If you are interested in hearing first-hand accounts of the oil spill tragedy in the Gulf, come out on Thursday to the Gulf Voices Fly Out event at the Oyster Bar. From Audubon Arkansas:
Clean Energy Works is hosting the Gulf Voices Fly-Out in order to share the personal stories of the devastating effects of the Deepwater oil disaster with communities and members of the press across the country.
Four Gulf Coast residents directly affected by the disaster will be traveling to Arkansas for approximately 24 hours in order to educate the people in the state about the effects of the oil disaster on business, health and ecosystems. The public is encouraged to attend.
The disaster in the Gulf affects real people whose stories resonate across the country. These Gulf Coast residents are seeing firsthand how America’s dependence on oil and other fossil fuels hurts our economy, our environment and their unique way of life in the Gulf. The worst environmental disaster in our nation’s history is happening in our backyards. The environmental, economic and human costs that come with our continued dependence on dirty fossil fuels is too high for our communities to bear any longer.
What: A roundtable discussion and media availability.
When: Thursday, July 15th at 11:00 AM
Where: The Oyster Bar
3003 West Markham Street
Little Rock, AR 72205-5853
Who: Rick Roberts, Executive Director, Snook Foundation (Sarasota, FL)
Linda Hawkins, Health Care Professional (ret.) (Abita Springs, LA)
Linda Schuch, Owner, Island Seafood Market (St. Petersburg, FL)
Joe Morris Doss, Bishop, Episcopal Church (New Orleans, LA)
The role of government subsidy of industry, if any, should be to support important, but struggling industries, or to bring new industries into an area. Currently, government subsidies often work as huge handouts, in the form of tax breaks, to profitable corporations. Big Oil is no exception. Even while earning record profits, these corporations have enjoyed tax breaks totaling as much as $45 billion a year. BP received $225,000 a day by writing off the rent on the Deepwater Horizon rig.
Climate Progress sums up the situation nicely. “So, essentially, the U.S. taxpayer paid BP to lease a rig that was incorporated in a foreign country for the purpose of avoiding the U.S. corporate tax.”
It’s time to let Congress know the American taxpayer is tired of subsidizing the wealthiest corporations on the planet through tax breaks. Write Senators Lincoln and Pryor today. CREDO is circulating this petition that you may sign on-line as well. (Please note that Sen. Pryor requires a letter through his website as he does not accept petitions and letters from outside groups. Cut-and-paste works well, but please add a personal touch.)
“At a time of soaring deficits and record unemployment, there’s no excuse for giving Big Oil a $35 billion bailout. I call on my elected officials to end the Big Oil Bailout by repealing all dirty fuel tax breaks and investing the money in green jobs instead. We have to get serious about supporting new, clean energy companies and breaking our addiction to oil.”
Pointing out the flaws in Mike Ross’ politics is about as useful as spitting into the wind, given his unflagging popularity with his district’s voters. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I’m going to do it, anyway.
It should also come as no surprise that Mr. Ross isn’t particularly moved by the oil spill that is still dumping over 2.5 million barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Or that he places the blame with the US government, not the multinational corporations responsible for the disaster. In an interview reported by the El Dorado News Times, Ross said the problem lies with the corrupt federal oversight agency.
U.S. Rep. Mike Ross of Arkansas made clear late last week during a phone interview with the News-Times that despite the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he is still very supportive of offshore drilling, and he said it can be done safely as long as government regulators aren’t too chummy with big oil companies.
Ross spoke frankly about the BP oil spill, which he said is dumping an estimated 2.5 million gallons of oil into the Gulf each day.
“We found that government regulators were too cozy with oil companies, and that has already ended,”…
It is understandable, at least from a political viewpoint, that Ross would not tout oil independence in El Dorado, home to an oil refinery. It is, however, questionable at best for a Democrat to get on the “blame the Feds” bandwagon. BP and its subcontractors are responsible for the oil spill. No reasonable person doubts that the Office of Mines and Minerals has much corruption to answer for. (Corruption, I would add, that reached its zenith during the Bush administration.) Those officials didn’t make the direct decisions that led to the accident. They weren’t the ones holding the gun. I don’t think “the Devil let me do it!” is a valid defense.
For the past several months, I have been toying with the idea of parking my SUV during the week and riding the bus to work. In many cities, making this choice might have been a no-brainer. In Little Rock, it’s not so simple. Riding the bus will require advance planning and a significant sacrifice of time. Popular opinion is that risk of mugging or worse is increased among bus riders, and that only the downtrodden and students ride the bus. Conditions at bus stops are deplorable, with most lacking shelter and many lacking even a bench. Once out of the downtown area, Little Rock is not a very walkable city, and just getting to the bus stop can prove to be a problem for many.
The idea has taken hold, however, and the Gulf oil spill has added new immediacy. It’s not enough just to boycott BP. I don’t buy gas there, anyway. We have to decrease our use of fossil fuels, and driving my vehicle to work each day is looking more and more like an unsustainable extravagance. There’s an example to be set here, and questions to be answered about the Little Rock bus system. So it is that this is to be the first post in a series designed to bring to light the problems and benefits of using mass transit in Little Rock.
