Every five years, the federal government is required by law to update its leasing program for offshore oil and natural gas development. On November 8th, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar announced the government’s proposed plan for offshore oil drilling for the next five years (2012-2017). The new plan can be summed up pretty easily: [...]
Recent articles in the New York Times and the Raleigh News & Observer suggested that North Carolina and its governor, Bev Perdue, may have played a key role in halting White House efforts to ratchet up the current ozone air standards. In September, the Obama Administration suddenly announced it was dropping its two-year effort to [...]
Following the White House’s surprise announcement delaying a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, Bill McKibben posted this blog for tarsandsaction.org on November 10, 2011. It is re-posted here with permission. Um, we won. You won. Not completely. The president didn’t outright reject the pipeline permit. My particular fantasy–that he would invite the 1253 people [...]
President Obama recently announced the cancellation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to update weak and scientifically unsupported Bush-era ozone standards. The President based this unfortunate decision on the newly popular idea that protecting human health and the environment is bad for the economy. The President bought into this rhetoric from Tea Party elites despite [...]
This blog was co-authored by Amy Vaden. It certainly seems that extreme weather events are becoming more commonplace. Scientific American recently reported that 2011 saw the sixth-highest number of tornado-related deaths ever recorded, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts a big hurricane season as well. This week, Hurricane Irene threatens the eastern [...]
The ongoing disaster in Japan at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has launched the nuclear debate to the forefront of energy discussions even here in the United States. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently launched a 90-day task force to assess the safety of the U.S. nuclear reactor fleet and to determine what measures the [...]
Earlier this year in the State of the Union, President Obama implored Congress to “eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies,” noting that “they’re doing just fine on their own.” Congress has now made two half-hearted attempts to end these taxpayer-funded subsidies to large oil companies. Last night, United States [...]
Co-authored by Simon Mahan and Toni Reale It seems like yesterday when the airwaves were filled with the horrifying news that an exploratory oil rig had exploded in the Gulf of Mexico killing eleven men and spewing unknown quantities of crude into Gulf waters. The explosion happened on April 20th 2010 and just two days [...]
As the President offered his vision for positioning America to ‘win the future’ in the annual State of the Union address last night, two lines really stood out for me, “I’m asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’re doing [...]
On March 31st, 2010 to the shock and amazement of clean energy advocates, President Barack Obama announced that the Department of the Interior would seek to lease offshore areas that were previously protected from oil and natural gas development as part of the new 5-year lease sale plan set to begin in 2012. Less than [...]
