Tuesday Gumbo: Gulf

Good Morning!

It's in the 60's today in Oakland, bright and sunny with a slight chill. I'm cozily wrapped up in a blanket on the couch catching up on the news from yesterday. I love these days!

Oil Spill Commission: Yesterday was the first day of a two day hearing by the Oil Spill Commission. Johanna at Gulf Restoration Network wrote a fantastic blog about it. You can listen to day two here. But learn from my actions from yesterday, don't listen to it editing a report. Not helpful. PBS news has a good segment on yesterday's findings.

The main finding . . . no instance was found that someone or three people made a calculated decision of money over safety. That sounds soooo familiar. Oh right, its the same thing communities being poisoned by polluting facilities are told when they realize they are being poisoned by the polluting facility in their community. Another thing that is important to know is that the commission wasn't given subpoena orders. They weren't allowed to look at classified information that any party didn't just provide to them. I bet that is comforting to those 11 families and millions of people impacted by the 87 days of leaking oil into their lifesource. None of the three companies involved were even legally required to participate, contribute fully or partially in the investigation.

Chickens: My Aunt Opal and Uncle Harvey recently started raising chickens. They are kind of adorable. The chickens and the aunt and uncle.

Prop 23 and Why We Must Beat Climate Change at the State Level: On the ballot in California last week was Prop 23. A proposition funded by Texas oil companies to stop those crazy Californians from continuing to create an alternative energy economy. A lot of environmentalists are providing their assessment of why this measure was beaten when the climate bill in DC was eviscerated by oil lobbyists earlier this year. NRDC says . . . Grist provides one of the best assessments I've seen yet. It really goes into detail about why we aren't going to win in Washington until we win in California and New York and Florida and Kansas and etc.

I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm not the crazy one that has been saying all along that spending all that money in Copenhagen and Washington DC is a big fucking waste and the other side knows it. We are wasting valuable resources participating in these fruitless fights when we could be investing in iconic projects on the ground and training the workforce and passing local incentive policies to create the market we want ourselves. Maybe I'm not the insane one, maybe all those groups that refuse to learn the lessons of failure are the crazy ones.

Time for the next project . . .

Ciao
Renee

And for those of you who remember 1998.