One year later: Assessing the lasting impact of the Gulf spill

The worst environmental disaster in history isn’t the oil that gets away. It’s the oil we burn, the coal we burn, the gas we burn. The real catastrophic spill is the carbon dioxide billowing from our tailpipes and smokestacks every second, year upon decade. That spill is destabilizing the planet’s life-supporting systems, killing polar wildlife, shrinking tropical reefs, dissolving shellfish, raising the sea level along densely populated coasts, jeopardizing agriculture, and threatening food security for hundreds of millions of people.

Review: Disaster on the Horizon by Bob Cavnar

It’s been nearly six months since BP Plc.’s runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, which caused the largest unintentional offshore spill on record, was finally deemed “effectively dead.” And those six months have brought almost as many books on the disaster. Cavnar’s book has a particular ring of authenticity, and I suspect that’s because he’s the only one of the above authors to have spent a career in the oil and gas drilling business.

Naomi Klein: Addicted to risk

Days before this talk, journalist Naomi Klein was on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico, looking at the catastrophic results of BP’s risky pursuit of oil. Our societies have become addicted to extreme risk in finding new energy, new financial instruments and more … and too often, we’re left to clean up a mess afterward. Klein’s question: What’s the backup plan?

The Deepwater Horizon spill report – Jan 12

-Oil spill report: Initial analysis
-Disregard for safety led to Deepwater Horizon spill
-Panel Faults Oil Firms, Calls for Better Oversight
-National Oil Spill Commission Finds Right Problems, Issues Wrong Solutions
-Missed Opportunity: Spill Commission Rejected by Drillers

Review: Prelude by Kurt Cobb

Kurt Cobb has just released a page-turner of a first novel titled Prelude, which uses a Grisham-esque tale of suspense and intrigue to educate the public about peak oil. Prelude’s main character is a young energy analyst who discovers a top-secret report shedding light on the true, precarious state of the world’s oil reserves….Allegorically named Cassie, she stands for all of the real-life Cassandras within the peak oil movement, who, like the Cassandra of Greek myth, are able to foresee disaster but so far seem cursed never to be believed.

Living better in ‘the finite world’

Economist Paul Krugman almost addressed the Limits to Growth in his recent article “The Finite World”, but pulled back before reaching the brink of suggesting there may be physical limits to economic growth. A Nobel Prize may await whomever finds a workable model to prosper human welfare under conditions of depleting resources. Will economists solve this problem, or ordinary people who are learning to live better in The Finite World?

ODAC Newsletter – Dec 3

The Obama administration announced this week that it has reversed its decision to open up new leases in areas of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast. The intention to lift the moratorium which had been in place since 2006 was made weeks before the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. See the recent UKITPOES paper for more on the likely impact of the Gulf of Mexico disaster on oil production…