Environment

BP has been criminally convicted in four previous cases — including a 2005 explosion in Texas that killed 15 workers — and the EPA has been considering broader debarment proceedings against the company since at least 2005. The agency had actually been nearing a decision on a contract ban in January 2010, just a few months before the Deepwater Horizon tragedy unfolded, killing 11 workers and sending more than 200 million gallons of oil into the sea.

Of the 378 coal plants across the country, 75 are considered to be the most toxic and receive an “F” on the report’s environmental justice report card. Four million people live within three miles of those plants. In fact, some 78 percent of African-Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant.

Enbridge was forced to shut down one of its pipelines last week after 900 barrels of crude oil leaked at the Mokena tank farm near Chicago. The leak was discovered on Tuesday of last week although its cause remained undisclosed until this morning, when the Mokena fire department cited a hole in a 20-inch pipeline.

Ken Burns' documentary The Dust Bowl is based on the terrifying dust storms and extended drought in the 1930s in areas centered around Boise City in the Oklahoma Panhandle.
The weather conditions devastated the area, impoverished many people and created an exodus to California. It's a story embedded in our state's psyche.

Two separate incidents involving container ships off the coast of British Columbia have local First Nations questioning the prudence of transporting tar sands crude in the region's hazardous waterways. The incidents, occurring within less than 48 hours of each other, lend new support to those who oppose the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline that would bring over 200 oil-bearing supertankers through the area each year. 

Last week, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) contacted Cargill employees in over 20 countries to alert them to the company’s ties to rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction. The email urged employees to watch a recent eye-opening prime time NBC news story profiling the imminent extinction of orangutans due to unchecked palm oil expansion in Indonesia and Malaysia.

At a well-attended energy forum hosted by Politico on Thursday, I shed some light on the role of coal lobbyist Jeffrey Holmstead in blocking pollution reductions for his coal utility and mining clients after he said we can't "regulate our way to clean energy." Here's the video

Patriot Coal, one of the largest coal companies in America, recently announced its decision to end mountaintop removal mining (MTR) in the Appalachian Mountains. 

Last week, RAN joined sixty environmental and social organizations, including a dozen Indonesian groups, in signing an open letter to banks and other financial institutions across the globe warning them to avoid investments in pulp and paper industry projects associated with deforestation and human right abuses in Indonesia.

Food and Water Watch (FWW) released a report today titled "U.S. Energy Security: Why Fracking for Oil and Natural Gas Is a False Solution.