use them to convince him that we are watching and waiting for him to show support for their constituents, not the corporations. MoveOn, as part of a coalition of progressives from Occupy Denver, Food and Water Watch, the Sierra Club, and Communications Workers of America will go to his Boulder office to deliver petitions and a letter this Thursday, Feb. 20. We will show him that we want him to represent us by taking a stand against the multinational corporations and the destructive TPP.
We urge everyone who can to join us for a show of strength and determination to stop the TPP fast track. This is a very critical issue that would negatively affect our economy, environment, workers’ rights, prescription drug availability, internet freedom, and much more. If you need more information, go to www.flushthetpp.org or www.stopthetpp.org. Then join us and exercise your right to representation, then to celebrate with us when we stop this intended corporate coup. Sign up here and get more details. Message from host:
For participants: : We will meet at Jared Polis’s office 4770 Baseline Rd., #220, Boulder 80303 at 11:00 a.m. We will bring talking points and a letter. All you need to do is join us. Later in the day, some of us will go to Rep. Ed Perlmutter’s office at 12600 W. Colfax Ave., Suite B-400, Lakewood, CO 80215 to deliver petition signatures and a thank you letter. You are invited to join us. He was leaning toward voting for the fast track until we made a lot of phone calls telling him that we the people do not approve of this and would never re elect him. He has now publicly stated that he will vote no on the fast track.
RSVP at http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/event.html?event_id=140717&id=91301-5272516-M2tTGsx&t=3
___________________________________________________
Thursday, February 20th, 2014
Powering The U.S. With Wind, Water, and Solar Power For All Purposes
Mark Z. Jacobson
Director of the Atmosphere Energy Program, Stanford University
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Bechtel Collaboratory
Discovery Learning Center
Engineering Dr, CU, Boulder
Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the most significant problems facing the world today. This talk discusses the development of technical and economic plans to convert the energy infrastructure of each of the 50 United States to those powered by 100% wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) for all purposes, including electricity, transportation, industry, and heating/cooling, after energy efficiency measures are accounted for.
The plans call for ~80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050 through aggressive policy measures and natural transition. Wind and solar resources, footprint and spacing areas required, jobs created, costs, air pollution mortality and climate cost reductions, methods of ensuring reliability of the grid, and impacts of offshore wind farms on hurricane dissipation are discussed.
More information can be found here: www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/susenergy2030.html
_________________________________________________
Colorado Community Rights Network Presents:
COCRN.org ~ Facebook.com/COCommunityRights ~ Twitter.com/COCommRights Flier attached, feel free to print and distribute
1. Democracy School with Thomas LInzey
Friday, March 7, 6:30 – 9:30 pm Saturday, March 8, 9 am – 5 pm
First Unitarian Society of Denver, 1400 Lafayette St., Denver, CO 80218
Seating Limited ~ $125 if payment postmarked by February 26; $150 thereafter based on availability
Mail payment:
17087 E. 106th Ave., Commerce City, CO 80022 Make check out to Colorado Community Rights Network Limited scholarships available, contact COCommRights@gmail.com
2. Statewide Activist Strategy Session
Sunday, March 9, 9 am – 3 pm
RSVP to COCommRights@gmail.com ~ Location TBA
This or previous Democracy School (full, not mini) a prerequisite for attendance
Communities throughout Colorado and across the country are finding that, in the face of corporate exploitation, they don’t have full authority to protect public health, safety and welfare, economic and environmental sustainability, property value, and overall quality of life.
Corporations have court-conferred constitutional rights which they wield against communities to subjugate local rights that interfere with corporate expansion. Furthermore, corporate rights are defended by the state and federal government through the doctrine of preemption.
Citizens of five Front Range cities voted recently to ban or place a moratorium on fracking in their communities. The Colorado Oil and Gas Association, with the state’s support, is suing to overturn these elections. Local rights have been suppressed by other industries in towns and counties throughout the state.
The immortal words of the Declaration of Independence are regarded as a moral standard upon which our freedom was founded and to which we continue to strive: people are endowed with certain unalienable rights, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” among them; government derives its power from the consent of the governed; and when any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.
