I thought that offshore drilling had been put on hold pending a resolution of the cause of the Deepwater Horizon debacle that threatens millions of people, billions of fish, birds, and the entire Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.Evidently not, since an appellate court yesterday gave the go-ahead for Arctic drilling:
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a case that challenged federal approval of Shell's exploratory drilling plans in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.(Huffington Post). The U.S. federal government is certifiably criminally insane to allow millions of people to be put at risk with these promiscuous dealings that are bringing on the demise of civilization, and the degradation of life as we know it.
The expedited ruling followed oral arguments last week in Portland, Ore.
The court determined that the federal Minerals Management Service met its obligations to consider the potential threat to wildlife and the risk for disaster before it approved Shell's Arctic Ocean project.
Shell Oil, a unit of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, hopes to drill three exploratory wells in the Chukchi and two in the Beaufort this summer with a 514-foot drilling ship, the Frontier Discoverer.
If Obama does not intervene and stop this drilling we can say that the federal government is intentionally destroying the human habitat on behalf of the Oilstate.
Since the 1973 oil embargo and the 1956 validation of peak oil by scientists, the federal government as a lackey for the Oilstate MOMCOM has repeated the mantra "things can't change overnight".
Senator Kerry repeated the mantra a day or so ago when he unveiled and proposed toothless capitulation legislation misnamed and called a climate improvement bill.
That puts him of the list of federal goverment officials who are not as smart as a fifth grader.
May 14, 2010 (FAUX News)- Confidential sources today revealed a highly secretive oil industry initiative, allegedly called "Operation Lowered Expectations" The plan, apparently conceived during Dick Cheney's 2001 closed door meetings with industry execs, focuses on managing the public's expectations of environmental disasters, rather than actual prevention, cleanup, and remediation. The plan calls for the oil industry to execute a series of continuous strategic oil spills, dumps, and deep water vents to gradually despoil host environments world-wide, in an effort condition the public gradually to accept environmental degradation as part of the cost of doing business.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, ad campaigns already in the works pitch the spills, such as the one currently ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico, as an actual boon to economic activity. One such ad depicts a mother and two children on a beach, all smeared in what appears to be crude oil and the children merrily tossing a tar ball between them, while in the background an oil rig looms on the horizon, with the caption "No sunscreen needed today. Thanks, BP!"
Industry officials mostly refused comment, but one anonymous insider confided that, "Americans have been conditioned to swallow just about whatever shit we decide to feed them, and this is really no different. We in the oil industry remain committed to profitability for as long as we can milk this thing out, and we believe that a little environmental degradation is a small price for the people to pay in order to insure our continued profits. Fuck you, fuck the environment, and fuck the people too. Fuck you all! Oh yeah, we're raising the price next week to cover our costs for all of this shit. Yeah, go ahead and write your congressman. Fuck him too."
May 14, 2010(FAUX News)- Reacting to today's allegations of a secretive oil industry initiative called "Operation Lowered Expectations," at least one local Gulf coast official was quick to come to the oil giant's defense. State representative Delmar "RayBob" Dimwitty, former mayor of Stinkcootchie LA, said that he was "receptive to BP economic overtures," and that "any proposed lawsuits on behalf of Stinkcootchie or the state of Louisiana remain purely speculative at this time pending any further offers BP might like to extend to me personally."
ReplyDeleteRegarding the effects of the spill locally or any prospective effects it might have on the environment worldwide, Dimwitty replied, "Hey, Einstein PROVED that the universe is all relative, and I've got TWO relatives that work over at the community college - well, yeah, one of them IS the janitor, but still - who BOTH assert that all this global warming and environmental crap is a bunch of hooey - SO THERE YA GO! So go on now, y'all get the hell on out a' here. Pick ya' up a complimentary tar ball on the way out now, ya' hear?"
Another article on the possible impacts of an active hurricane season in the gulf here. The article once again quotes Florida St professor Ian McDonald - the one who first and has continued to maintain that government spill size estimates are drastically understated - so I'm guessing BP and industry officials are about ready to buy this guy off or silence him by other means about now.
ReplyDeleteHowever this eventually impacts the decision to continue with offshore drilling or not - and I have no doubt whatsoever that any negative impact will be minimal, simply because we're hopelessly addicted to the stuff - BP will be feeling the financial and PR impacts for years to come. Going out on a limb, if the long term impacts were to be particularly onerous to BP's bottom line, I could imagine some sort of imaginative restructuring/renaming so as to shed the rightfully defamed corporate label. Indeed, the very term "BP" was nothing more than an effort to run from the proper title of British Petroleum in the first place. Ahh corporate marketers! Too clever by half and then some!