I think funding should be directed to cleaning up the water column and restoring microbial benthic communities that were smothered due to the enormous volume of dispersants used–something that hitherto had never been tested. DV

Published: Wednesday, July 18, 2012, 12:02 AM The Associated Press

More than two years after the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental groups say billions of dollars the British oil giant is expected to spend on restoration should go toward buying tens of thousands of acres of coastal land for conservation, rebuilding Louisiana’s eroding wetlands and creating nearly 200 miles of oyster reefs. Under the Oil Pollution Act, companies must pay to restore areas fouled by a spill. The amount BP will have to pay is subject to ongoing litigation with the government, which also will choose how to spend the money. Regardless, the company is expected to pay billions of dollars for the more than 200 million gallons of oil spilled from its out-of-control well after the rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in April 2010.
In a report released Wednesday, the environmental groups laid out 39 priority proposals for spending the money in one the first overarching visions of restoration of the Gulf.

The report recommends a massive $500 million restoration of the Louisiana coast, the purchase of large tracts of coastal land in Florida, Texas, Alabama and Mississippi for conservation, plugging unused oil and gas wells in the Gulf, spending about $165 million on restoring Mobile Bay, cleaning up marine debris across the Gulf, building nearly 200 miles of oyster reefs and setting up long-term monitoring to track the Gulf’s health.

“Without knowing what the actual payment will be, our assumption is that this will be the biggest environmental restoration ever,” said Stan Senner, director of conservation at the Ocean Conservancy. He was the chief restoration planner after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska and helped develop the restoration model for the Gulf. Federal and state lawyers are in negotiations with BP over how much the company should pay for the damage its spill caused. BP faces a January trial unless a settlement can be reached before then. The report was sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Ocean Conservancy, the National Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy, Oxfam and the National Wildlife Federation.

A look at proposals on how to restore the Gulf of Mexico
Environmental groups released a report on Wednesday making 39 recommendations of how to repair damage to the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem caused by the catastrophic BP oil spill in 2010. The amount BP will have to pay is subject to ongoing litigation with the government, which also will choose how to spend the money.
Below are some of the environmental groups’ costlier proposals.
Florida

Buying land around the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge and Apalachee Bay. Cost: $30 million.
Sea-grass and oyster restoration along the Florida Panhandle. Cost: $15 million.
Buying 69,453 acres to help conserve St. Vincent Sound and Lake Wimico near Apalachicola. Cost: $100 million

Alabama

Mobile Bay restoration and building 100 miles of intertidal oyster reefs. Cost: $95 million
Reconnecting tidal exchanges within the Mobile-Tensaw Delta by building new bridges under the Mobile Causeway. Cost: $70 million
Buying coastal properties in Alabama coastal counties to aid conservation. Cost: $125 million

Mississippi

Restoration of 3,622 acres of coastal habitat. Cost: $7.8 million
Wetlands and oyster restoration in Hancock County, restoring up to 60,000 feet of oyster reef. Cost: $18.8 million
Restoring 1,000 acres of coastal marsh along Mississippi coast. Cost: $13.6 million

Louisiana

Barataria basin restoration with new dunes, marsh, oyster reefs and filling in oil canals. Cost: $378 million
Breton basin restoration with armoring marsh, oyster reefs and building up Chandeleur islands. Cost: $100 million
Building 70 miles of oyster reefs in Cameron, Terrebonne and St. Bernard parishes. Cost: $70 million

Texas

Expand the Texas Chenier Plain Refuge by 64,260 acres. Cost: $90 million
Build sub-tidal reef in Matagorda Bay within footprint of historical Half Moon Reef. Cost: $3.8 million
Restoring Shamrock Island in Nueces County by creating sea-grasses, marsh and mangroves. Cost: $3 million

Open waters of the Gulf

Plugging and removing nonproducing oil and gas wells in waters off the coast of Louisiana. Cost: $31 million
Place observers aboard fishing vessels to monitor catches for marine mammals, sea turtles and bluefin tuna. Cost: $32.5 million
Cleaning up marine debris across the Gulf. Cost: $10 million

The Associated Press
The environmental groups emphasized the the projects in their portfolio were suggestions only and based on limited information about the oil spill’s effects on the environment. The government has not disclosed its findings on what damage has been caused by the spill. The groups delivered the report to a council of federal and state officials overseeing restoration efforts. The group, known as the trustee council, is in discussions with BP over how much the company should pay. This legal process, known as the natural resources damage assessment, is secretive as BP and government scientists investigate how badly the environment was damaged.
The environmental groups said their recommendations would be adjusted based on those findings becoming public.

