Headlines - Monday June 14

 

Chip Ward: The BP Disaster Marks the End of the Age of Arrogance About the Environment ... Can We Change?

This spill will mark the time we started to learn about ecocide; a turning point in our realization that our industrial, carbon-dependent way of life cannot last.

 

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After listening to all of the overoptimistic BP spin, a dose of what sounds like reality from a worst case scenario by an expert seems more likely. One other troubling point deep inside is the mention of the relief well experiencing the same blowout as the initial well due to the stress. This already bad problem can become much worse. The volcano might not be stopped until December.

 

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So this is what Obama is supporting? Really? Besides being immoral, how can an economy with as many problems as Japan even afford such a political freak show? It is a joke to believe that giving in to such a corrupt system will somehow produce a result that is not corrupt. It's as if the Obama administration and other "rich" nations like New Zealand agreed that yes, it makes sense to allow the mafia to do just a little bit of drug trafficking, prostitution and blackmail because that will be enough to satisfy their business requirements. Surely they will not do more, right?

 

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Once again, money trumps common sense.

Atrios points us to this article about gas mining in Pennsylvania:

Pennsylvanians are only slowly becoming aware that we are under siege. More than a thousand Marcellus Shale drill sites are in the works, with tens of thousands more poised to descend on Penn's Woods, its towns and neighborhoods, threatening to poison water tables, suck streams dry, pollute the air with ear-splitting noise and toxic fumes -- all without meaningful regulation, without meaningful taxation.

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I'll say the same thing I said to the folks in the Gulf. You all made money selling the leases and rights to these pirates, you didn't want government involved when it came to regulating the polluting assholes (it's not that they didn't have a track record), yet now you're crying because you can light your tap water on fire.

Now the federal government has to come in and clean up the mess you invited upon yourselves. It just kills me that people who don't want big government, don't want to pay taxes, and generally don't want to be bothered, look to that same government to drop everything and come running. If it didn't effect the rest of us in such a meaningful way, I'd tell you live with it and make "lemonade from lemons". I mean, you can always use your tap water as a substitute for gasoline, right?

 

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The International Committee of the Red Cross is calling on Israel to lift its Gaza blockade, saying that the closure is "having a devastating impact on the 1.5 million people" who live in the Palestinian territory. The aid group cites the area's "electricity crisis," "lack of proper sanitation," an "ailing health-care system," and ruined livelihoods.

 

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Chevron spills more than 400 barrels of oil in Utah, just days after the Republicon governor called for more domestic oil production. 

 

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This should be hilarious "Israel has announced an internal inquiry into its deadly raid last month on a convoy of Gaza-bound aid ships. Israel earlier rejected a UN proposal for an international probe, but has now agreed to include two foreign observers in its own inquiry. The "independent public commission" proposal would be voted on by the cabinet, said a government statement. Nine Turkish activists were killed when Israeli commandos stormed the ships in international waters on 31 May. Reacting to the Israeli announcement, Washington described it as "an important step forward". White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "We expect Israel's commission and military investigation will be carried out promptly. "We also expect that, upon completion, its findings will be presented publicly and will be presented to the international community." The six ships, carrying campaigners and 10,000 tonnes of aid, had sailed from Cyprus in a bid to break Israel's three-year blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip."

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Hooray!

Afghanistan jackpot! It's filled with precious metals!

If you thought Afghanistan was only profitable for opium wholesalers and the defense industry, think again! According to some convenient new geological study of the mountainous, wild land that has broken the backs of so many empires, the whole place is chock full of precious metals — $1 trillion in reserves, maybe, including "huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium." This is great news for somebody, but we're betting it's not going to be particularly good for the Afghan people, the American military people, the other NATO military people, the U.S. taxpayer, anybody vaguely concerned about Pakistani nukes raining down upon London or New York, the mental condition of angry loners considering leaving car bombs in Times Square, or people stocking up on gold right now. MORE »

Update: The Pentagon thinks you're stupid

The big "news" this morning is about so-called huge new finds of mineral deposits in Afghanistan. The Russians will be amused to learn that the mineral deposits are newly discovered, since they knew about them before they ever invaded the country in the 70s, especially the lithium that has some (extremely gullible) people so excited they seem to be doing the 'gotta pee' dance.  This report (.pdf) from the United States Geological Survey on minerals in Afghanistan was written in 2002 and references Soviet white papers detailing discoveries of mineral deposits from the 70s.

