Oh that looks yummy!

Yum yum...when can I get myself a mouthful of this?

Thanks BP

Thank you BP, for the wonderful decimated shoreline our children will inherit along the Louisiana coastline.  Thanks for propelling our messed up environmental future into our faces...I'll drink an oil slick milkshake in your honor, Daniel Day Lewis style.

Environmental Heresy in the Gulf

Here it is, America.  The path you put yourself on, which resulted in nothing but a polluted, oily, messy future.

Our most vital marshes and wetlands on the Gulf Coast are being destroyed right in front of our eyes...by the greedy subhumans who are (or are part of) Big SpOil.

I hope BP gets sued by EVERYONE on the Gulf Coast.  Sue the oily swine out of existence.

We desperately need to get a grip on our energy future, and real quick.  We need to determine whether the future of America is going to go green in earnest, or continue on a path that sets itself up for calamities like this.

May our children, grandchildren, and their great-grandchildren find it in their hearts to forgive us.

Meanwhile, God help us.

It's a GREAT day for the environment

Barack Obama has just been elected as the 44th president of the United States...unbelievable...that is totally awesome.

Come January, the environment will have the most ardent ally to ever enter the Oval Office...however there's DEFINITELY work that needs to be done before then to hold the Bush Administration at bay on certain issues.

Here's more insights from the NRDC:

Dear supporter-

It sure feels good to be an environmentalist this morning.

Just the sight of people going to the polls yesterday was a welcome reminder that President Bush's unrelenting assault on our natural heritage will soon come to an end.

And if that weren't uplifting enough, there is the stunning outcome of the voting itself. An advocate for the environment, Barack Obama, will be the next president of the United States.

Talk about transformation!

Before I go further, let me remind you that NRDC is a tax-deductible, non-partisan organization and, as such, we did not -- and cannot -- endorse specific candidates.

But I can tell you this: Hundreds of NRDC attorneys, scientists and policy experts have worked night and day for eight long years to stop the Bush-Cheney juggernaut from laying waste to our public lands, national forests, wildlife refuges and ocean ecosystems. Thanks to your phenomenal support, we have succeeded to an extent that few thought possible.

Barack Obama's election is a huge win for everyone exhausted from playing defense. Count us among them. It rekindles our hope that environmental protection may be restored to its rightful place as a treasured American value.

On the most important issues of the day -- from global warming controls to clean energy solutions to wilderness preservation -- President-elect Obama campaigned on behalf of far-sighted policies that NRDC has championed for years.

But hope alone will not turn those promises into reality. It's time to get to work.

For starters, our next president will take office in the midst of an economic cataclysm. He will be faced with monumental challenges and beset by powerful special interests.

We've got to make sure that his New Energy for America Plan goes right to the top of the national agenda -- along with its commitment to creating five million clean energy jobs, putting a million hybrid cars on the road, scaling up renewable energy, and capping global warming pollution.

America's economic and environmental salvation lies in that high-tech, clean energy future. That's why NRDC will be pressing the White House to tackle this do-or-die issue in its first 100 days.

Then comes the hard part: we'll have to move that legislation through the new Congress, where the same old polluters -- Big Oil and Big Coal -- will be lying in wait. They're not about to surrender their stranglehold on our economy without one heck of a fight.

NRDC is building a new and unstoppable coalition -- of green groups, young people, mainstream religious organizations, high-tech businesses, and labor -- that can wage and win this looming battle for a viable economy and a livable planet.

In the meantime, hundreds of NRDC staffers will focus on reversing the terrible environmental damage the Bush Administration is leaving behind in its wake. We'll be working to restore protections for wild forests...safeguards for endangered species...prosecutions of air and water polluters. The list goes on and on.

And that's before we feel the full brunt of new attacks that we know are coming from the White House over the next 80 days. Because lest we forget: President Bush is not gone yet.

His executive agencies are racing to carry out policies that would trigger an invasion of chainsaws into the Alaskan rainforest...expose Greater Yellowstone's wolves to mass killing yet again...and promote massive oil and gas exploration in the polar bear's Arctic habitat.

NRDC is already mobilizing to block these and other eleventh-hour raids on our natural heritage. Rest assured, we will not rest in our defense of America's environment until the last Bush official leaves the White House and turns off the lights.

In the weeks ahead, I will be reporting to you in more detail on our action plan for the final weeks of the Bush Administration and the first critical months of the Obama Administration.

But I can share one key element of that plan right now: You. Again and again, you've helped us defend the environment against the most withering attacks in modern American history. And we are far stronger today for having endured and prevailed.

