Why is it that ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN thought that the politician America needed to hear from this week was Newt Gingrich, a candidate who’s been thoroughly rejected by all but the most delusional and extreme Republican voters and has no chance of becoming President? Even if it hadn’t been a ghastly week, with Republican icons insulting women and degrading the national discourse while the GOP leadership and Presidential candidates hid, the idea of giving the man who has spent 20 years contributing to our declining politics yet another national platform would be inexcusable for any supposedly news entity.

Every viewer knows that any interview of Newt Gingrich usually results in an uninterrupted commercial for himself, his lies, and his fantasies. With a weak interviewer like ABC’s George Stephanopoulus, that means we get 10 minutes of misrepresentations, misdirection and evasions with little or no pushback, leaving the audience either frustrated or more misinformed than they were before.

Today’s This Week with Newt and George was a perfect example.  Not only did Stephanopoulus give virtually free time for Newt’s dissembling, he facilitated and contributed to the misinformation on the topic of energy prices.

The backstory is one the GOP has uniformly misrepresented, though Politico eventually corrected its part in repeating the scam.  It’s the claim that Energy Secretary Chu told a Congressional hearing that it was not the Administration’s policy to lower gas prices, when in fact he said no such thing. Apparently, the corrections to this lie, easily available on teh Google, are unknown to George and could not be found by the crack ABC research team, even though the topic was in one of George’s prepared questions. Here’s just one link.

First, a summary of part of what Gingrich claimed, while telling us he could get gas prices below $2: (emphasis mine)

“This president and his secretary of anti-energy, Dr. Chu, have as a goal getting us to pay European-level prices of $8 or $9. Dr. Chu was clear about that before he became secretary. He wants us to get to be a European-level price structure of $8 or $9 a gallon,” said Gingrich. “He said this week, in testifying in the House, he has ‘no intention of trying to lower the price of oil or the price of gasoline.’ The American people on the other hand would much rather pay $2.50 and be independent of Saudi Arabia than be where we are today. ”

Note that Stephanopoulus did not bother to challenge Newt’s total fantasy that with billions of Chinese and Indians demanding more oil/gas for the ten million new cars they bought last year, never mind Newt et ilk beating the drums for war with the world’s fourth largest oil producer, we are only a Gingrich presidency away from again buying gas at $2.50/gallon (he bragged it would be below that today).

Gingrich was misrepresenting what Chu said, but Stephanopoulus didn’t seem to know that. Instead, when he later asked David Axelrod (why would any President allow this apologist to be their spokesman?) about Newt’s preposterous claims, George began by showing an out of context clipped video of Chu’s Congressional appearance.  He then repeated the GOP’s misrepresentation.

So what really happened when Chu testified?

In the context of a discussion of gas prices in Europe, which because of higher gas taxes and European threats to boycott Iranian oil have reportedly reached something like $8/gallon, Secretary Chu was asked “is it the overall goal to get our prices . . .”  And the questioner didn’t finish.

Get our prices to what? Up to $8/gallon or European levels? Or down to something lower? But as the clip shows, instead of waiting for the rest of the question, Secretary Chu interrupted and said “No . . .”  It seems likely he understood the point of the question in the context of the discussion of Europe to be asking about getting US gas prices up to their levels, to which Chu answered “No . . .” But ever since, the Republican wurlitzer has falsely claimed that he was asked whether the policy was to get prices down, and Chu said “no.”  No, he didn’t.  Stephanopoulus simply repeats this GOP fabricated talking point.

To be clear, I think the Administration is being disingenuous and foolish with it’s “all of the above” energy policy.  That’s a recipe that leaves us even more dependent on today’s dominant, harmful options and at the mercy of the unaccountable monster corporations (some of whom sponsored the show) and countries that control the supplies.  The policy should be, “we need a lot more of the options, starting with no-regrets conservation and efficiency, that don’t harm our health and threaten the planet, and a lot less of the conventional options that do hurt us.” Right now, we have it backwards.