Garret Graves, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s representative on the trustee council, said the recommendations were not helpful.
“The environmentalists’ report is so out of touch that I put my copy in the recycling bin,” he said. He said it appeared the groups saw “an opportunity to pick pet projects and fulfill their political agendas.”

The environmentalists said the report’s intent was the opposite of that. “This is about getting people to think about what restoration could look like,” said Paul Harrison, the senior director of the Environmental Defense Fund’s water program. “We need a comprehensive approach.” He warned that states might try to get projects funded that would not do the greatest good to the ecosystem. Edward P. Richards, a professor of law at Louisiana State University who’s studying Louisiana’s ongoing restoration plans, was critical of the report. He questioned spending money on areas that saw little direct damage from the oil spill. Florida and Texas had little oil wash up on their shores.

Richards said he was struck by the irony of environmental groups campaigning to spend so much money on places that might be submerged by sea-level rise. For example he said it was unwise to spend large sums on diverting rivers to rebuild land in coastal Louisiana, something the report recommends.

“River deltas do not build in the face of ocean rise,” he said. “The only science we have on the effect of river diversions is that the water that causes the dead zone at the end of the Mississippi is also bad for the marsh lands.” Louisiana recently adopted a master plan to rebuild its coast over 50 years with $50 billion and the plan calls for river diversions to funnel sediment and freshwater back into eroding basins. Louisiana has lost about 1,900 square miles of coastal land since the 1930s and the state is working to hold the sea back.

The scientific community is not in agreement about the effectiveness of river diversions. Many scientists believe river diversions can work to re-establish the natural order of the Mississippi delta while others believe they will not do the job and also cause unintended harmful consequences.

Just how much money BP will end up paying in ecosystem restoration is uncertain. Exxon paid $900 million for the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill that caused 11 million gallons to leak into Prince William Sound. Based on the criteria from what Exxon paid per barrel of oil spilled and adjusted for inflation BP could pay about $31 billion.

But experts say BP is unlikely to pay that much. BP can argue that the spill’s effects were minimized by the Gulf’s warm waters, oil-eating bacteria and other factors. Also, the Gulf has been soiled by past spills and natural oil seeps, so the oil giant could say it’s too hard to pinpoint what is BP damage and what isn’t. However state and federal lawyers argue that the damage was extensive and that the Gulf’s marine environment is more varied and rich than that of Prince William Sound.

Cain Burdeau of The Associated Press wrote this report.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/shell-arctic-ready-hoax-greenpeace_n_1684222.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada

Timothy Stenovec
Become a fan
timothy.stenovec@huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 07/18/2012 8:13 pm Updated: 07/19/2012 2:47 am

At first glance, Arctic Ready looks like a legitimate website from Shell. The clean lines, judicious use of white space and the prominent placement of the familiar red and yellow “Shell” logo have all the markings of the oil corporation’s homepage.

But would Royal Dutch Shell really splash “LET’S HIT THE BEACH” across a grey picture of its Noble Discoverer drilling rig that last weekend lost its mooring and drifted close to the shore?
Probably not.

Indeed, Arctic Ready and the accompanying “Let’s Go!” campaign is an elaborate hoax from Greenpeace and The Yes Lab aimed to increase awareness of Shell’s contentious plan to drill in the Arctic.

The groups have harnessed social media, online video and gaming in a full-blown assault on Shell, which plans to begin exploratory drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
The Huffington Post’s Tom Zeller Jr. reports that federal estimates suggest that more than 26 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 130 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could be extracted from the undersea shelf.