NRDC is emerging from the Bush fiasco with the most potent combination of grassroots activism, courtroom power and legislative clout ever assembled by one public interest organization. It is an operation driven by your unwavering idealism and your unflagging support, which you've maintained even in these difficult economic times.

That idealism and support will soon be put to the ultimate test.

Come January, we will be granted a fleeting moment of opportunity -- a matter of months -- for turning environmental promise into legislative reality. We must strike swiftly if we are to defuse the twin crises of fossil fuel addiction and global warming -- or the Earth we leave our grandchildren will be unimaginably different than the one we now know and love.

It's a tall order. But the last eight years have prepared us like nothing else could. NRDC is ready. I trust you are, too, because we'll need you there with us more than ever before.

Sincerely,

Frances Beinecke
President
Natural Resources Defense Council

P.S. The next 80 days are absolutely critical, as we fight off this president's last-ditch attacks on the environment and gear up to advance a visionary agenda in January. In all my years at NRDC, I can't remember a time when your gift would accomplish more. Please consider making a donation today.

The "other side" of Exxon's mouth

I thought this article from the site Oil Watchdog was worth noting... another example of bad behavior from our oil industry favorite, the promoters of drunken oil tanker slalom racing captains.

If you guessed Exxon, you win a crude oil milkshake with whipped topping and a cherry... I've been refusing to gas up at their locations since the 90s, and also at Mobile stations since the merge.

All of you do realize that Exxon-Mobile hasn't paid ANYTHING in terms of taking responsibility for the Valdez spill in 1989, don't you? It was a rude awakening when I found out about that a few years back.

...but that's a story for another day... S

3-07-08 by dugan

The next time you pump $70 worth of $3.50 a gallon gasoline into your tank, munch on this thought: When ExxonMobil defends its $41 billion yearly profit profit to us angry peasants, it's a mere "10 percent of revenue," just like other big companies and less than, say, big tech companies.

When Exxon reports to big investors, it talks about a much different profit measure.

Exxon's PR department reported this week on CEO Rex Tillerson's speech Wednesday to stock analysts in New York, focusing on plans to "invest more than $125 billion in capital spending over the next five years to deliver major projects to help meet growing world energy demand." More on that later. Buried at the bottom, and not much reported in the financial media, was this:
"ExxonMobil continued its superior performance with a 2007 return on average capital employed of 32 percent, almost 40 percent greater than its closest competitor, and increased its five-year average to 28 percent."

At 32 percent, Exxon is making more than double what U.S industries make on average by the same measure. And about triple what regulated gas and electric utilities make.
Here's a great piece by consumer columnist David Lazarus (now of the LA Times, previously at the San Francisco Chronicle) explaining Big Oil's deceptive spin when it talks about profits to different audiences. It was written in 2006, but it's just as accurate today:

While the oil industry habitually downplays its profitability when speaking to lawmakers, the media or the public, it sings an entirely different tune when addressing investors and others in the financial community.

In such cases, industry officials emphasize not their relatively benign profits as a percentage of total revenue but their very impressive "return on capital employed," or ROCE -- their earnings as a factor of money spent to make money.

Exxon's chief exec, Rex Tillerson, reiterated this point to Wall Street analysts in March. "In our view, ROCE continues to be the best overall measure of financial performance given the long-term and capital-intensive nature of our industry," he said. "I would be cautious of anyone who tries to de-emphasize it."

As for Exxon's plan to invest $125 billion over five years on exploration, refineries and the like, remember that it's a well-spun announcement, not a promise. Not a penny is likely to go to developing renewable fuels. And remember that Exxon spends more than it invests, on a yearly basis, to buy back its own stock.

Since the end of 2005, Exxon has announced $60 billion in stock buybacks, money that doesn't do anything but boost the stock price and act as a piggy bank for a company that makes unspendable, and unspeakable, amounts of profit.

Environment prevails in Texaco case!

This is something that came in from the NRDC publication Nature's Voice, which I thought was worth sharing.

Of all the environmental organizations I've given my money, time and attention to, NRDC seems to reap the biggest results and have the most fingers plugging holes in the dam. S

After an epic 19-year battle, NRDC has struck a breakthrough court settlement with Texaco that will pour millions of dollars into environmental restoration projects on the Delaware River.

The oil giant relented just as NRDC litigators were preparing to head back to court in October for the fourth trial of the longest-running "citizen suit" in history.

Under the eleventh-hour agreement, Texaco will hand over $2.25 million to local groups that are working to restore the very stretch of the Delaware that the company illegally polluted over the course of a decade.