Why the Administration thinks it can’t sell that common sense policy escapes me, but perhaps everyone (except Secretary Chu?) believes the nonsense they are selling.  I’d like to see that discussion, but if the Talking Head shows waste our time on charlatans like Newt Gingrich, there is no chance we can have that conversation.

Bloomberg had a revealing article yesterday exposing the basic economics driving the Keystone Pipeline and how it affects Canadian and American oil producers, while exposing consumers in the upper Midwest to higher prices.   The differential impact is not a surprise to anyone who understands the basics of “congestion pricing,” which has been a fact of market life in gas and oil markets for decades and is now the rule in most of the nation’s electricity markets.

But first, credit to Matthew Yglesias for his explanation and chart, (above) which shows a perfect example of how prices at different locations can diverge when there is congestion in the pipelines that move oil or gas product from one location to another.  The assumption that oil is sold and priced on a world market doesn’t hold when there are local or regional transmission bottlenecks.

Put simply, if you have a surplus of supply in a region but limited ability to move the product outside that region, the prices inside the region will tend to be lower than they are in regions outside the high-supply region.  A bottleneck in moving the product outside the supply region will depress prices there until more pipeline capacity (for oil/gas) or transmission (for electricity) is built to move the product to larger markets.

As Yglesias notes, limited fuel pipeline capacity from Cushing, Oklahoma to refineries along the Gulf Coast — and hence to world markets — has created supply surpluses in the upper Midwest, which depressed crude oil and gasoline prices there.  As a result, as Bloomberg points out, crude oil and gasoline prices above the bottleneck, from Denver to Chicago, remained significantly below what the same product could command on world markets, if they could only get the product to the world markets.

Now that Keystone’s sponsor, TransCanada, plans (with the Administration’s relieved blessing) to relieve this bottleneck by building more pipeline capacity from Cushing down to the Gulf Coast, that oil glut that arose in the Midwest can get to the Gulf and, voila!, prices will rise in the Midwest to levels closer to world market prices.   Who knew?  Well, anyone paying attention.

Economists and industry/market analysts have known about this for ages, but state and federal regulators sometimes prevented prices from reflecting these realities. In another life I helped explain the effects of “congestion pricing” to state electric utility regulators and worked with a consulting team on rules that now recognize locationally different prices caused by transmission bottlenecks on America’s electricity transmission grids.  (You can see these locational price differences in real time, as they change throughout the day, in color-coded pricing maps for regional grid operators at the Midwest ISO.)

Locational price differences are neither good nor bad; they just tell us how transmission (or pipeline) capacity limits affect prices.  If the differences are big enough, it may make sense to expand transmission, which means that someone can make (or lose) money if the congestion is relieved by building more transmission (or pipelines) to remove the bottleneck.

So the question is always: who wins and who loses by relieving the bottlenecks? The value of the Bloomberg article is that it explains very clearly that the original and now revised (lower half) Keystone XL pipeline was never designed to benefit consumers, let alone the land owners along the pipeline route.  It was always meant to allow bottled up oil producers in the US and Canada raise prices in much of the US, allow the oil producers to escape the Midwest’s lower price region and reach the world markets where prices are higher.  All that stuff about helping the US become “independent” or helping to lower gasoline prices to America was just bunk.  From Bloomberg:

The line would create a new way to carry Canadian imports outside the Midwest and reduce an oil surplus that’s depressing prices in the central U.S. Spot gasoline was 55 cents cheaper in Chicago than in New York on June 1, the second-highest ever. Nationwide, retail gasoline set its highest February average at $3.55 a gallon, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The purpose of the $7.6 billion Keystone is to move 830,000 barrels of oil a day from landlocked Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, obtaining new customers and a higher price for heavy Canadian crude, Canadian regulators said in a 2010 report. The oil sold for $23.38 less per barrel in 2011 compared with heavy grades of Mexican crude, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“The Canadian plan was to use their market power to raise prices in the United States (UNG) and get more money from consumers,” Philip Verleger, founder of Colorado-based energy consulting firm PK Verleger LLC, said in an interview. Prices may gain 10 to 20 cents in central states, he said.

