Joseph J. Romm's Blog, page 1237

BP CEO Tony Hayward: "I'd like my life back."

The millionaire CEO of foreign oil giant British Petroleum, Tony Hayward, is upset at the inconvenience caused to him by his company's devastation of the Gulf of Mexico.  In this TP excerpt, Brad Johnson has the stunning video of the tone-deaf 'apology' from the leader of the company whose recklessness and hubris has already claimed 11 lives and spewed 20 to 100 million gallons of toxic oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

On Sunday, immediately after apologizing, Hayward then complained about t...

Energy and Global Warming News for June 1: Ford revamps shuttered plant for clean economy; Lots of activity in world solar markets

Ford plant renovation signals company's new direction

Ford Motor Co. is about halfway through converting its Michigan Assembly Plant from one that used to build trucks and SUVs into one that produces the fuel-efficient vehicles the automaker hopes will be its cornerstone.

The $550 million project to convert the plant in Wayne, Mich., from a closed-down factory to the production site for the Ford Focus compact car could bring about 3,200 new jobs. The nearby Wayne Assembly Plant, where...

Enery and Global Warming News for June 1: Ford revamps shuttered plant for clean economy; Lots of activity in world solar markets

Ford plant renovation signals company's new direction

Ford Motor Co. is about halfway through converting its Michigan Assembly Plant from one that used to build trucks and SUVs into one that produces the fuel-efficient vehicles the automaker hopes will be its cornerstone.

The $550 million project to convert the plant in Wayne, Mich., from a closed-down factory to the production site for the Ford Focus compact car could bring about 3,200 new jobs. The nearby Wayne Assembly Plant, where...

When corporations rule

The fatal disasters at the Upper Big Branch Mine and Deepwater Horizon are fresh evidence the Bush-Cheney corporate culture continues in some federal agencies charged with overseeing industry. President Obama needs to change that culture fast.  Bill Becker, a regular CP contributor and Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), explains what Obama needs to do.

Formal investigations are underway, but it appears that lax  federal oversight and enforcement...

What's the matter with Kansas? - A Kari Manlove retrospective

Kari Manlove helped me launch Climate Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.  She started as a CAP intern and stayed to become Research Associate for the Energy Opportunity team because she is hyper-competent!

Here are links to all her posts.  She is a Kansas native so she tracked the efforts by then Gov. Sebelius to block to unnecessary coal plants in many of her posts.  Her last post was Women's role in a warming world.

Kari Manlove's Climate Progress career:

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A 'fresh look' at onshore oil and gas drilling - Obama and Salazar move to protect lands in American West

The Obama administration is moving briskly to erect new protections against environmentally destructive energy development practices in the American West even as it grapples with the cascading effects of the catastrophic BP oil disaster in the Gulf—and the federal oversight lapses that may have contributed to it.  CAP's Tom Kenworthy has the story in this repost.

Leasing of public lands to oil companies soared under the Bush-Cheney administration, even long before "drill, baby, drill"...

Why has a Newsweek economics editor, Stefan Theil, written "basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint"? - Bickering and defensive, Newsweek reporters have lost the public's trust.

Another week, another staggering journalistic lapse in climate science reporting at a once-great media outlet.

How bad is "Uncertain Science," by Stefan Theil, European economics editor for the near-dead newsweekly?  I asked Dr. Robert J. Brulle for a comment, and the Drexel University "expert on environmental communications," wrote me back:

This article is basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint.  Mr. Theil significantly distorts the situation, and grossly fails to...

Why has a Newsweek economics editor, Stefan Theil, written "basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint"? - Bickering and defensive, climate reporters have lost the public's trust.

Another week, another staggering journalistic lapse in climate science reporting at a once-great media outlet.

How bad is "Uncertain Science," by Stefan Theil, European economics editor for the near-dead newsweekly?  I asked Dr. Robert J. Brulle for a comment, and the Drexel University "expert on environmental communications," wrote me back:

This article is basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint.  Mr. Theil significantly distorts the situation, and grossly fails to...

Memorial Day, 2030

The three worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise and ocean poisoning:  Hell and High Water.  But another impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don't leave a world of wars...

An oil dependence speech for Obama

Last week, I asked readers to "."  A few people actually wrote entire speeches.  Here is one by guest blogger Stewart J. Hudson, President of the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, suggests Obama deliver a speech centering on the next holiday weekend, July 4:

America is at a crossroads.

Do we continue our dependence on foreign sources of oil  –  Or do we stop funding regimes that are trying to...