Submitted by Anne Landman on
News photographers are saying that their efforts to document the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials working with BP.
Who is going to pay to clean up BP's disastrous oil spill, besides BP? After all, they made $14 billion in profit last year alone. BP has asserted it will pay all "legitimate claims" for damages -- talk about a lot of wiggle room there -- but beyond actual cleanup costs, BP's economic damage liability is legislatively, and outrageously, capped at $75 million, a pittance to a company that made 186 times that amount in profit in 2009. Senate Democrats attempted to increase the liability cap to $10 billion by proposing and passing a bill, but their efforts were thwarted by Senate Republicans. The current tally for the cleanup cost stands at $760 million, but that is surely understated.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
On April 30, President Obama announced that he was slapping a moratorium on drilling permits for new offshore wells, and would stop handing out the kind of controversial environmental waivers the Administration gave the ill fated Deepwater Horizon rig -- but those prono
Submitted by Anne Landman on
Eighteen years ago, the government set up the EnergyStar program to help guide consumers to the new appliances that are the most energy-efficient, cost the least to operate and help reduce the nation's total energy consumption.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
Just as Congress is set to begin debating ethanol-related subsidies, Growth Energy, a lobbying group for the ethanol industry, is starting a $2.5 million, 6-month national television ad campaign aimed at defending ethanol, and portraying it a way to break the country's addiction to foreign oil.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
A Democratic Illinois state representative quietly slipped five words into the definition of renewable energy in a bill that would clear the way for a power company to burn tires as a way to reap green energy credits. Representative David Miller, who is running for state Comptroller, inserted the words "incineration of burning tires" into the definition of renewable energy in a measure that was intended to promote wind and solar energy.
Submitted by Anne Landman on
Although it seems a bit like a dog-bites-man story, the New York Times reported that Texas Governor and 2012 presidential aspirant Rick Perry (R-TX) has joined with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) in challenging the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. As the Center for Media and Democracy has documented on our SourceWatch site, CEI has been well-funded by Exxon and other oil companies, and is one of the main U.S. corporate front groups fighting efforts to address global warming and regulate the industry that feeds it funding. But, the courts are now stacked in Perry's favor, as noted below.
Submitted by Bob Burton on
Gary Jobson, a leading U.S. sailor and sailing commentator, is working on a 90-minute "documentary" promoting nuclear power.
Giovanni Bisignani, the director general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), is a worried man. As the head of the global civil aviation's main lobby group, which represents companies such as American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Qantas, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, Bisignani (right) has been frantically working to ensure that IATA isn't stripped of its its exemption from the Kyoto Protocol at the COP15 conference, which opens in Copenhagen next week.
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