Spitting the project between the lower pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast and the upper part for moving even more Canadian Tarsands oil across the US border makes this underlying purpose much clearer.  Before, Midwest politicians could fool themselves and voters into thinking that more crude oil from Canada would help them by supplying refineries in the Midwest.  What they never realized, or didn’t tell you, was that the lower half pipeline to the Gulf Coast would collapse the nice low pricing bubble some US consumers have been enjoying, thus allowing every US and Canadian oil producer in the entire region to raise its prices in a dozen states and major cities, from Denver, Colorado to Chicago, Illinois.

But don’t worry, the people who have to bear the risks of this all going wrong, aside from the earth’s climate, are farmers in Nebraska and Texas.

Workers at Cardiff Mine disaster, 1913 (photo: Library of Congress)

Whenever we have debates about whether to approve more oil drilling, or more coal mountain-top removal, or another coal plant, the arguments always come down to jobs.  The advocates of the project tell us how many jobs will be involved in the construction or extraction processes or operating the plants.  And the opponents are left to argue over whether the jobs numbers are exaggerated, or whether they’re only temporary instead of permanent, or comparative macroeconomic effects.

So it’s not surprising that the advocates of the Keystone XL Pipeline and related tar sands oil development have bussed in lots of supposed pipeline construction and oil workers to argue at the State Department hearings on the Environmental Impact Statement for why the project should go forward and why it’s in America’s national interest. It will create jobs and allow us to use less oil from bad places

Opponents sometimes find these arguments difficult to counter; you don’t want to argue against someone’s job.   Both sides then offer expert studies on how many jobs would be created by the proposed activities.  These efforts are fine and worth doing, I suppose, but I think they miss the broader picture.

We have an economy whose annual GDP is about $15 trillion.  We use enormous amounts of energy, of all types, probably more than any other nation.  In an economy as large as ours that relies on energy as much as ours, there will always be a large number of jobs that depend on the industries that provide that energy.

So of course, any large fossil energy source, whether it’s coal or oil or natural gas, will employ lots of people.  Large projects to extract, refine, transport and market those carbon fossil products will each provide many jobs.

But exactly the same is true of renewable energy industries like solar, wind, geothermal and even more so for energy efficiency endeavors.  There are plenty of studies showing that if we directed more of the nation’s wealth towards solar and wind and energy efficiency efforts, those too would create and sustain large numbers of jobs.  And doing the right thing is a terrific investment.

When you generate electricity from wind or solar power, you need to generate less electricity from coal or natural gas.   You need less coal and less gas to be extracted and transported.  And making our homes and offices more energy efficient takes lots of labor, but the resulting efficiency improvements also mean using less energy generated from coal and natural gas.  All of these “alternative energy” efforts create and require hundreds of thousands of jobs.  And those jobs are growing and growing fast.

So the question has never been whether we should extract more carbon from oil or coal or gas to provide jobs, because providing enough energy for this country will always provide lots of jobs.  Always.

The jobs question is, and always has been, whether we want those jobs building safer, cleaner, renewable energy technologies and efficiency improvements, or we want only jobs extracting, refining and burning dirtier, harmful, carbon-based energy sources.

We’re going to have plenty of energy jobs — hundreds of thousands of them — either way.  It just depends on where we focus our money and efforts and what we want the consequences of our choices to be.  But one way, the smart way, we get clean, renewable sources that don’t destroy the environment or the health of our children and elderly, and they rescue the planet from catastrophic global climate change . . .  and the other way we get environmentally destructive extraction, unsafe industries, unhealthy communities with huge health care costs and a heated up, endangered planet.

The comparative job numbers are interesting, but you don’t really need them to decide the smart thing to do.  It’s a fairly simple, no-brainer of a choice, once you understand what the real choice is all about.

Harvard Protestors Greet Jim Messina

President Obama’s reelection campaign chairman, Jim Messina recently told reporters that Obama supporters would be fine once the campaign explained all the Administration had accomplished. “No one is calling me up yelling,” he insisted.

That changed today, when between 40-50 Tar Sands protesters, mostly Harvard students and folks from local environmental groups and several of whom had recently been arrested in front of the White House, showed up to greet Messina as he entered a Harvard dorm complex to speak to the few who bothered to show up to listen to him.

