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Weekly Mulch: How Reid’s Energy Bill Undermines Senate Climate Efforts

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) introduced a limited energy bill that responds to the oil spill and promotes energy efficiency. Reid’s action is a signal that the Senate will not pass climate legislation before November, although Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) said that a climate bill could come up [...]

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Weekly Mulch: Politics, Power, and the Environment Beyond BP

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Washington has a blind spot when it comes to the environment. BP and the oil spill brought the government’s failures into the spotlight, but the same problems crop up across industries: Corporations pollute water, blast through mountains, and pour carbon into the atmosphere with insufficient oversight. But no one—Congress, the [...]

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Weekly Mulch: When will America be free from BP?

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom—the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts [...]

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Weekly Mulch: As risks for oil and gas grow, USSF offers change

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique [...]

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Weekly Mulch: Can Washington Stand Up to the Energy Industry?

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger

President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders spent this week trying to stand up to the oil industry. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama pushed BP to siphon $20 billion into a escrow fund that will cover liability claims, and Congress grilled BP [...]

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Weekly Mulch: BP Oil Spill Stalls Climate Bill

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
“There’s a dead dolphin on this beach,” Mother Jones‘ Mac McClelland, wrote yesterday in Louisiana. It’s one snapshot of the harm visited on the Gulf Coast by the BP oil spill. Back in Washington, the Senate climate bill, which would put the country on a path to cleaner [...]

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Weekly Mulch: Oil Spill Could Bring Mass Extinction to the Gulf Coast

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
A cap placed over a severed pipe is siphoning some oil from the broken BP well in the Gulf Coast, the company said today. The company’s CEO said this morning on CBS that it was possible that this fix could capture up to 90% of the oil, but that it will [...]

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Weekly Mulch: Obama’s Responsibility for the BP Oil Spill

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
President Barack Obama is in Louisiana today, and BP is saying it will know in 48 hours if its attempt to “top kill” the leaking oil well in the Gulf Coast by pouring mud and cement over it has worked.
If the scramble to stop the leak has ended, the slog [...]

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Weekly Mulch: BP Oil Hits Louisiana – But How Far Away is the Next Disaster?

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Oil has hit shore in Louisiana, and despite BP’s best efforts to keep the media away, reporters can now touch the greasy stuff with their hands and feet. The onrush of  oil into the Gulf has continued for over a month now, and while BP is still trying to staunch [...]

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Weekly Mulch: Why the Senate Climate Bill is Doomed

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), though down one man, finally released their stab at climate legislation this week. One of the most crucial sections in the bill covers off-shore oil drilling, an issue that was supposed to help solve the tricky math of reaching 60 votes. [...]

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