Today, our structure of law elevates corporate rights over the unalienable rights of citizens and usurps the consent of the governed.
To reclaim our rights, we must challenge corporate supremacy & change our structure of law that upholds it. Democracy School teaches you how.
Thomas Linzey, Executive Director and Chief Counsel for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, has over 15 years experience helping communities protect their health and quality of life in the face of corporate exploitation.
____________________________________________________
CU Lacrosse Defeats Stetson 12-4 In Inaugural Game
Feb 14th
DELAND, Fla. – In its first game of its inaugural season, the University of Colorado lacrosse team started setting records early, grabbing a 12-4 win over Stetson here Thursday.
“Going into the game we were really excited,” CU head coach Ann Elliott said. “We had a really good walkthrough this morning. I knew the girls were going to come out with a lot of energy and excitement with it being our first game. We were really happy with the way they came out, not just the excitement and energy, but really the focus they had and the determination to really play together and stick to our game plan.”
That determination was evident from the beginning of the game to the closing minutes. Colorado edged Stetson in nearly every category. The Buffaloes outshot the Hatters 25 to 15, scooped up three more ground balls (15 to 12) and grabbed two more draw controls (10 to eight). The Buffs defense also stepped up, preventing the Hatters from scoring on any of their three free position shot attempts. (CU was four of seven from the 8 meter.)
In the program debut, Cali Castagnola led the Buffs with four goals off five shots. Johnna Fusco was the top point-getter, with six points off three goals and three assists. Maddie Hunt was strong on the defensive end of the field, causing three turnovers and grabbing two groundballs. In just under 53 minutes, goalie Paige Soenksen grabbed four saves and allowed just three goals.
With one game under their belt, the Buffs are 1-0, while Stetson falls to 0-3 on the season with previous losses to No. 3 Syracuse and Mountain Pacific Sports Federation competitor Oregon.
The Buffs attacked early and often, with Castagnola earning CU’s first ever hat trick by the first period’s midpoint to give the squad a solid 3-0 lead.
“Cali stepped up for sure early in the game,” Elliott said. “I think they were all a result of our offense playing together, working hard together to give each other opportunities, and Cali was able to take advantage early on. I think it really set the tone for the team. It was exciting for us.”
Grabbing an assist on the Buffs’ third goal, Katie Macleay was at it again, scoring exactly five minutes later to push CU’s lead to 4-0. Johnna Fusco continued to push the lead in the final eight minutes before the break, first scoring off a free position shot. Just 15 seconds before halftime, Fusco scored again to give the Buffs a 6-0 lead by halftime.
Macleay’s pace wasn’t slowed by the intermission, getting her third point of the game less than two minutes into the second half.
Colorado had built a dominating 7-0 lead, but Stetson aimed to climb back. During a nearly 20 minute span, CU and Stetson traded off on four goals. The Hatter duo of Mary Kate Sullivan and Samantha Akl proved to be a strong force. Akl first assisted O’Sullivan six minutes into the half. Castagnola, assisted by Fusco, responded, but Stetson was ready for another. Akl assisted Lindsay Summers this time, cutting the Buffs’ lead to six once more.
Amanda Salvadore and Marie Moore both scored their first goals as Buffs with under 10 minutes remaining. O’Sullivan and Akl combined once more, and Stetson’s Julia Lozano scored the Hatter’s final goal, but it wouldn’t be enough to diminish the Buffs’ lead and slow their tempo. Elliott said she was impressed with the way her team handled the Hatter attack and how they took back control on the offensive end.
In the final four minutes, Macleay and Fusco became the second and third Buffs to join the young hat trick club, putting the game away at 12-4.
The Buffs’ first road trip continues against another Florida team, Jacksonville. CU faces the Dolphins, who have received votes in both the IWLCA preseason and first week polls, on Saturday, Feb. 15 at 10 a.m. MT.
“Jacksonville – they’re a great team,” Elliott said. “They play hard all over the field: offensively, defensively and in transition. It’s going to be a great challenge for us, and we’re really excited for the opportunity to play them and see what we can do.”
—
MARLEE HORN | Assistant Sports Information Director