Chanting “Obama can stop tar sands! Yes he can!,” the demonstrators managed to serenade Messina as he detoured through a side entrance after his advance team spotted the demonstrators and tried to sneak him past them.

As we reported last night, Messina was scheduled to speak at the Kirkland House, one of several undergraduate housing/dorms on the Harvard campus. The normal entrance to Kirkland is on a side street near the Kennedy School, so that’s where the demonstrators had set up, expecting Messina to walk between their flanks as he entered the main courtyard on the way to the meeting room.

A few demonstrators held a banner and signs; most were students and members of the student Environmental Action Committee, which had organized the event, along with folks from local environmental groups. They were not blocking the entrance and had no plans to go beyond the main entry, since the planned talk was closed to the public and off the record for those selected by raffle to attend. We weren’t permitted inside, but I could see through the windows to the courtyard there were only a handful waiting to hear Messina.

When Messina’s car arrived and his advance team saw the protestors waiting at the main entrance, they drove Messina around the block and entered through the usually locked gates on the other side of the courtyard. Suspecting this might happen, the protestors quickly moved inside the courtyard just as Messina was slipping in the back gate and entering the courtyard.

When they saw him, the reorganized group yelled and yelled — there’s no doubt Messina heard them this time, barely 40 feet away — as Messina and escorts quickly ducked in yet another side door instead of the obvious main entry to the scheduled speaking room. After Messina went in, the group yelled some more, just outside the room, whose windows were open.

So the next time Mr. Messina talks to reporters about what his previous supporters are telling him, he should reply, “Obama can stop the tar sands! Yes he can!”

Talking to the demonstrators later, I learned that of the more than 40, many of them students, who gathered on short notice to greet Mr. Messina, 25 of them said they had worked on the Obama campaign in 2008. When asked how many would do so in 2012 if Obama approved the related Keystone XL pipeline, only 5 raised their hands. And of the 40+, 13 (not counting me) of them said they had been arrested in front of the White House during the Tar Sands Action last month.

That’s your base, Jim. They’re getting arrested to protest your guy. You’re losing them. Time to listen up and pay attention.

[New picture added showing the group inside the coutryard as Messina arrived. Also see this photo from ThinkProgress shows the group gathering at the main entrance about a half hour before. Great job done by student organizers, Serena Zhao and Sam Novey]

TTar Sands Action 2011 (photo: Milan Ilnyckyj)

President Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina will be at Harvard University on Tuesday, hoping to urge Harvard students to help “pass the bill” or reelect the President or something. However, students and others opposed to the Tar Sands oil development and the Keystone XL pipeline are also planning to be there to greet him.

Boston/Cambridge, Massachusetts supporters of TarSandsAction are hoping to remind Messina that support for Mr. Obama may well depend on the President showing a lot more concern for the environmental/climate risks of tar sands development than either he or his State Department have so far shown.

From the Tar Sands protest organizers:

Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina will be making an appearance tomorrow at Harvard, and some of your fellow Tar Sands Action arrestees Serena Zhao and Same Novey are organizing a demonstration to let him know that the President needs to reject the keystone XL pipeline if he expects our full support in the coming months.

This is an amazing opportunity to reach someone who has a great deal of influence on the President’s decisions. It’s not often that you have an opportunity to interact directly with such a high-ranking member of the President’s inner circle, and we should do everything we can to take advantage of it.

Here are details:

What: Tar Sands Action rally for Jim Messina, Obama 2012 campaign manager
When: [Tuesday], 9/13 at 3:00-4:30
Where: Kirkland courtyard on Harvard’s campus in Cambridge
Facebook Event link

[Update: Organizers asking folks to show up at 2:30 to get ready.]

So if you’re in the Boston area, just hop on the Red Line, get off at Harvard Square and walk down to the Kirkland House, right across from the Kennedy School. Messina is scheduled to be at the Kirkland House Junior Common Room about 3:30 p.m. Here’s a map.

Hope to see you there.

