Political Climate: July 2008 Archives

Newt Gingrich has been making himself out to be a green lately - but activists at the Alaska Wilderness League say he's just an oil company shill. Get the details at Political Climate:

Since May, the former speaker has been larding his environmental rhetoric with calls for America to begin new drilling programs to achieve energy independence and bring down the price at the pump. Never mind that domestic oil production will never put a significant dent in gas prices or offset the demand for imported oil: Newt’s sloganeering - “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” - hit a nerve, and more than 1.3 million people signed a petition backing his campaign.

That was bad enough. Now, though, researchers at the Alaska Wilderness League have revealed that Gingrich’s cheerleading for Big Oil was bankrolled by a veritable Who’s Who of the extractive industries. The group behind Newt’s drilling drive has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from executives and investors with close ties to companies like Exxon, Shell, and Suncor.

Read more here.

The lifeless 'dead zone' off the Louisiana coast is set to expand to record-breaking levels this year, thanks to profligate agricultural polluters along the Mississippi river basin:

The spread of the dead zone is partly due to widespread flooding, possibly caused by global warming, which this year brought especially large quantities of chemical waste into the Mississippi. The single biggest culprit, though, is the American infatuation with corn ethanol: Farmers are planting more corn per acre than ever before in a bid to cash in on federal biofuel mandates. That’s rapidly depleting the soil along the banks of the Mississippi, leading to a massive new demand for the chemical fertilizers responsible for deoxygenation.

Researchers say that we’re rapidly approaching the point of no return. If the dead zone continues to spread, shrimp and other seabed dwellers could be left with nowhere to run and find themselves literally pushed off the continental shelf. If that happens, the Gulf’s valuable crustaceans could be permanently replaced by an expanse of worthless - and possibly carcinogenic - bacterial sludge.

Read the rest here.

Off-shore drilling is all the rage this election cycle, and Democrats seem to be struggling to find a decent response. I've scribbled some thoughts over at Political Climate:

Dems haven’t quite gone so far as to back Bush’s barmy plan to open up protected areas of America’s coastline to the oil companies, of course; instead, they’ve rolled out a counter-proposal that would boost oil production in those areas of Alaska already open to drilling. That’s essentially an attempt to shield Democratic lawmakers against charges of obstructionism, while stopping short of endorsing new drilling in protected areas.

Unfortunately, though, it’s a strategy that plays into Republicans’ hands. The Democrats’ Alaskan gambit only makes sense if the root problem is that American oil production is too low. That reinforces the Republican argument that boosting oil production would help alleviate the current energy crisis, and makes it easier for Bush and McCain to argue that greens, in opposing new offshore drilling, are simply putting coastal ecosystems ahead of the wider US economy.

Get the rest here.