From Zeller:
An economic analysis, prepared by a consultancy on behalf of Shell last year, estimated that employees in Alaska would draw some $63 billion in payroll, and another $82 billion would accrue to workers in a variety of ancillary and downline jobs across the U.S. Local, state and federal governments would draw billions in revenues, the report reckoned.

The site launched last month, and it’s seen a recent spike in traffic. A Greenpeace spokesperson said on Wednesday that Arctic Ready has received 1.8 million page views in the last two days.
The site is so similar to Shell’s that it’s confused some into thinking that it’s actually a failed social media experiment by the company.

Arctic Ready allows visitors to create their own ads, overlaying custom text over photos of polar bears, whales, narwhals and birds, among others.

(SCROLL DOWN FOR IMAGES)

The group has developed “Angry Bergs,” a kids’ game in which players have to melt icebergs that “threaten our energy future” before they get too close to the oil rigs.

“The goal was really to shine a light on the absurdity of Shell’s actual plans to drill in the Arctic,” James Turner, a Greenpeace spokesman, told The Huffington Post. “What we’re tying to do is use humor and … social media to call Shell out for what is a reckless and unscientific drilling program, and to engage the public.”

The site is part of the same campaign that last month was responsible for the video that purported to show a Shell celebration gone horribly wrong.

Despite the popularity of the spoof, and the potential public relations mess, Shell has decided not to sue Greenpeace over the campaign, HuffPost Canada reports.

“Journalists, blog readers and YouTube viewers have recently been targeted with scams launched by organizations opposed to energy exploration in Alaska. A contest on a mock Shell website promotes the creation of fake advertisements,” Shell said in a statement, according to Forbes. “The advertising contest is not associated with Shell, and neither is the site it’s on. And Shell did not file legal action in this matter. Our focus is on safely executing our operations.”

This is by no means the first time a spoof account has been created on behalf of an oil company. The “BP Public Relations” (@BPGlobalPR) fake Twitter account that launched during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill has more than 150,000 followers, more than three times more than the actual BP account.

LOOK: Spoof advertisements from Arctic Ready:

Arctic Ready

1 of 12
This post has been updated with additional information from Greenpeace about the number of page views Arctic Ready has received.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://allafrica.com/stories/201207170233.html

BY CLARA NWACHUKWU, OKEY NDIRIBE, EMMAN OVUAKPORIE AND KUNLE KALEJAYE, 17 JULY 2012

Living with oil spill in Ogoniland, Nigeria

Lagos – The Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company, SNEPCO, has been fined U.S.$5 billion over the massive oil spill that occurred at its Bonga oil field on December 20, 2011.

This was disclosed yesterday by the Director General, National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, NOSDRA, Dr. Peter Idabor, when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Environment.

The committee’s public hearing was meant to provide key actors in the Bonga oil spill an opportunity to brief the committee on the claims of affected communities.

Oil spill in the river

Idabor said the sum was an “administrative penalty” considering the large quantity of crude oil discharged into the environment by Shell and the impact of the incident on the water and aquatic life.

According to Idabor, the penalty was also consistent with what was obtainable in other oil producing countries such as Venezuela, Brazil and the United States of America.

He explained that this penalty was not the same as compensation since compensation could only be demanded from a polluting company after a proper post impact assessment has been conducted and scientific evidence of impact established.

Idabor disclosed that NOSDRA, Shell and other relevant stakeholders have concluded plans to conduct the post impact assessment on the spill as soon as approval for funding is secured from National Petroleum Investment Management Services.

Shell disagrees with fine

However, Shell has contested the fine, saying it has done nothing wrong to deserve the fine. In a quick response to Vanguard enquiries, a spokesman for Shell, Mr Tony Okonedo, said: “We do not believe there is any basis in law for such a fine. Neither do we believe that SNEPCo has committed any infraction of Nigerian law to warrant such a fine.

“SNEPCo responded to this incident with professionalism and acted with the consent of the necessary authorities at all times to prevent environmental impact as a result of the incident.”

In the heat of the controversies over the spill, especially with regard to third party spill which was cited in several other parts of the Niger Delta, Shell claimed it had sent samples of the spill to laboratories abroad for tests to confirm its liabilities. But till date, nothing was heard of the result of the tests.