John Chandley
Tarsands 65

Tarsandsaction protest, Aug 20, 2011

I received this open letter from Virginia Kennedy, who was arrested in last Saturday’s White House protest against the Tarsands/Keystone XL Pipeline Project.  Virginia was arrestee #4. – Scarecrow

An Open Letter to President Obama about the Tar Sands Arrests

Dear President Obama,

My name is Virginia Kennedy.  I am a fifty-year old mother of three.  I was one of 65 citizens arrested in front of your house – my house really, the country’s house – the Whitehouse, on the first day of theTar Sands action, Saturday August 20th, and kept in jail for the weekend.  We spent the weekend in jail because we asked you to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline.  To reject tar sands oil, the extraction of which is destroying Indigenous people’s lands and lives and decimating boreal forest lands.  The oil which if extracted and burned will mean, in the words of your NASA climate scientist James Hansen, “game over for the climate.”  That’s game over for my children, for your children, for everyone’s children.

Just so you have the full picture, I was in a holding cell with twelve other women who participated in the action.  Most of these women were not perennial activists.  Many had never participated in such an action before.  These women from ages 20 to 70 were retired schoolteachers, grandmothers, college students, a pilates instructor supporting her husband in graduate school, working women supporting themselves or supporting families.  Every one of whom decided that this is the issue of issues because we are talking about the earth itself, the viability of human life on our planet, a planet we are irreversibly harming.  They decided they had to join with all the other voices who are trying to make you listen and trying to give you courage to take this step; to take this stand against the fossil fuel industry – the moneyed interests that regularly demand you yield to them.

And more of the picture, Mr. Obama, we were in a holding cell for the majority of the time.  A freezing cement cellblock with no windows and one solid metal door, no way to see out.  No blankets.  Nowhere to lie down.  An open toilet in the corner.  Glaring fluorescent lights that never dimmed.  We were kept without food or water for 18 hours.  And then given bread, cheese and water every twelve hours after that.

I want you to know I thought about you a lot during those long hours.  I wondered about the power you have or maybe don’t have.  Maybe it has just gotten impossible for any politician to stand up to the brutal, greedy bullying of the fossil fuel companies.  Or maybe you don’t want to.

I wondered how I could be in a jail cell with a group of women who were guilty of nothing but trying to get their president to listen to them, to listen to reason.  Women who stood peacefully with a whole group of citizens who said we want clean energy.  We want an end to oppression by a fossil fuel industry that wants the world to believe we have no choices but the choices they want to give us.

I wondered if you knew about Tim deChristopher, the young man in jail for two years for posing as a bidder in an auction, in order to save thousands of acres of public lands from being auctioned to mining companies.  The auction itself was found to be illegal.  No consequences for that, though.  I wondered if you ever think about the 11 dead men killed in the BP Horizon disaster, the 29 dead coal miners dead at the Massey coal mine, the reports of negligence, the environmental decimation, all the lives and livelihoods destroyed.  Not one indictment.  No repercussions really at all.  A few dollars lost, then back to business as usual.  And then there is us, tax-paying, law-abiding folks freezing in a filthy jail cell for standing politely in front of the Whitehouse and asking for clean energy.  For asking you to do the right thing.  For trying to give you the courage to do the right thing for your daughters, and for ours.

I thought about you together with your family in Martha’s Vineyard while we were body searched, shackled, and paraded ankles chained into a federal prison cell to await our time in front of a judge while our families worried about where we were; what was happening to us.  I wondered how you’d feel if Malea or Sasha ended up in such a situation for such an “offense”, what that would inspire you to do.

I wondered if you ever spent any time in the DC prison right in your front yard, filled with mainly African Americans of every age, some of whom are legitimately bad news, but many, many of whom are guilty of nothing much more than being caught in the terrible cycle of poverty and defenselessness generated by a system that would jail them instead of supporting their rights, their education, or their humanity.  A system that would incarcerate a poor woman for being drunk on the street and reward a CEO ultimately responsible for the deaths of his own workers with more and more profits.

I wondered who you are, Mr. Obama, what your values are.   Because I can’t really tell.  I hold out hope you’ll send a signal and reject this pipeline because I have to hold out hope.  But, contrary to that famous slogan of yours, since you came on the scene, there hasn’t been too much change, and you do not make hoping easy.