"This fantastic victory belongs to our Members," said Mitch Bernard, NRDC's director of litigation. "They have backed this case since 1988, and today we have shown that no company -- no matter how rich or powerful -- is above our environmental laws."

NRDC won the first round of this historic case back in 1992, when a federal judge ruled that Texaco had violated the clean water law on a total of 3,360 days and ordered the company to pay a fine of $1.68 million, stop its illegal pollution and assess the damage it had caused to the fragile river ecosystem.

After repeatedly defying court orders and suffering legal setbacks at the hands of NRDC and our local partners, Texaco paid the fine, reduced its pollution and produced a multiyear report on the impacts of its contamination of the Delaware.

Now, the company has granted long-awaited restitution to the ecosystem itself. Texaco's hefty payout will fund groups that include Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, the Delaware Native Plant Society, the Delmarva Ornithological Society and Delaware State Parks.

The monies will advance projects like tree planting, wetland restoration, meadow management and osprey nesting.

--Nov/Dec 2007 issue of NRDC's Nature's Voice

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by Shell Oil, is upon us.

A letter by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, the Senior Attorney of the NRDC, just brought this to my attention. Here’s the content of his letter.

Dear NRDC Member,

As you read this, the Shell oil company may have already begun exploratory drilling off the spectacular coastline of the Arctic Nation Wildlife Refuge.

We simply cannot afford to fail – or we’ll be leaving the Arctic Refuge vulnerable to a catastrophic oil spill that could despoil the shores of our greatest wildlife sanctuary for generations to come.

In fact, it would take just one oil spill on the icebound Beaufort Sea that borders the Arctic Refuge to create a long-term toxic waste site – because the oil industry has no proven method for cleaning up oil in icy water!

Last month, NRDC President Frances Beincke and I wrote to alert you that the Bush Administration had already approved Shell’s dangerous plan for drilling in the Beaufort.

And as I write this, Shell’s icebreakers and drilling equipment are likely on the move.

A worst case spill in the Beaufort Sea sends shivers down the spine of anyone who knows the appalling record of toxic spills by Big Oil in the Arctic.

And make no mistake: an oil spill off the coast of the Arctic Refuge is all but assured. The Bush Administration’s own experts have predicted that drilling in the Beaufort will lead to at least one oil spill.

That spill would likely spread into the migratory routes of the endangered bowhead whale… blanket the shores of the Arctic Refuge where polar bears give birth… and impact hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.

The death toll of oil-soaked and poisoned whales, seals, polar bears and shore birds would be unimaginable.

With your help, we can win this case – because the Administration’s approval of Shell’s drilling is a brazen violation of our country’s environmental laws.

All we need is your backing.

So there, the check’s in the mail. I’m sending $30 to help out. If any of you are interested in helping with this cause or other fights for the environment, you can link to the website of the NRDC at NRDC: The Earth's Best Defense.

I’ve said before, as I’ll say again now: future generations many years from now are going to look back at us as if we were completely nuts for blasting through all these oil reserves. Well, they’re right. Many of us are nuts. Those of us who have no sense or desire for conservation, environmental stewardship, sustainability, or to seek a desire to implement auto technology and get away from our addiction to fossil fuels.

I like to think I exist in a different camp. As one prominent environmentalist recently said: “This is not just a scientific issue, this is a moral issue.”

If the tide was turning in a direction of upholding these ideals I hold so dear—the ones I just stated in the previous paragraph—then this blog wouldn’t exist. …but here I am, and I don’t plan on going away anytime soon. S

The Bozo Bus: Big SpOil's Top Ten in Washington

A quick little update here; the top bozos on the hill in Washington who have received campaign funding from the oil monkeys, along with their respective amounts... and I'm assuming these are the dollars that we know about.
The paddywagon's filled to the tilt with bozos today! See if you can match the name below to the bozo in the picture. Be careful, as looks can be deceiving. Take your time and good luck! Here's the Bozo list:

1. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senate (R, TX) - $300,161
2. Joe Barton, House (R, TX) - $184,300
3. John Cornyn, Senate (R, TX) - $180,000
4. Bob Corker, Senate (R, TN) - $173,700
5. Mary Fallin, House (R, OK) - $162,450
6. Heather Wison, House (R, NM) - $144,000
7. Dennis Hastert, House (R, IL) - $134,600
8. Jon Kyl, Senate (R, AZ) - $133,700
9. Steve Pearce, House (R, NM) - $121,578
10. Barbara Cubin, House (R, WY) - $119,150
    

The source of this information is from the Center for Responsive Politics. Hmmm... All Republicans too... what a shocker.
Stop --- don't thank me --- you're welcome. I was happy to add warm fuzzies to your day. S