I live approximately 5 miles from work. Riding the bus directly from the nearest bus stop will entail a short (1/2 mile or so) walk and one transfer. Already a hitch. Buses here only run approximately every 30 minutes, even during rush hours, and the Rodney Parham bus I would catch misses the transfer at W. Markham street by about 5 minutes each time. This means about a half-hour wait at the bus stop for the transfer and a trip to work of over an hour. (I make the trip in about 15 minutes by car.) I have never designed a bus schedule, but I would think that in a city with relatively few major cross streets it would make sense and be fairly simple to schedule transfers better. What’s worse, my choices for leaving the house would be about 6:45 am for an 8:00 arrival or 7:30 for an 8:30 arrival. An alternate plan would be for me to walk or bike to work with my husband and catch the West Markham bus from there. This entails about a 1.5 mile walk and significant backtracking, but no standing around waiting for a transfer. As bus riding around here goes, though, I am in pretty good shape. A friend of mine who lives just across the river in North Little Rock says it would take him 2 transfers and about 1.5 hours to get to work.
Tomorrow, I will buy my first 30-day bus pass at a cost of $36. This is less than the cost of one tank of gas, and I generally fill up once in about a week and a half. I’ll count this as incentive.
For those who are wondering why I do not just ride my bike to work I have two answers. First, I do not enjoy riding a bike. I would rather run the five miles to work. Second, Little Rock is even less bike-able than it is walkable. W. Markham is a narrow 4-lane street with curbs and no shoulders. I’m not suicidal.
The current limit for corporate liability in cases like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is capped at $75 million. The estimated cost of clean-up and restoration is already estimated to be close to a billion dollars. That’s going to leave the US taxpayer holding the bag for over 90% of the clean-up. It’s time that corporations are held accountable for their mistakes. The risks of doing business should be borne by the corporation, in exchange for the privilege of doing business. That privilege amounts to about $14 billion dollars of profit yearly for BP. Transnational corporations should not be allowed to create environmental disasters in this or any other country without making full restoration.
You can take action today by signing a petition at Firedoglake asking the Senate to end the liability cap.
When a company like BP conducts reckless projects that destroy our environment and our communities, they should assume full liability for their actions and be held financially responsible for paying any damages.
The current liability cap on companies who pose such a threat to our collective safety and livelihood ultimately puts taxpayers on the hook for cleaning up someone elses mess.
We, the undersigned, demand the Senate eliminate the liability cap and force companies to pay for their disasters in full. Taxpayers cannot be expected to bailout another irresponsible corporate giant. We need accountability in business now.
Progressive groups like CREDO are calling on the Obama administration to take action against BP for the alleged negligence and incompetence that led to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Although the current liability cap is set at a measly $75 million, less than BP makes in profits in a single day, the EPA could sanction the oil giant by suspending its contracts to the tune of billions of dollars in lost revenue. There’s ample reason to do so, according to CREDO.
Prior to the current Gulf spill, EPA had linked BP to at least four instances of criminal misconduct and BP has paid tens of millions in fines for environmental crimes. According to the public interest investigative journalists at Pro Publica, the EPA is considering re-evaluating BP and determining whether the company’s actions leading up to and following the Deep Horizon spill are evidence of an institutional problem inside BP that would qualify for debarment action.
You may sign a petition here urging the EPA to sanction BP.
BP isn’t the only company that should be in the spotlight. TransOcean, the company running the Deepwater Horizon rig at the time of the explosion, is planning to pay out dividends worth a billion dollars to shareholders. 18 Senators, including our own Mark Pryor and Blanche LIncoln (yes, that’s Murkowski Amendment Blanche) signed a letter demanding an investigation of TransOcean, which, incidentally, will make an additional $270 million dollars in profit off the insurance policy on the rig. The Senators claim the rig was insured for more than it was worth. Full story at Politico.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is balking at Democratic requests to raise the liability cap on oil-drilling corporations to $10 billion or higher, according to the Huffington Post. Decisive action by President Obama on this issue would resound with voters of all but the most rabid Right persuasion. Sainthood would be within his grasp if he assumed leadership and demonstrated that the United States is in control of the Louisiana Gulf Coast and clean-up efforts, not BP. Handing over the Louisiana beaches, the livelihood of thousands of Gulf-coast families, and the welfare of a fragile ecosystem to a trasnational corporation isn’t helping his image right now.
You may link to updated views of the BP oil spill on Google Earth. Using data from the State of Louisiana and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the map outlining the oil spill is updated daily at the Crisis Response Site. The site also links to news reports about the spill and a time line of events. More information about the spill may be found at the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. Don’t accept the official estimates of the size of this spill or its environmental impact. Get the facts.
With all the well-deserved negative press BP is getting over its irresponsible behavior in the Gulf, one would think the company would give 100% effort to resolving the problem. Not so. Shareholders still rule, and getting the job done cheaply is still more important than getting the job done well. Think Progress reports that BP chose to buy an oil dispersant known to be among the least efficient and most toxic.
Of 18 dispersants whose use EPA has approved, 12 were found to be more effective on southern Louisiana crude than Corexit, EPA data show. Two of the 12 were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective, respectively. The toxicity of the 12 was shown to be either comparable to the Corexit line or, in some cases, 10 or 20 times less, according to EPA.
So far, the company has put over 400,000 gallons of this stuff in the water. The product comes from Nalco, a former BP subsidiary, and a company that still has close executive ties to BP. To make matters worse, the formula for Corexit is proprietary, and it’s difficult to predict what long-term effects may be.
It’s time not only for a boycott of BP, but for consumers to take back the environment and their health from megacorporations. Consumers have a right to know what’s being put into the Gulf of Mexico. We have a right to know what’s being put into the ground closer to home here in Arkansas, in natural gas fracking operations around the state.
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