Oil’s Toxic Reach
Posted by admin on 06/11/2010
by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Brad Johnson, Alex Seitz-Wald, Tanya Somanader
ENVIRONMENT
Oil’s Toxic Reach
The politics of oil dominated the halls of Washington yesterday, as oil money-dependent politicians tried to prevent the Obama administration from reining in the fossil fuel’s toxic pollution. Fighting Obama’s attempts to clean up the catastrophic mess of the oil-soaked Bush-Cheney era, members of Congress with ties to Big Oil lashed out at Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling and held a vote to block the regulation of greenhouse gas pollution. These political maneuvers came even as the harsh effects of oil-driven global warming and of BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster grow by the day. Yesterday, the federal government recognized that the oil gusher has been flowing at a rate of “840,000 to 1.7 million gallons a day,” the estimate first made by independent scientists in April. This latest estimate — double what the government admitted last week — applies only to the time “before a kinked riser pipe was lopped off on June 3, a move that inevitably increased the flow, although to what extent remains unclear.” Meanwhile, “fishermen, businesses and property owners who have filed damage claims with the company angrily complained of delays, excessive paperwork, and skimpy payments that have put them on the verge of going under.” “BP could fire all their contractors,” Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish president Billy Nungesser testified Thursday, “because they are doing absolutely nothing but destroying our marsh.” Just as the Gulf Coast is under siege from growing invisible clouds of oil under the sea, the entire planet is being cooked by the invisible carbon pollution in the atmosphere. “As Senators debate climate change on Capitol Hill,” the World Wildlife Fund’s Nick Sundt wrote yesterday, “NASA reports that global surface temperatures this spring rose to record levels.” Glacier loss in Asia “threatens the food security of millions of people,” and “the current extent of Arctic ice is at its lowest point for at least the last few thousand years.” After hours of debate, Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK, $433,989 in lifetime contributions from the oil and gas industry) resolution to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific finding that oil’s greenhouse gases endanger the American public was rejected yesterday by a vote of 53-47.
‘EVASION IN THE FACE OF HARD EVIDENCE’: The oil industry and its backers are trying every means to cover up the harsh evidence of oil’s destruction. Alabama fire officials report that BP is “purposely keeping trained local officials away from the spill response.” Numerous press reports indicate that BP is blocking the media from reporting on the Gulf oil disaster. Last month, Fox News anchor Brit Hume scoffed at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering, “Where’s the oil?” The company has even hired Anne Womack-Kolton, a former top aide to Vice President Cheney, to be its new spokesperson. Joining Womack-Kolton in attempting to repair BP’s image is former chief of staff to President Bush, Josh Bolten. After BP’s stock hit a 14-year low, the company announced it “is not aware of any reason which justifies this share price movement.” BP’s “evasion in the face of hard evidence” is reminiscent, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann noted Wednesday, of “another infamous flack” — the Saddam Hussein official known popularly as “Baghdad Bob,” notorious “for his optimistic, if fanciful, statements about Iraq’s triumph over the American infidels.” The Senate debate on the Murkowski resolution drew from the same playbook: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT, $246,979) said, “Warming is not a big deal and is not a bad thing.” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ, $332,332) claimed the resolution “is not about the science of climate change.” Opponents of the Murkowski resolution called out these lies. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) said that voting for the resolution is “to assert that there is no climate change or global warming going on, and to dismiss scientific facts that already exist.” “What are we going to do next, repeal the laws of gravity?” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) asked. The Murkowski resolution and BP’s public relations blitz mean that, liberal blogger Digby writes, “we are beginning to see the oil industry really pushing back hard.”
OIL’S CORRUPT REACH: The oil industry came out in force for Murkowski’s Big-Oil bailout, which would have blocked new fuel economy standards for vehicles and new pollution controls for oil refineries and producers. Americans for Prosperity, the front group founded and funded by the oil conglomerate Koch Industries, hosted an event to urge the passage the resolution, attended by Republican lawmakers like Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK, $1,228,223) and first-term congressman Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA, $90,535). Multimillionaire Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), the ranking member of the House Global Warming and Energy Independence Committee “who owns thousands of shares of BP stock, has no plans to recuse himself from a congressional investigation related to the Gulf oil spill.” Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA, $751,744) “is reiterating her call to end the Obama administration’s moratorium on deepwater drilling, saying it will cause economic hardship in the region.” Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY, $174,250) called the moratorium “a second assault on the Gulf.” The American Petroleum Institute (API), the oil industry trade association that “plays a crucial role in writing the safety and environmental rules for offshore drilling,” “expressed disappointment with the Senate’s defeat of the Murkowski resolution,” saying it hopes “the Senate will quickly take up Senator Jay Rockefeller’s resolution to delay EPA rules by two years.” API also opposes the deepwater drilling moratorium, lifting the cap on oil spill liability, boycotts against BP, and any climate legislation that does not “recognize the importance of domestic oil and natural gas development to the nation’s economy.”
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