Media, public, governments unprepared for the End of the World (As We Know It)

Source: Sweetnam, DOE, April 2009

The BP oil disaster reminds us once again of the many large costs of oil use not included in its price.  But because conservatives have blocked or rolled back all serious efforts to move us off of oil in the last three decades, peak oil will soon change that (see Deutsche Bank: Oil to hit $175 a barrel by 2016 and World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery: “We have to leave oil before oil leaves us”).

Energy economics expert and long-time guest blogger Craig Severance, has a review of recent research in this important area, which is largely ignored by the status quo media.

Read more

Plus my ‘debate’ with Greenpeace on Senate climate bill

You can listen to the full Diane Rehm show here.  This didn’t end up being a debate, and I think was pretty informative.

Democracy Now! has posted a full transcript of what they bill as “Greenpeace v. Center for American Progress: A Debate on the Kerry-Lieberman Climate Bill.”

Read more

The Daily Show’s segment is titled, “There Will Be Blame”:
Read more

Transocean, Ltd, the company that operates the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which recently exploded in the Gulf, is the “world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor.”

We’ve already seen that the Deepwater Horizon drill rig used the Marshall Islands’ flag as a “flag of convenience” so it “could comply with that country’s standards, and not the U.S. regulations” (see “Oil well’s blowout preventer had leaks, dead battery, design flaws“).

Now the AP reports today that Transocean, after moving its headquarters from the U.S. to Zug, Switzerland, two years ago, paid a paltry 16 percent on its corporate income last year, less than half of the current American corporate income tax rate of 35 percent:

Read more