This isn't news, it is pure, unadulterated propaganda and they are betting you are stupid enough to buy into it without asking too many questions.  

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits - including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium - are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

Let's just cut to the chase here. It has been known for decades that Afghanistan has vast, untapped mineral resources. But so what? They are worthless without the infrastructure to exploit them. Afghanistan has no mining infrastructure, it doesn't even have roads. That is why American forces have been providing security for Chinese road-building crews for over a year. Those crews are building the infrastructure to get to a copper mine that they are developing.

I have been saying for over a year that it was a good thing for China to get heavily invested in Afghanistan. That way, we can just drop the whole mess in their lap a year or so down the road, and I still hope that is the ultimate goal of this long game we find ourselves playing.

But if Petraeus and a bunch of dead-weight flag-ranks at the Pentagon start believing their own propaganda, then we're screwed.  

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"Another day of death and destruction in Baghdad An attack on the Iraqi central bank in Baghdad has killed 15 people and left more than 50 injured. The assault began with a bomb blast. Gunmen then battled with police as they tried to storm the building. Five gunmen blew themselves up, police said. The BBC's Jim Muir Baghdad says it is unclear if it was a bank raid, an insurgent attack, or both. The attack came one day before Iraq's new parliament was due to hold its first session. Many of those killed were bank employees, security officials say. Our correspondent says that in recent months there have been several well-organised attacks on jewellery stores and banks. US and Iraqi officials have said they are being carried out by insurgent groups desperate to raise cash to finance their operations. Television pictures showed a column of black smoke rising over Baghdad from the scene of the explosions and ambulances racing through the city streets."

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What could make the BP oil gusher/catastrophe worse?  A bailout for the boondoggle ethanol industry.

Kevin Drum:

The BP oil spill is bad enough already. But I'm here to make it even worse. Here is Robert Bryce in Slate today:

The most disgusting aspect of the blowout in the Gulf of Mexico isn't the video images of oil-soaked birds or the incessant blather from pundits about what BP or the Obama administration should be doing to stem the flow of oil. Instead, it's the ugly spectacle of the corn-ethanol scammers doing all they can to capitalize on the disaster so that they can justify an expansion of the longest-running robbery of taxpayers in U.S. history.

....Why does the ethanol business need federal help? The answer is so disheartening that after five years of reporting on the corn-ethanol scam, I find it difficult to type, but here goes: The corn-ethanol industry needs to be bailed out by taxpayers because the industry was given too much in the way of subsidies and mandates. And now the only way to solve that problem is - what else? - more subsidies and mandates. The BP mess provides the industry with the opening it needs to win those subsidies from the federal government.

....The strongest indication that an ethanol bailout is imminent came last Friday when Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack (former governor of Iowa, the nation's biggest ethanol-producing state) said, "I'm very confident that we're going to see an increase in the blend rate." The "blend rate" refers to the federal rule that limits ethanol blends to no more than 10 percent for standard automobiles. Commonly known as "E10," the fuel contains 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent alcohol. The Obama administration bailout, which would come via approval from the EPA, will likely allow gasoline retailers to blend up to 15 percent ethanol into U.S. gasoline supplies.

Three years ago, responding to an increase in corn ethanol subsidies, I wrote: "Can anyone think of any other single policy that has as many simultaneous baneful effects? Are we complete morons?" The answer, apparently, is yes. Read Bryce's whole piece to get the entire grim story.

If a fraction of the tens of billions of tax dollars that have been wasted on ethanol over the past thirty years had been spent instead on genuine renewable energy, we wouldn't be drilling for oil today.

Ethanol can't replace oil; solar, wind and geothermal can.

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Learning from the Gulf disaster

The following bears repeating until it registers with enough people to really start to make a difference.

"…what does the conservative worldview tout as a matter of course? That nearly every area of public policy should feature less government, more private enterprise, fewer regulations, and less federal oversight."

"And in this case, we tried that. It was the guiding principle of the last decade, when oil companies were effectively told they could do as they pleased, without pesky federal mandates and oversight. The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico isn't the result of Kristol's vision of "Obamaism" gone awry; it's the opposite — the idea that if we just get government out of the way, everything will be fine looks patently ridiculous right now."