A little over a month into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the American public wants answers– from the Obama administration, from Congress and from BP. While there are still many more questions than currently available answers, President Obama answered a few and dodged others in his speech today. He made a resounding push for clean energy legislation and referenced the House cap and trade bill passed last year and the one recently introduced in the Senate. He also suspended or canceled a number of lease sales off the coasts …
A fudgelike goo coating Louisiana’s marshes. A thick oil slick stretching across the Gulf of Mexico. A plume of oil miles below the ocean surface. A tragic loss of life. Reverberating economic consequences. Throw in a poll that shows that 53 percent of Americans rate President Barack Obama “poor” or “very poor” in his handling of the Gulf oil spill, and it’s no wonder the President yesterday broke his 308-day self-imposed press conference moratorium in hopes of conveying some semblance of leadership amid an environmental, economic and human catastrophe that …
It will be a long time before we know how much the oil spill is going to cost in terms of total economic damages, but it is certain to be higher than the $75 million liability cap set by the 1990 Oil Pollution Act and could even be higher than the additional $1 billion provided through the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. BP has said it will pay all legitimate claims beyond the $75 million limit yet politicians are understandably skeptical, and so want their promise put in writing.. Some …
“Let’s be clear: Every day that this oil sits is one more day that more of our marsh dies,” Gov. Bobby Jindal (LA) said Monday. “We’ve been frustrated with the disjointed effort to date that has too often meant too little, too late for the oil hitting our coast,” he continued. Specifically, Jindal is frustrated by the failure of the federal government to produce the 8 million feet of oil-blocking booms it asked for back on May 2nd and 3rd. So far Louisiana has only received 815,000 feet of boom, …
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an unfortunate and terrible accident that poses economic and environmental challenges to the Gulf coast. The fact that the explosion took eleven lives is regrettable and condolences to friends and families who lost their loved ones. Many questions are yet without answers; the most general and pressing being: what went wrong? Along with stopping the leak and containing the oil slick to minimize, the imperative concern is to figure out what went wrong. There will be lots of finger pointing and …
During the weekly round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, Bill Maher made an astonishing claim. He claimed that Brazil has “gone off oil” in the last 30 years. He said: So, you know, I could certainly criticize oil companies, and I could criticize America in general for not attacking this problem in the ’70s. I mean, Brazil got off oil in the last 30 years. We certainly could have. Well, Mr. Maher certainly has an odd view of what constitutes “getting off oil” because according to the Central Intelligence …
