American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has spent more than $16.3 million in 2010, including $3,005,540 on a national ad and buys in Washington, D.C., Montana, and Texas over the last three months. The group has budgeted $20 million for online campaigns. This Big Coal front group is infamous for its forged letters to members of Congress opposing clean energy and climate legislation that resulted in a congressional investigation.

In filing for a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court, the government cites persistently dangerous conditions in Massey Energy's Freedom Mine No. 1 in Pike County....The Freedom Mine employs about 130 miners and was cited for safety violations more than 700 times this year alone.

"What do you think could happen if one of our energy sources was suddenly unavailable (e.g., power plant maintenance, government curb on production, etc.)?"

"The mission of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy is to unify policymakers, regulators, business leaders, and the American public behind a common sense energy strategy to help keep America secure, prosperous, and clean. Through policy development, education, and advocacy, the Institute is building support for meaningful action at the local, state, national, and international levels."

• In early 2009, the Coal Education Development and Resource of Southern West Virginia, Inc., taught students to appreciate the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. (If you're not familiar with mountaintop removal coal mining and its threats, read more here).

• In mid-2009, coal industry front-group Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy released coloring books for kids.

• The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (who we remember for hiring a firm that forged letters from interest groups to Congressional representatives about global warming legislation) is currently running a bus tour to our nation's college campuses to teach them about so-called "clean" coal. They just hit up West Virginia University.

• The coal industry gave so much money to the University of Kentucky that the administration renamed a dorm as Wildcat Coal Lodge last year.

"There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream, and this is the first I ever saw. Its banks are luxuriantly peopled with rare and lovely flowers and overarching trees, making one of Nature's coolest and most hospitable places. Every tree, every flower, every ripple and eddy of this lovely stream seemed solemnly to feel the presence of the great Creator. Lingered in this sanctuary a long time thanking the Lord with all my heart for his goodness in allowing me to enter and enjoy it."

1. The three poorest counties in America are all in Appalachia's coal country and have given for decades at the altar of King Coal. And while the coal barons are richer, the counties have nothing but rampant poverty to show for the toxic mess Peabody and its ilk have left behind. Just which country is Peabody imagining aspires to be dominated by coal and look like the poorest parts of Appalachia or the Southern Illinois coalfields?



2. Last month the Clean Air Task Force released a new report documenting that the fine particle pollution from coal plants causes upwards of $100 billion in health costs every year. These costs include asthma attacks, emergency room visits, and cancer. In addition to the Americans who are breathing coal's pollution and paying with health problems, all of us are also paying higher insurance costs and taxes to pay for coal's pollution.

"The greatest crisis we confront in the 21st Century is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models, but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve. For too long, too many have been focused on the wrong end game," said [Peabody CEO and Chairman] Gregory Boyce.

"For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases."

Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Mary Anne Hitt rallies against mountaintop removal coal mining with her baby Hazel. Photo courtesy of Appalachia Rising.

Yesterday's massive Appalachia Rising rally and march was a big success - with more than 2,000 activists taking to the streets in DC to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining.


For some great recaps, be sure to check the Appalachia Rising website, these two posts from our campus coal organizers, and these two posts from Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard.


If you're unfamiliar with mountaintop removal coal mining, it is a destructive practice where coal companies blow up mountains to get at a seam of coal beneath. They then push all the dirt - much of which now includes toxins - into nearby valleys, which then poisons watersheds.

Take action against this practice right now.


The photos with this post (excluding the first one) were all taken by Jay Mallin and show the march, along with some folks getting arrested in front of the White House (the Sierra Club was not part of the civil disobedience).

(Via HuffPost.)

- A more thorough and detailed plan to mitigate negative impacts to migratory birds. The DOI not only asks for a more in-depth report of how TransCanada will avoid negative impacts to migratory birds, it also requests that this plan be implemented prior to and during construction and operational activities.

- As such, the DOI requests five specific additional reports from the State Department relating to migratory bird impacts. The most notable of these includes the request for an explanation, if necessary, of why construction must occur during nesting season for migratory birds, and a demonstration that all efforts were made to avoid construction during this sensitive time.

- The DOI again joins other cooperating agencies in calling for a more holistic assessment of this project than the Department of State gave upon first pass. Specifically, they too demand that the numerous power lines constructed to support the pumping stations be considered as part of project, and their impacts assessed therein.