Reason for fine

The NOSDRA boss explaining the reason for the $5 billion fine noted that “although adequate containment measures were put in place to combat the Bonga oil spill, it, however, posed a serious environmental threat to the offshore environment.”

He said: “The spilled 40,000 barrels impacted approximately on 950 square kilometres of water surface; affected great number of sensitive environmental resources across the impacted area and has direct social impact on the livelihood of people in the riverine areas whose primary occupation is fishing.

“It also potentially caused a number of physiological effects on aquatic lives while surviving aquatic species around the spill site would migrate to a farther distance to situate new habitat thereby forcing coastal communities to move deeper into the sea to carry out fishing activities.”

Chairman, House Committee on Environment, Hon. Uche Ekwunife had at the opening of the interactive session expressed displeasure that seven months after the spill, there were doubts if Shell carried out a thorough clean-up programme as the oil firm was said to have hurriedly resumed operations on the facility.

She further stated that there were also indications that Shell had refused to accept full responsibility for the incident and had rebuffed claims from communities affected by the spill.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/17-0

I couldn’t agree more!!! Great to see this in print. Wish all teachers could read it. DV

Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Rethinking Schools Blog

by Bill Bigelow

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve been spared most of the brutal weather experienced in the rest of the country. Throughout the United States, in the month of June alone, 3,200 daytime high temperature records were broken or tied. In Washington, D.C., an 11-day stretch of temperatures above 95 degrees is the longest since records have been kept. The weird and deadly mid-Atlantic storm—the “land hurricane”—took the lives of 23 people and left 4 million without electricity. Colorado has suffered through the worst forest fires in the state’s history. And the fire still burning in southeastern Oregon is the biggest one the state has seen in 150 years.Illustration: Erik Ruin

As climate scientists will tell you, there is no way to link any single weather event to global warming. But as Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, said recently on Democracy Now!, “What we’re seeing now is the future. We’re going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we’re seeing from this series of heat waves, fires, and storms. . . . This is just the beginning.”

And yet, the fossil fuel industry continues to lead the climate change denial parade. On June 27, a day when almost 200 high temperature records were broken, Rex W. Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, pooh-poohing climate change, saying that the problem was activist organizations that “manufacture fear.” Tillerson said that the problem was an “illiterate public,” which needed to be taught that all environmental risks were “entirely manageable.”

And conservative pundits proudly wave the same flat-earth flag. Arguing with E. J. Dionne on ABC’s This Week, George Will said, “You asked us—how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. . . . We’re having some hot weather. Get over it.”

In our editorial, “Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis,” in the spring 2011 issue of Rethinking Schools, we wrote that the climate crisis is “arguably the most significant threat to life on earth,” and urged educators to respond with the urgency that the crisis deserves. The events of this summer have added an exclamation point to our editorial.

A new article by Bill McKibben in the July/August 2012 issue of Orion Magazine, “A Matter of Degrees: The Arithmetic of a Warming Climate,” holds profound implications for educators. McKibben begins with the reminder that there is a global consensus that if the planet warms more than 2 degrees Celsius, we enter the “guaranteed-catastrophe zone.” (And McKibben acknowledges that even 2 degrees may be too generous of a climate allowance.)

So McKibben does the arithmetic. To remain under the 2-degree threshold, we need to emit no more than 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide over the next 40 years. As he puts it, “It’s like saying if you want to keep your blood alcohol level legal for driving, you can’t drink more than eight beers in the next six hours.” But here is the problem. Analysts have calculated that all the claimed reserves from fossil fuel—coal, oil, and natural gas—companies add up to 2,795 gigatons, five times more than the maximum allowable, even in a scenario that itself is fraught with climate danger.

“Here’s another way of saying it: We need to leave at least 80 percent of that coal and gas and oil underground,” McKibben writes. “The problem is, extracting and burning that coal and oil and gas is already factored into the share prices of the companies involved—the value of that carbon is already counted as part of the economy.” This would be the equivalent of these companies writing off $20 trillion.