Virginia Kennedy

[Other posts from the Tarsands 65 include:

Kristy Powell #3, Finding Freedom in Prison

Ian Hoffman #63, Gets Arrested

John L. Clark #59]

Jane Hamsher #14 Tarsands Action: Are You Discouraged or a Flaming Firebagger?

Bill McKibben on Tarsands and the D.C. Sit ins, by Scarecrow #33]

Video of citizens from Nebraska and other states driving to Washington D.C. to sit in front of the White House to protest the Tar Sands Keystone XL Pipeline.

Bill McKibben, head of 350.0rg and a principal organizer for the White House demonstrations against the Tar Sands extraction and Keystone XL pipeline, was interviewd Tuesday night by KO on Countdown.   McKibben’s quietly understated message to the President was direct,  personal and moving, and equally important, evolving:

It’s going to be gut-check time for the President.

When he ran for President . . . the night he was nominated, in fact, he said, “you know what?  When I’m President , the rise of the oceans will begin to slow, and the planet will begin to heal.”   That’s powerful talk.

He hasn’t yet done heroic things on the environment.  He’s done some good things around the edges, but nothing transformative.  And he’s backed down on some important fights.

This time, he can’t blame it on Congress; he doesn’t have to ask Jim Inhoff for permission; he doesn’t need any help from the Congress.  He can turn down this permit himself.  And if he does — and here I think is the political calculation — if he does it will send a surge of excitement through that base.

We were sitting, lying on the metal shelves in what’s called the central cell block in the Washington jail the other day, and people were saying, “you know, the last time I was this uncomfortable, I was lying in a church basement getting ready to go knock on doors for Barack Obama.”  I sure hope I get reminded of why I was doing all of that.”

When Jane Hamsher asked me if I wanted to join her at a White House demonstration led by McKibben that would also include Dan Choi, I said “sure,” not yet realizing I would spend two days in the cell directly across from Bill and down the cell block corridor from Dan.

And Bill is right that the cells and bunks were uncomfortable.  But we kept telling each other this isn’t anything compared to what the planet and its people face if we don’t stop the madness of releasing one of the world’s largest concentrations of carbon, stripping the forests, threatening the aquifers, and then burning the fuel.  How could we ever explain such shameful and reckless selfishness to the next generations?

But what Bill and the organizers did was to make sure that several generations understood all at once.  I’m 67 but was far from the oldest and clearly not the veteran of this kind of war.  Two cells down, 18 year old Lucas, who had just graduated from high school, was right there, and so were a dozen or more kids still in or just out of college or that age.  We had two ministers — one older, one newly ordained –  teachers, inventors, architects, former government advisers and more . . .  just regular Americans.  They all understood far more than I.

One of many favorites is Tom Weis, 45, who’s planning to ride his part electric three wheeler all the way from Canada to Texas, staring in October.  He’ll be biking the pipeline route and stopping to interview folks whose lands and water supplies risk destruction from leaks and pipeline failures.  Tom is planning to cross-post his experiences here at FDL, so check out his video and watch for “Renewable Rider.”  If you can help in his effort, follow the links.

The woman in the first 65 arrestees blew me away when they were arrested.  (Many great pictures here.)   We watched as the Park Police and SWAT guys handcuffed each of the women first, starting with a young women who stood up bravely, looked at us and held it together as burly men placed handcuffs on her for the first of what would be three or four times.  I will never forget that look, nor the next  from a woman probably older than I.  Proud, defiant, brave, she was. Unbeatable.  Hell, we all thought, look at that!  What are we worried about? And so it went, one after another.   Out of the way, guys, the ladies have got this.

And so it went. Jane’s posts provided great commentary on the conditions in the women’s cells at the first holding center — it was the same for the men, with 15 of us in our 6X8 foot cells.   The paddy wagons tanking us to the main jail became dangerous heat traps when we were left inside to wait for  . . . what?

Others have posted on the conditions at the main jails to which we were transferred late Saturday night and remained until Monday morning before donning ankle  shackles to be led to another large holding cell before release some 10 yours later.   I don’t have much to add except those were without doubt the most inedible not-really-cheese sandwiches in the history of food, but the only alternative was the almost equally undigestible baloney.

Inside the main jail, once it was clear we were to spend an exceptionally uncomfortable weekend courtesy of the DC Park Police, Bill McKibben had the difficult task of helping others keep the faith — since the original expectation was we’d be released on Saturday — so people needed to keep faith in the plan, the goal, and in themselves.  The mix of generations proved useful, here, and everyone hung in there, telling jokes, exchanging stories, quoting famous sayings, controlling the doubts and most of all, passing the time.

Like all of us, Bill is moving, learning from this event.  He’s telling his President there’s a promise to keep, a threat to be stopped, an alternative future to be built.  And people who worked for Obama are now prepared to hold him accountable.  I don’t think this President is listening, yet, not sure he can or cares.  But McKibben and followers aren’t done.  They’re just starting.   And there are now 65 more people from last weekend, and by today, another 200 or more who are ready to do it again and again, and more.   Because it doesn’t have to be this way, and it’s not okay for our government not to care about the only home planet we have.

John Chandley

Update:  Schedule of events and places/churches where the training is held nightly:  TarsandsAction.org If your in the area and want to the sights, come!

I don’t know how any sentient being could miss the obvious signs that if the gods care at all, they’re either testing us or not on our side. So its strange to hear the President of the United States tell an anguished, worried people facing destroyed livelihoods and desperate for leadership and a plan of action that prayer and faith are our best hope for stopping an ongoing catastrophe and preventing the next.

Let’s start from the end:

The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through – what has always seen us through – is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it. Tonight, we pray for that courage. We pray for the people of the Gulf. And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America.

Does anyone believe this catastrophe continues because of a lack of faith in a better future, a shortage of American strength and resilience?

Why don’t we start by assuming the America people can understand basic physics. They intuitively grasp that we can’t keep punching holes into highly pressurized formations three miles beneath the ocean and not expect at least one of them to blow up with catastrophic consequences and then be the devil to stop. They understand that if corporations engage in inherently dangerous but highly profitable activities, they’ll inevitably cut safety corners, ignore risks and cause a disaster that kills people and causes massive damages. People get that.

And now they can see and touch and smell the nauseating reality that the destruction this causes can be beyond anything they’ve been told, anything they’re willing to accept. They know they’ve been lied to, and it hasn’t stopped. So it would be helpful if the President stopped it.

In the understatement of the decade, the CEO of Exxon-Mobile told Congress today that "when these things happen, we are not well equipped to deal with them. . . . There will be damages occur."

So any statement a President or any leader would put before a public whose intelligence and judgment they respected would have at least these two parts:

(1) Here’s the plan for fixing the immediate crisis, and here are the risks it might not work and what we’ll do about that.

(2) And here’s my challenge for the future: "We don’t have to take this. But if we want something different, we have some very hard work to do, and we need to get on with it. Here is what we must do, and here are the people and the failed ideas that stand in our way. We have to fight them if we want a different future. And that’s what I propose to do; here’s my plan, and I want your support."

I don’t know why our President can’t say it that simply, but apparently it’s not his style, or not what he wants or believes, or maybe he and his advisers just don’t know what to say or do. But someone needs to tell him, and now, that calling the nation to faith and prayer is not a substitute for a plan and it’s not leadership. It’s a sop.

_________
The President’s Address to the Nation on the BP Oil Spill (transcript)

The President opened by reminding us we’re fighting three wars: an economic one against the deepest recession in 75 years; a military one against those we classify as terrorists; and a technological one against our dependence of energy sources that are inherently dangerous to extract, use, or dispose of.

What he didn’t say is that we’re making little or no progress in any of them, and that his Administration has virtually given up on the first and struggling with what to do about the second. It is any wonder he was so timid about the third?

He correctly tells us a drilling blowout at these depths is "testing the limits of human technology," but he still assures us — based on what? — we’ll soon capture 90 percent of the escaping oil. Does anyone believe that? And what of the oil already out there? He promises only that "we’ll fight this with everything we’ve got, for as long as it takes," and then help the Gulf and its people recover.