- A more detailed map identifying all impacted wetlands, open for public appraisal, as well as a detailed plan with the goal of "no net loss" of wetland habitat.

- The DOI notes the "minimal" assessment given to impacts on animal passage and aquatic biota, and calls for a more robust consideration of the project's potential disturbance of numerous species.

- And finally, the DOI highlights several "Areas of Conservation Concern," including TransCanada's proposed placement of a major power line across a highly frequented flight path out of a Wildlife Management Area wetland and nesting ground.

For 20 years the amount of carbon-storing plant matter on the Earth's land surface had continued to increase as warmer temperatures led to a longer growing season, but somewhere around the start of the last decade, it began to decline.

Other recent studies have pointed to similar correlations between an increase in carbon in the atmosphere eventually leading to a decreasing ability of plants to store and use all that carbon. A paper in the peer-reviewed online journal PLoS ONE in July challenged the idea of "carbon fertilization" whereby more atmospheric carbon yields more plant growth, including greater agricultural yields.

After the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee mysteriously canceled an 18 month study on tar sands tailings and water quality -- even going so far as to shred the drafts-- members of the Liberal government and Environment Canada recently released a report on tailings waste, showing dramatic increases in many toxic substances.

This release came as a result of a lawsuit filed by EcoJustice, a leading Canadian legal advocacy group, in conjunction with Great Lakes United and Mining Watch Canada.

The shocking data released in the report is a major blow to the culture of secrecy and minimal oversight practiced by the Alberta government around tar sands tailings.

Industry has repeatedly sought to characterize the toxic lakes as benign ‘water recycling’ sites, and so far the oil royalty-soaked Alberta government has expressed little interest in regulating the massive waste ponds as toxic facilities.

The report makes public what opponents of the tar sands industry have been saying all along- that the government and industry are lying about the toxicity of tailings, and these massive poison lakes are a real threat to public heath and environment in Canada.

The report details a laundry list of rising toxic chemical concentrations in the 50,000 tons of tar sands tailings released between 2006 and 2009. Arsenic, a toxin sold as rat poison, increased 26 percent -- from 256 thousand kilograms in 2006 to 322 thousand kilograms in 2009. Other toxic heavy metals, like cadmium, surged 36 percent; nickel and lead increased 30 percent. Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, rose 13 percent in the same period. Concentrations of benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, both known human carcinogens, also rose.

The report leaves out naphthenic acids -- a chemical that researchers consider the most potent toxin in tar sands tailings, but the Alberta government has resisted classifying as a pollutant because it can be hard to track and remains dangerous for decades.

These figures are especially alarming considering current plans to triple tar sands production by 2025. For every one barrel of water produced, up to six barrels of freshwater are contaminated. The resulting contaminated waste water inevitably leaks into groundwater- by some estimates at a rate of 11 million liters a day.

If the industry continues its current tailings disposal practices, levels of toxins in Canada’s water and environment will inevitably and dramatically increase.

The Alberta government will have a much tougher sell in making tar sands and its toxic byproducts seem safe in light of this study. One can only hope Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, a longtime ally of tar sands, will take action to protect the health of Alberta’s people and environment by creating stringent standards for tailings disposal instead of propagating the fallacy of safety upheld by current lax regulations.

The federal government today took a small step toward banning the toxic metal from kids' products. In recent years it has increasingly been found in toys, including kids jewelery. Cadmium, a "cheap, unregulated alternative to lead," can typically be found in batteries. It can cause serious lung damage when inhaled. More serious cases of cadmium poisoning can lead to kidney failure.

Hopefully, cadmium will be treated with the same seriousness as lead. Keeping these harmful chemicals from the path of our kids should be a no-brainer.

At nearly 5,000 megawatts of output, the Kusile plant would be one of the largest dirty-coal plants in the world, and would be one of the single largest point sources of climate disrupting pollution on Earth. The Kusile project would annually emit more than 150 percent of the annual carbon emissions from projects supported by the Ex-Im Bank in 2009.

CCS is Viable: There are no insurmountable technical, legal, institutional, or other barriers to the deployment of this technology.

A Carbon Price is Critical: Widespread cost-effective deployment of CCS is best achieved with a carbon price, but there are market drivers and actions that can and are taking place now, which are essential to support near-term CCS demonstration projects that will pave the way for broader deployment after a carbon price is in place.

Federal Coordination should be Strengthened: With additional federal actions and coordination, the task force believes our nation can meet the president's near-term goal and get 5-10 commercial demonstration CCS demonstration projects online by 2016. The report recommends the creation of a standing federal agency roundtable and expert committee to facilitate that goal.

Recommendations on Liability: The task force conducted an in-depth analysis of options to address concerns that long-term liability could be a barrier to CCS deployment. It concluded that open-ended federal indemnification is not a viable alternative but that four approaches merit further consideration: relying on existing frameworks, limits on claims, a trust fund, and transfer of liability to the federal government (with contingencies).

On 3 August, researchers at the Ecological Society of America conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, presented what they say is the first conclusive evidence of a direct link between this type of mining and environmental damage. Their research has teased apart the effects of mountain-top mining and urbanization on local water quality in West Virginia, and found that even relatively small mining operations can cause serious harm to ecosystems.

"Even at very low levels of mining we found a dramatic impact on water quality and stream composition," Emily Bernhardt, a biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and one of the study's lead researchers, told Nature. The scientists have called on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to tighten the water pollution limits faced by mining companies.

Unlike some renewable energy projects blocked by objections that they would despoil the landscape, this one has the support of environmentalists.

The San Joaquin initiative is in the vanguard of a new approach to locating renewable energy projects: putting them on polluted or previously used land. The Westlands project has won the backing of groups that have opposed building big solar projects in the Mojave Desert and have fought Westlands for decades over the district's water use. Landowners and regulators are on board, too.

"It's about as perfect a place as you're going to find in the state of California for a solar project like this," said Carl Zichella, who until late July was the Sierra Club's Western renewable programs director. "There's virtually zero wildlife impact here because the land has been farmed continuously for such a long time and you have proximity to transmission, infrastructure and markets."

An expert report issued today finds that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can move forward in a timely way on new air quality rules for power plant emissions to improve public health while maintaining the reliability of the nation's power system.

"However, these will tend to be older, smaller generating units that are already reaching the end of their design life. We have identified at least 40 units that are scheduled for retirement with an average age of more than 50 years old."

The report, Ensuring a Clean, Modern Electric Generating Fleet while Maintaining Electric System Reliability....reviews the impact on power plant operations of proposed EPA rules to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), mercury, and other hazardous air pollutants.

(The final rules) protect Americans' health by cutting emissions of mercury, particle pollution and other harmful pollutants from Portland cement manufacturing, the third-largest source of mercury air emissions in the United States. The rules are expected to yield $7 to $19 in public health benefits for every dollar in costs.

Mercury can damage children's developing brains, and particle pollution is linked to a wide variety of serious health effects, including aggravated asthma, irregular heartbeat, heart attacks, and premature death in people with heart and lung disease.

While risks to individuals are small and are dwarfed by risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and obesity, the overall effect on the public is big, says Robert Brook, a cardiologist at the University of Michigan and lead author of the report.

Much of the worrisome data concerns "fine particulate matter" - tiny bits of soot that come from burning coal, oil, diesel fuel or wood, mostly in factories, vehicles and power plants.

"These fine particles get deep into the lungs," says Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association....It's also possible that some fine particles seep into blood vessels and the blood itself, causing direct damage. Dirty air also may trigger irregular nervous system activity that affects the heart and blood vessels.

Television newscasts, for months fixated on the spectacle of oil gushing from the broken riser pipe on live underwater video, barely covered the transition.

Meanwhile, despite scant media coverage of the oil disaster at the Kalamazoo River, the Michigan spill has prompted new scrutiny on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would send dirty Canadian tar sands oil to Texas.

TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, has applied for a safety waiver which would allow them to operate at higher than standard pressure. Worse, TransCanada is currently planning to build the pipeline using cheaper, thinner than average steel, which would increase risk of ruptures and spills. Following the Michigan disaster, TransCanada is rumored to temporarily amend the safety waiver though they are still committed to using thinner, cheaper steel which is estimated to save the company roughly a billion dollars.

(Image via RealClimate.org)

"Global warming" turns 35 years old this weekend. Which is why the Guardian's Environment blog thinks it's as good time as any to revisit the term.

Personally, I've never much taken to the term "global warming" (perhaps, it's my British roots, or that, yes, it seems too narrow in its scope) so I'm happy to stick with "climate change". I think we've reached a point now when we all know what we are talking about, even though the world will always be populated by the predictable pedants who love to crow that "the climate has always changed" when they know full well that what is being discussed is anthropogenic climate change.

Nearly everyone who's been paying attention knows that the world is undergoing a warming trend. But is it wise to call it "global warming" anymore? After all, from my vantage point here in California, it's August and freezing outside. And the 10-day forecast says that temperatures are going to get even colder next week. It's bizarre to be pulling out my coats from the closet at this time of year.

Elsewhere, meteorological extremes are happening as well. Just ask people in Las Vegas, who have just experienced their hottest month ever. Same for Moscow.

We all saw why last winter when the D.C. area got an unusual amount of snow. Climate deniers in political and media circles used the snow dump to mock climate advocates and distort the issue. (See here and here and here for examples. Meanwhile, Vancouver needed snow to be trucked in for the Winter Olympics.)

The snow in D.C. did nothing to disprove what scientists have been saying for quite some time: the climate is artificially changing because of us and this will precipitate the likelihood of local weather extremes. This point is why I'd like to see "global warming" yield the floor to "climate change" or something else that reflects the realities of what's going on out there.

There are no end of scoundrels to blame for the United States' failure to address global warming: Climate-change deniers, obstructionists in the Senate, an apathetic public, even the recession. But looking at the big picture, director of the Centre for European Studies Daniel Gros finds one villain that stands above the rest.

"Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed?" he asks. "The answer can be found in one word: 'coal'."

His essay, "King Coal's Pyrrhic Victory," is short, so instead of summarizing it I'll just urge you to give it a quick read. His conclusion is not very optimistic. We failed after Kyoto, we failed after Copenhagen, and the chances of future failure are multiplying by the day.

Climate advocates were disillusioned. So they began to look to the next international meeting for hope. That meeting takes place this November in Cancun, Mexico.

And already the expectations are taking a downward spiral. Once again, the rift between rich countries and developing countries is taking center stage:

The divisions between industrialized and developing nations over climate policy seem even deeper than they were six months ago. China, which has long acted as a spokesman for developing countries, scolded developed countries on Monday for failing to accept their “historical responsibility” for climate change and urged them to do more in the way of emissions cuts, according to Xinhua, the government news agency.

A U.N. summit in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of the year will not result in a new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the co-head of the European Union's climate delegation said in an interview on Tuesday.

"It will not be the big deal. Hopefully it will be a big step forward to the deal," Artur Runge-Metzger told Reuters.

Join the National Bike Ride to Support Climate and Energy Solutions
The nation's largest environmental charity bike ride and 'climate conference on wheels' comes to California! After two years on the East Coast, Climate Ride debuts Brita Climate Ride California 2010 this September 21-25, 2010.

Two hundred cyclists will pedal beautiful country roads 300 miles along California’s rugged northern coast from Eureka to San Francisco to raise awareness of clean energy, the climate crisis, and pedal power.

This fully-supported adventure raises funds for Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, Green America, and 1Sky. Climate Ride is the first multi-day, multi-city bicycle ride to address climate issues and highlight renewable energy solutions. The event also showcases that the bicycle is the ultimate carbon-free machine and a viable form of transportation. Participants can register online at www.ClimateRide.org.

"The top ends up flatter, but we're not talking about Mount Everest. We're talking about these little knobby hills that are everywhere out here. And I've seen the reclaimed lands. One of them is 800 acres, with a sports complex on it, elk roaming, covered in grass." Most people, he continues, "would say the land is of enhanced value, because now you can build on it."

(via TPM.)

Also of concern is what would happen if a pipeline accident caused a serious spill above the Ogallala aquifer which millions of Americans in the Midwest rely on for fresh drinking water as well as irrigation [...]

"We have negatively impacted your lives and made a mess of your properties and waterways," said Patrick Daniel, Enbridge president and CEO. "We're now working around the clock to minimize the impact of that and clean up the area."

Wow -- #BP said today it plans to claim $9.9 billion in U.S. tax credits http://sc.org/9UkXGm #oilspill

By the way, there's a new oil disaster in the Gulf. Early this morning, a tow boat slammed into an abandoned well. A plume of oil is shooting about 100 feet into the air. Watch:

Gillette, Wyoming -- You might be pardoned if you thought that the Powder River Basin, in northeast Wyoming and southeast Montana, was a coal-producing region. After all, the third line of the Wikipedia entry mentions that the basin "supplies about 40 percent of coal in the United States." Most of the Google images for the basin are of coal-mining operations, or maps of coal deposits. This town lies next to the biggest coal mine in the country, the Black Thunder Mine. John McPhee devoted a major part of a book to the coal trains that snake out of the Black Thunder to Georgia Power's Plant Scherer, 1,800 miles away, just north of Macon, Georgia.

We need you to call your Congressional Representative immediately!! Please take two minutes this morning to help stop our opponents from gaining ground in the House. You can call the House switchboard and ask to be transferred to your member's office, (202) 224-3121

Two damaging letters to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson are currently circulating in the House asking for weak coal ash regulations.

Representatives Rick Boucher (VA) and Fred Upton (MI) are circulating one letter seeking sign-on from Energy and Commerce Committee members and Representative Holden (PA) is circulating a second letter to all House members. Both letters ask EPA to issue only guidelines, maintain the inadequate status quo of weak state regulations, and refrain from establishing federally enforceable regulations!

Please call your representative in Congress and ask him/her to refrain from signing a letter that will hurt your community and lead to EPA action that fails to protect our health and environment from toxic coal ash.

Let your voice be heard and call immediately. The deadline for sign on to these letters is TODAY. The authors may extend the deadline, but only until Friday at the latest.

Also this past weekend, hundreds of Texans gathered for the Great Texas Cleanup Event in Houston, which was co-organized by the Texas Sierra Club - especially by our Texas Beyond Coal and Texas Sierra Student Coalition teams (seen in the photo to the right). The event was an outdoor music and arts festival mixed with community organizing for clean energy and clean air. This website has a great write-up and more fantastic pictures.

The decision to leave the well capped, which was made at the recommendation of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, means that scientists with the government and with BP think that the well is undamaged and that there is little risk it would deteriorate if kept under pressure, as it has been since valves on a new cap were closed a week ago. Reopening the valves would mean that oil, which has not flowed since they were closed, would once again pour into the gulf.

- A broader assessment of the need for this pipeline, including a "robust analysis of options for meeting national energy and climate policy objectives";
- A more thorough investigation into the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the project, including a consideration of Canadian tar sands development (which EPA asserts is an action clearly connected to building the pipeline and must be considered);
- A lifecycle assessment of "well-to-wheel" (greenhouse gas) emissions generated from tar sands;
- A better understanding of mitigation measures that could be taken to decrease the emissions from tar sands developments;
- An assessment of the air quality impacts of refining tar sands, and a more in-depth look at the environmental justice ramifications of these air quality concerns;
- A much more thorough emergency response plan, including a consideration of the specific impacts to water bodies or a leak or spill of the chemical dilutent needed to transport heavy tar sands oil;
- A consideration of the safety waiver [the Department of Transportation] is considering granting to TransCanada, with special attention paid to the sulfur content of the fuel and how this would impact the thinner steel which would be used if the waiver were granted;
- A complete assessment of all the project's impacts to wetlands;
- A consideration of the impacts of Canadian tar sands developments on migratory birds.

This is a guest post from Chip Gaul, Intern for the Sierra Club Good Jobs Retrofit Campaign.

In April, twenty-five cities and states received “Retrofit Ramp-up”awards from the U.S. Department of Energy’s stimulus funds (a competitive grant under the Energy Efficiency and Community Block Grant Program). These grants are beefing up existing programs and new initiatives set to launch this fall and winter that allow households and building owners to improve the energy efficiency performance of their homes and businesses.

New Sierra Club ED Mike Brune recently stated that we need to do more than simply fight the status quo of dirty energy and environmental degradation: we need to promote new solutions. Improving the performance of our country's 130 million energy inefficient homes (20 percent of global warming pollution) will help curb our dependence on fossil fuels and create quality jobs in a slumping economy and construction sector.

Even though retrofits produce many benefits for building owners- reduced carbon footprint, lower utility bills, and more comfort during extreme weather days- most people are unaware of local programs that help pay for energy-saving measures. Community-based organizations and local clean energy advocates in "Ramp-up" cities can help spread the word about these new programs and help deliver real energy savings by signing up their peers and neighbors, implementing solutions envisioned in ED Brune's remarks.

For instance, in Maine, where 75% of homeowners heat their homes with oil at an average cost of $2,000 per year, Maine Partners for Cool Communities is organizing canvassing and neighborhood events to teach homeowners about the benefits of home energy upgrades through Maine's Home Energy Savings Program with Efficiency Maine. Sierra Club has joined labor unions and business partners to host Clean Energy Roadshow events across the country. The Roadshow partners create an open forum for business leaders, industry experts, public officials, and stakeholder groups to exchange best practices and form new partnerships to rapidly build new clean energy industries.