For those of us who take climate science seriously, I think that we’re left with an inescapable conclusion: It’s not enough to teach about fossil fuels, we have to teach against fossil fuels. Any curriculum discussion that fails to address the threat posed by fossil fuel consumption to humanity and the future of all life on earth is profoundly irresponsible.

To illustrate the criminal full-speed-ahead approach of the fossil fuel industry, here in the Northwest, coal companies are pushing plans to export between 150 and 170 million tons of coal a year from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana through six different Oregon and Washington ports to Asia.

Put aside for a moment the horrible toll that coal mining takes on the land and water and people in Montana and Wyoming.

Put aside the coal dust pollution that destroys lungs and kills people.

Put aside the violation of Native fishing rights along the Columbia River, where all the coal would travel by train and barge.

Put aside the noise pollution and disruption from as many as 60 mile-long, diesel exhaust-spewing trains a day.

And instead think only about the climate implications of the hundreds of millions of tons of coal that will be burned if these export routes are opened—a yearly figure, by my calculations, of between 240 and 270 million tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. That’s the equivalent of 65 coal-fired power plants. (Of course, anti-coal export activists are busy making sure this doesn’t come to pass.)

Educators need to do our part. We have to continue to create—and teach—curriculum that through role play, simulation, experiment, projects, art, story, media, and activism helps students explore the causes and consequences of climate change—and imagine economic arrangements that can stop hurtling us toward the “catastrophe zone.” This work is already under way.

See articles in our special issue on “Teaching for Environmental Justice:”
“‘Don’t Take Our Voices Away’: A Role Play on the Indigenous People’s Summit on Climate Change”
“Dirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline”
“Got Coal? Teaching About the Most Dangerous Rock in America”
And in the latest issue of Rethinking Schools, “Fracking: In the End, We’re All Downstream.”

We concluded our climate crisis editorial: “The fight for a climate-relevant education is part of the broader fight for a critical, humane, challenging, and socially responsive curriculum. It’s work that belongs to us all.”

It’s also work that has never been more urgent.
© 2012 Rethinking Schools
Bill Bigelow

Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and author or co-editor of several Rethinking Schools books: A People’s History for the Classroom, The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration, Rethinking Columbus, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, and Rethinking Our Classrooms–Volumes 1 and 2. Bigelow lives in Portland, Oregon, and has taught high school social studies since 1978.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/17-2

Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Common Dreams
Greenpeace Activists Shut Down 77 Shell Gas Stations in Day of Action
– Common Dreams staff

Environmental activists shut down dozens of Shell gas stations across the UK, Denmark and Germany on Monday. The action was part of environmental group Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic Campaign — a bid to prevent oil drilling in the Arctic slated to begin within the next three weeks. Greenpeace has ramped up its efforts against oil company Shell as its drilling vessels drift closer to its targets in the Arctic.

Greenpeace polar bears scale a Shell gas station (Photo: Greenpeace via twitter) Earlier this week Shell’s first drill rig to near the Arctic, Noble Discoverer, lost control during high winds and ran aground near Dutch Harbor, Alaska.

“Shell can’t keep it’s drill rig under control in a protected harbor, so what will happen when it faces 20 foot swells and sea ice while drilling in the Arctic? Shell’s whole drilling program seems to be running aground…Shell cannot be trusted, and President Obama should not let its Arctic drilling program move forward,” stated Greenpeace Lead Arctic Campaigner Jackie Dragon.

On Monday the activists scaled the roof of a Shell gas station, many in sickly polar bear costumes, used barriers to block off access to pumps, and covered a Shell sign with a Save the Arctic banner. In one instance they placed a life-sized polar bear model on a station’s roof. Other campaigners chained themselves to pumps, a Greenpeace spokesman told the Independent.

Activists shut down pumps by switching emergency shut-off levers, which stop gas flow.

24 were arrested over the course of the planned actions.

All together the organization protested at over 100 gas stations and shut down up to 77, most of them in London and Edinburgh.

“Obviously, we need to ratchet up the pressure, we need to let Shell know that this isn’t just a publicity campaign, we’re going to put pressure on them until they agree to stop what they’re doing,” Greenpeace activist Graham Thompson told the Guardian.

Greenpeace’s video of the day’s actions: