When we last left Bobby Jindal, oil-addicted governor of BP-ravaged Louisiana, he was demanding more deepwater drilling ASAP. Former dirty energy lobbyist Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MI) also demanded renewed drilling before the cause of disaster was found.
The White House has now responded, as HuffPost reports:
LONDON””As the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico entered its eighth week Wednesday, fears continued to grow that the massive flow of bullshit still gushing from the headquarters of oil giant BP could prove catastrophic if nothing is done to contain it.
The toxic bullshit, which began to spew from the mouths of BP executives shortly after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April, has completely devastated the Gulf region, delaying cleanup efforts, affecting thousands of jobs, and endangering the lives of all nearby wildlife.
Dense streams of shit are expected to continue spreading throughout the region and the entire United States.
America’s Finest News Source has more on this fast-breaking story:
In an appearance this morning on MSNBC, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the vice-chairman of the Senate Democratic Caucus, treated legislation to fight global warming as an afterthought to an energy-only bill. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) have painstakingly crafted a comprehensive climate policy bill, the American Power Act, that would build upon the legislation passed last year by the House of Representatives. Also last year, Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) energy committee passed a limited package which Center for American Progress president John Podesta described as “weak, toothless, and unacceptable.” Sitting with the Morning Joe anchors, Schumer praised the building codes in the Bingaman bill. He said that Kerry’s “thing” would be offered as an amendment to Bingaman’s “good, strong energy bill”:
In the bill that Jeff Bingaman has proposed, which is the base energy bill upon which Kerry is going to try to add his thing, we have those codes nationally. Will it immediately have an effect in the first year? No. But in ten or 15 years it will do a huge amount.
In this bill is something — it’s a little controversial: much more ability to do nuclear energy. If we standardize it and apply the same rules we talked about with oil, that you know, you got to be real careful because if you screw up, you’re going to pay the price — but do it! And people want to take that, that endeavor, they should. It’s going to be a good strong energy bill and I think it’s been given new life.
Now what do you do about, uh, climate change? Now Kerry has a proposal that has pretty broad support, it has the environmental groups, the energy companies, et cetera. And of course, the extreme people at each side say it’s not good enough. But he’s done a damn good job. He’s in my opinion going to get a chance to offer that amendment and we’ll see if it has the votes.
Watch it:
Evidently, Schumer is skeptical of President Barack Obama’s commitment that although “the votes may not be there right now” for a comprehensive bill like Kerry-Lieberman that puts a price on carbon, “I intend to find them in the coming months.”
Honestly, with natural gas wells and pipelines exploding and killing people, with the BP oil gusher continuing to spew uncontrollably into the gulf, with tornadoes ravaging the country as the globe reaches record temperatures, I just don’t have the energy to deal with Schumer equating people concerned by billion-dollar giveaways to the fossil and nuclear industries with people who deny the existence of science as the “the extreme people at each side.”
,Schumer’s spokesman walked back his remarks later in the day. Schumer spokesman Brian Fallon said in an e-mail to National Journal:
To the senator’s knowledge, no decisions have been made yet on the floor strategy for legislation addressing the nation’s urgent energy challenges, nor is it his decision to make. The senator speculated on one procedural option, but make no mistake: He believes climate change legislation is vital to our nation’s energy security and looks forward to voting for it.
Kerry and Schumer “will meet later this week to talk about a possible strategy for moving a broad climate and energy plan.”
Mother Jones has a good interview with Chris Lehane, an expert in crisis communication.
They lead with the BP communications screw up, but I actually think what he has to say about what team Obama is doing wrong is much more important:
In the ongoing saga of The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley vs. reality, TVMOB tosses up an air ball in response to Prof. John Abraham’s evisceration of his standard talk. Maybe the better analogy is one of bad sportsmanship, a basketball thrown directly at the head of Abraham.
TVMOB is, of course, a shameless purveyor of hate speech and anti-science disinformation (see TVMOB hate speech shocker: Lord Monckton repeats and expands on his charge that those who embrace climate science are “Hitler youth” and fascists and links below). [Please note that the picture on the right is not TVMOB nor do I think he would ever participate in this.]
So it is no surprise his ‘response’ devolves into a nasty threat:
It looks like the Senate is going to vote this week on the pro-pollution amendment of the ‘dirty air’ Lisa — see Polluters work with Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) on amendment to thwart EPA GHG regulations that might help save her state.
The dirty air Lisa most certainly knows that unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions could devastate Alaska (see “Lisa Murkowski proposes to fiddle while Nome burns“). As she said in a 2006 speech:
Warmer, drier air, has allowed the voracious spruce bark beetle to migrate north, moving through our forests in the south-central part of the state. At last count, over three million acres of forest land has been devastated by the beetle, providing dry fuel for outbreaks of enormous wild fires. To give you some perspective, that is almost the size of Connecticut.
But the fact she has been working closely with lobbyists for polluters suggest that her Arctic policy is is to do nothing and let the whole damn thing melt and burn (see “M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F “” with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F“).
EPA Administrator Jackson, aka ‘clean air’ Lisa, has a response in HuffPost:
DUNHUANG, China — About 4 miles west of here, in the still blankness of the Gobi desert, a large array of solar panels shimmers like a mirage in the heat.
The latest Toles BP cartoon, “All directions point to pollution,” takes us from the eco-disaster hitting the Gulf to the one hitting the entire planet:
On Fox News Sunday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) continued to aggressively downplay the massive BP oil gusher, explaining that tar balls washing up on his state’s beaches are “no big deal” because you can “pick them up and throw them in the bag.” And instead of attacking BP for causing the spill, he blamed the media for creating a “misperception” of crisis by daring to call attention to one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. TP has the story:
Sunday on ABC’s This Week had a must-see slugfest. In one corner was Arianna Huffington of our very own planet Earth, laying out the case for Cheney’s Katrina. In the other corner was Liz Cheney of the Bizarro World, Htrae, a planet where her father and her father’s former company are champions of the environment and public safety. In this repost, ThinkProgress has the blow-by-blow.
Edited by Joe Romm, we cover climate science, solutions and politics. Columnist Tom Friedman calls us "the indispensable blog" and Time magazine named us one of the 25 "Best Blogs of 2010." Newcomers, start here.
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga.
Joe Romm has pulled together the secrets of the greatest communicators in history to show how you can apply these tools to your writing, speaking, blogging — even your Tweeting.
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