Self-deleted by member

[ensho]

This message was self-deleted and locked by ensho.

[Le Taz Hot]

1. Unfortunately, our Democratic President

is just fine with deep-water drilling. :shrug:

[Marblehead]

2. At least make them...

drill a relief well at the same time, we wouldn't have had such a massive spill if the relief well was ready.

[Overseas]

3. I remain stunned that poisons like Corexit were used

because it seemed like the benefit was mostly cosmetic -- to make the spill look less severe.

It seemed like you could dredge more oil out of the sea if it weren't dispersed with poison.

And it was so shocking that such a poisonous substance was used when Ixtoc-1 had still not recovered its marine life.

And stunning that with hundreds of millions in taxpayer subsidies for R&D, BP was still using clean up technologies that were decades old.

How can we continue to call solar "too expensive" when these spills and their aftermaths cost us so much? More corporate socialism for Big Oil.

[Lorien]

6. Exactly. I felt the same way from the beginning. I couldn't believe that it was

all allowed under a Dem President. I live in Florida and am very chemically sensitive. I had severe headaches for months while the Corexit was being sprayed (I still have them). Even my cats have had runny eyes and noses since the Corexit spraying began-and we're 40 miles from the ocean! Those who live right on the Gulf are in real danger. I suspect that cancer rates will skyrocket in the coming years, and for what? More corporate profits? What will it take for us to get serious about developing clean, green renewable energy??

[Overseas]

11. A power shift way from the corporate imperative for ever increasing quarterly profits

to more sustainable long-term moderate profitability for a broader range of energy producers.

Just need the big old fuel providers to open their minds to a new business model. We don't want to zoom ahead furiously using up all our fossil fuels rushing through the next fifteen years. Most of us know full well that we will want to use fossil fuels for decades to come, so we need to increase our efforts on building in alternatives to stretch those precious supplies. We would rather use petroleum more carefully than scramble into pumping millions of gallons of poisons into the ground to force out the natural gas. That's desperation. Business as usual-- do whatever it takes to generate oil.

We want a more judicious approach. Much better safety to save the millions of gallons so callously wasted in deep water drilling so far. But using fossil fuels more responsibly involves a new business paradigm-- including the public good in business strategies. Businesses could no longer hide behind being legally bound by their charter with shareholders to maximize their quarterly profits. They have hidden behind that imperative so far-- Poison is cheaper so we've gotta use it. It's not illegal and we won't be liable for it since we paid to get the laws written in our favor. You know we'd like to do things more responsibly but gosh, we've gotta go for the cheapest production we can afford because we're obligated to maximize profits.

I remember a time when businesses accepted the value of pollution regulations-- all companies would be bound to follow the more expensive waste disposal procedures so none could get ahead with reckless disposal. Everyone's got to do it, so no one has the advantage. Businesses grudgingly accepted some constraints after they had seen rivers catch fire, and subsequently saw the ecosystems improve. They accommodated OSHA and saw less workers injured on the job. The value of those improvements was appreciated for a while. We were talking about the environment and sustainable development in the late 70's.

But in the meantime, alas, get rich quick guys were plotting away, to take back that Do Good money. Recycling and regulations were bothersome so they could work those angles. And after we had lost the War in Vietnam, talking about how wasteful the USA is compared to other countries could be portrayed as disparaging our country, being unpatriotic. We're America! We don't have to cut back! It's Morning in America...

That was the slick messaging of Ronald Reagan's era-- that environmental stuff is a real pain in the butt, why should there be any Limits to Growth? We're America! It's time to Get Rich Quick, squash those demanding unions, and exalt the Wisdom of the Free Market. Get people to think the Free Market will regulate itself. Unconstrained it will work for all of us and best practices will naturally triumph.

Now we know-- unconstrained, it worked to enrich the Top Two Percent of us by hundreds of percent increases in their annual incomes, and billion dollar corporations. Too many of them took those fabulous tax savings and invested them in lobbying Congress for more favorable laws like subsidies to off-shore production that had been done by those demanding unions, and better tax shelters. They didn't use the Bush tax cuts to create jobs; they used them to gamble by selling shady mortgages and repackaging and swapping them around until the Wisdom of The Free Market crashed our economy. Supply side trickle down economics failed miserably.

And yet the Koch Parties are still with us. The Chamber still spends millions to loosen pollution regulations and crush more unions. How very sad. Still using professional PR to inflame desperate citizens to vote against their own and humanity's best interests in order to increase the quarterly profits of multinational corporations.

Our media used to issue challenges to Republicans to defend outrageous ideas like defunding the EPA or cutting Low Income Heating Assistance. But our last Democratic president allowed media ownership to be deregulated into fewer, stronger, multinational corporate hands, so we don't see enough direct challenges to Republican officials.

I've been glad to see more Democratic legislators taking up the slack recently. I have really appreciated their direct challenges to the reckless cruelty of the GOP's budget. But I wish I'd seen more TV news people asking Republican officials directly to explain why they voted to cut over a billion from the EPA in these treacherous times for energy production. And why they voted to cut back on community clinics when we still have 50 million people uninsured.

[Kurovski]

4. KRNT

[Snoutport]

5. kr important stuff!

[girl gone mad]

7. k & r

[felix_numinous]

8. La Ley De la Madre Tierra (The Law of Mother Earth) in Bolivia

plans to establish 11 laws for Earth. These would include the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered; and the right to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities.”

I like this idea, and wish it would go global.

[Odin2005]

9. The fact that BP ignored authorities who told them to stop using Corexit...

...just shows who is really in charge.

There is a huge cover-up and millions of Gulf-Coasters are going to suffer illness and death because of corporate greed.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

10. no words

:cry:

[Mnemosyne]

12. K&R for truth. n/t

[G_j]

13. about the only one reporting on deep sea drilling these days

is Rachel..

I just wrote to her to say thank you.

:-(