The Environment

• Chevron's Underhand Tactics to Avoid Paying for Worlds Worst Oil Disaster

  The Andean Commission of Jurists and five prestigious international law experts from around the world have joined a growing chorus of criticism targeting Chevron's attempt to use a secret investor arbitration as part of its campaign to evade an $18 billion environmental judgment in Ecuador, according to letters released today. In a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the Andean Commission said it was "alarmed" at Chevron's attempt to use a private investor arbitration convened under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty ("BIT") to influence the outcome of a private litigation between indigenous groups and Chevron in Ecuador's courts.…

• Why Oil Companies Don't Want Us Talking About Climate Change

  If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet -- as we shall see -- it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us. In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology.  Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture…

• We are not Thinking Big Enough with our Solutions to Climate Change

  Climate change presents us with a pressing challenge. A global consensus accepts that human activity is responsible for climate change and its associated dangers. However, there is disagreement on how best to address this challenge. The essay argues that leading proposals are unsatisfactory, such as the ecological footprint and polluter pays principle. The reasons include that they do not effectively manage climate change and may contribute to further problems. We require a new approach to address climate change. Even if you don’t accept the consensus on AGW, I suspect that few of you would say with confidence that there is…

• Global Warming - Fact or "Fuzzy Science"?

  Perhaps no environmental issue arouses more fierce partisan debate than global warming. On the one side are environmentalists and many scientists, on the other many governments and businessmen, who decry both the phenomena and the attendant costs in dealing with it. The debate was opened by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol climate treaty and has raged ever since. While the Clinton administration supported it, the Bush administration simply walked away from it. On 7 June 2005 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences posted a statement on its website noting, “The U.S. National Academy of Sciences joined 10 other national science academies today in…

• Interstellar Energy Cloud may be as much to Blame for Climate Change as CO2 Emissions

  For years climate change has been blamed on global warming, which has in turn been blamed on green-house gases produced from the combustion of fossil fuels. However there is another explication that perhaps can’t be held culpable for all changes affecting the global environment at the moment, but it certainly doesn’t improve the situation. On July 14th 2010 it was officially revealed that information from the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 satellites prove that our solar system is passing through an interstellar cloud of electrical energy. According to astrophysicist Alexei Dmitriev the energy in the cloud is being absorbed by…

• In Warning to Polluters, Brazil to Impose Record Fine on Chevron and Transocean

  On 8 November oil began leaking from well 9-FR-50DP-RJS in 3,930 feet of water in Brazil’s Campo de Frade offshore field, 230 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro state in the Campos Basin. In October the Frade field, which has been in production since 2009, produced 76,000 barrels a day of oil and natural gas. Chevron Corp. maintains that upon receiving approval from the Brazilian National Agency of Petroleum on 13 November, its subsidiary Chevron do Brasil Ltd immediately began plugging and abandonment activities and subsequently announced that the oil flow was stopped within four days, although on 24 November…

• Startling the Global Community, Canada Withdraws from the Kyoto Convention

  Canada has announced its intention to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse gas emissions (GGE), sandbagging the other signatories to the convention. The Kyoto protocol, initially adopted in Kyoto, Japan in 1997, was designed to combat global warming with the agreement allowing countries like China and India take voluntary, but non-binding steps to reduce their greenhouse gas carbon emissions. International condemnation was swift. China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a news briefing, "It is regrettable and flies in the face of the efforts of the international community for Canada to leave the Kyoto Protocol at a time…

• A Look at Why the Durban Climate Talks Failed

  Why did the Durban climate talks fail? Ultimately, the culprit is the near-universal pursuit of economic growth. All the major players want growth: the US, because it’s still pulling out of a recession; China, because it knows 10 percent annual growth can’t go on forever, but is trying to avoid a hard landing; Europe, which is trying to pull out of its sovereign debt spiral. The US and China, in particular, know that fossil fuels have given them growth in the past, and are especially reluctant to give them up now. The Chinese pulled a PR coup during the talks…

• Insurance Companies Feeling the Effects of Climate Change

  Environmentalists are not the only ones who worry as projections about climate change keep getting worse and worse. So do insurance companies, which feel the effects financially as the pace of climate-related disasters accelerates. It is telling that, even as some business groups oppose climate-change legislation in Washington, many of the companies with the most to lose from global warming are treating it as a reality – and pricing their products accordingly. Losses from extreme weather related to climate change are no longer chump change. Allstate CEO Tom Wilson this year told investors that catastrophic weather losses beyond hurricanes and…

• BP Accuses Halliburton of Destroying Evidence of its Involvement in the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

  BP claims Halliburton Energy Services Inc. intentionally destroyed evidence that proved the firm shared the blame for last year's massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. According to BP's federal court filing yesterday, Halliburton hid test results showing samples of the cement used to seal BP's Macondo well after it exploded. The fight is getting ugly as BP and Halliburton sue each other over the fault of the blow-out that resulted in 11 deaths, hundreds of lawsuits from locally damaged businesses and the country's worst offshore oil spill in history. "BP has now learned the reason for Halliburton's intransigence -- Halliburton…