He tells us that from the beginning "the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation’s history." Residents of the Gulf know this is false. They know BP is still in charge, still allocating resources, and the locals are furious at BP’s arrogance, secrecy and inattentiveness.

He says they have thousands of people and boats at work; locals know BP controls most of them, just as it’s deployed zillions of booms, but badly deployed and attended to both. He’s "authorized" 17,000 National Guard; locals know many haven’t been deployed.

The President could have acknowledged these failings and the justified anger and explained how he’ll change that. He didn’t. Instead he told locals to call if there’s a problem. But locals have been calling — to BP’s call centers — with little effect.

It will be interesting to hear local reactions to this part of the speech. My guess is many will feel let down. They should.

More on the energy challenge tomorrow.

John Chandley

We’re about to find out how this "BP is responsible for the spill and cleanup, but we’re responsible for oversight" concept works, because BP is apparently defying the Environmental Protection Agency’s order to find and use a different, less toxic and more effective dispersant.

From the continued excellent coverage by the Times Picayune:

BP has told the Environmental Protection Agency that it cannot find a safe, effective and available dispersant to use instead of Corexit, and will continue to use that chemical application to help break up the growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP was responding to an EPA directive Thursday that gave BP 24 hours to identify a less toxic alternative to Corexit — and 72 hours to start using it — or provide the Coast Guard and EPA with a "detailed description of the alternative dispersants investigated, and the reason they believe those products did not meet the required standards."

BP spokesman Scott Dean said Friday that BP had replied with a letter "that outlines our findings that none of the alternative products on the EPA’s National Contingency Plan Product Schedule list meets all three criteria specified in yesterday’s directive for availability, toxicity and effectiveness."

Dean noted that "Corexit is an EPA pre-approved, effective, low-toxicity dispersant that is readily available, and we continue to use it."

He did not directly address widely broadcast news reports that more than 100,000 gallons of an alternative dispersant chemical call Sea-Brat 4 was stockpiled near Houston and available for application.

As the article notes, there are reportedly quantities of alternative dispersants available in the region.

BP’s Dean statement suggests an attitude of open defiance. They’ve been ordered to stop using a dispersant and replace it, or explain why, but "we continue to use it." So who’s in charge here?

Either EPA needs to say, "we’ve examined the response and based on our own investigation we agree that alternatives meeting our criteria are not available and so authorize BP to continue using its dispersant" . . . or . . . EPA needs to say "we do not agree and BP shall immediately cease its use of the dispersant and comply with our order."

What EPA can’t say, or leave others to conclude, is "we continue to believe BP can and should be using an alternative, but we have to take their word and there’s nothing we can do about it."

The public is out of patience and they expect their government to be able to function in an emergency. It better be quick.

Update: Interesting comments from BP and EPA yesterday, reported by ABC:

Though Suttles said BP will continue to search for a better alternative, he said "right now we cannot identify another product that is available that’s better than [dispersant] Corexit."

EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy told ABC News today, "It’s not that Corexit is banned. It’s not that they have to stop using it because they’re using it right now. But it’s just that they need to switch over."

Oh. And there’s this:

Suttles said he had not seen any evidence of the toll the dispersant is taking on marine life, he admitted that using the chemicals involves "tradeoffs."

"I haven’t seen any evidence to show that," Suttles said today. "We’re doing extensive monitoring as is NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the EPA."

According to the NYT, NOAA has only four research ships to cover the Gulf, with another still returning from the Pacific, while all of the EPA’s monitoring is either near shorelines or for air contamination on shore, not effects on the deepwaters near the BP site. (see EPA website below).

Related:
Times Picayune, EPA demands BP use less toxic dispersant
Empytywheel, Congress gets results on Corexit, and see John Hall questions BP on greenwashing campaign
NYT/Greenwire, Less toxic dispersants lose out in BP oil spill cleanup
EPA website on dispersants and directives to BP
NYT, Scientists fault lack of studies over Gulf oil spill
Local media: Fisherman report illnesses from BP chemicals