Two oil line ruptures in as many weeks—one in North Dakota, one in Canada’s remote boreal forests—may jeopardize a planned Alberta-to-Texas tar-sand pipeline that Calgary-based TransCanada is seeking US approval for.
The US approved a Royal Dutch Shell plan to drill for oil in five location under the Gulf of Mexico, in the company’s second exploration plan to win approval since the moratorium was lifted in October.
A group of Nobel Peace laureates called in an open letter for all countries to pursue safer forms of renewable energy rather than going ahead with plans for nuclear development in light of the current disaster in Japan.
Right-wing websites are jumping on a 2005 UN report predicting that climate change would create 50 million refugees by 2010—and gloating that it hasn’t come to pass. But maybe we are closer to the 50 million than they think.
As “progressives” like George Monbiot pose nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels, the big corporations that control both oil and uranium laugh all the way to the bank.
The Center for Biological Diversity charges that the impacts on wildlife of last year’s BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe have been dramatically underestimated.
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut regarding whether electric utilities contributed to global warming. The Obama administration has sided with the power companies.
A plan awaiting approval by the US Environmental Protection Agency would dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after “radiological incidents.”
Despite the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Obama’s 2012 budget calls for an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants. Obama last week called nuclear power an “important part” of his energy agenda.
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Alaska refused to order ExxonMobil to pay an additional $92 million in damages from the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Oil prices rose past $104 a barrel, a two-and-a-half-year high, on fears that Saudi Arabia will not be able to make up for the shortfall as chaos engulfs Libya and threatens the entire region.
The president’s Oil Spill Commission finds that last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill was “an entirely preventable disaster,” especially noting substandard construction work by Halliburton.