Implementing these budding "Ramp-up" programs will help communities enter a new era free of pollution from dirty energy and booming with a clean-energy economy. Read about Sierra Club campaigns in a community near you.

“I don’t use that,” the Nevada Democrat replied. “Those words are not in my vocabulary. We’re going to work on pollution.” [...]

If cap-and-trade is so unpopular that its primary legislative advocates can't mention it, then it's dead.

But seriously folks, some developments have surfaced today in the BP oil disaster saga. BP execs seem to think that if the conditions are right, they can cap the gash in the Gulf by the end of the month -- earlier than expected. With weather getting better in the Gulf, the White House is nudging the oil giant to act.

An oil recovery ship known as the Helix Producer, capable of capturing up to 25,000 barrels a day, has been waiting near the crippled well for more than a week, unable to connect to the well because of high winds and waves from Hurricane Alex.

The weather has also delayed deployment of a new, tighter-fitting cap for the well that not only will be able to capture more of the spewing oil but could potentially shut down all oil releases from the well. Swapping the caps requires disconnecting the well from a recovery ship, the Discoverer Enterprise, potentially increasing the flow of oil by as much as 15,000 barrels a day for two to three days.

The two operations were to have begun a week ago and take place in sequence. The administration now wants BP to move forward with both at the same time to take advantage of a period of seven or eight days of predicted calm weather.

Is the EPA's romance with coal ash over? For years the agency has partnered with the coal industry to promote coal ash--the toxic leftover from coal-fired power plants--as an ingredient in a variety of industrial, agricultural, and consumer products. (In 2008, the American Coal Ash Association celebrated the stuff's use in everything from "toothpaste to railroad ties.")

Today, however, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) reports that the EPA's Web site page on its "Coal Combustion Products Partnership" has gone dark, the only explanation being a notice that the program "is being re-evaluated." As PEER points out, given that EPA has finally undertaken to possibly regulate coal ash as hazardous waste, it doesn't look right for them to also be promoting its use. But industry doesn't want coal ash declared to be hazardous waste, because then how could they put it in your toothpaste?

You can help the EPA make the right decision by making an official public comment here.

And here's a look back at the non-troversey over the hacked emails late last year that only fueled the distortions of climate deniers but did nothing to reverse the scientific evidence. It did, however, result in a flurry of death threats in the email inboxes of scientists.

Even after the explosion, BP was still insisting that it had “skimming capacity of more than 171,000 barrels per day, with more available if needed.”

So far, it has managed to skim less than 900 barrels per day. Add burn-offs, and you get to just over 300,000 barrels in total, over 77 days — that’s less than 4,000 barrels per day.

BP’s reaction to being massively wrong, by a factor of over 100, is to grab onto the biggest numbers it can find — to try, in other words, to deal with the optics, rather than the reality. Take the much-vaunted super-skimmer, for instance. Some reports say that it “can collect up to half a million barrels of oil a day”, but it’s much more accurate to say that it can theoretically collect that many barrels of contaminated water, which is only about 10% oil. And, as Kindy drily notes, “thus far, it has been unable to produce those results in the gulf.”

Back in the 1970s. the search for offshore oil was so exciting that BP put out a board game on "the thrills of drilling." Better hope you don't draw a "hazard card," though: "Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1 million." Present day BP wishes it could get off so cheaply; the latest estimate of its costs thus far in controlling its Macondo gusher is $3 billion. (h/t to Metro.co.uk)

In a very similar optimistic mood, the Washington Post reports that in March, BP promised federal regulators that in the event of a major spill it could skim 491,721 barrels of oil each day. In practice, skimming since the disaster began has captured only 67,143 barrels total, or 1/500th part of what BP promised for the period.

There are going to be seven or eight sessions across the country after next week's hearing in L.A.: Florida, New York, Colorado, Nebraska, North Carolina, for example. They’ll probably run one or two a week till the end of August. The Interior, the EPA, and the Forest Service will look at the public feedback, put together a report, and base recommendations on what the public has to say. We want to augment that and put forth our vision for Resilient Habitats.

Q: Obama’s initiative is in coordination with other government agencies, like the Department of Defense, Department of Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development, among others. Why?

The Sierra Club of all the environmental groups is probably best positioned for these efforts because of our Building Bridges to the Outdoors program and getting youth outside, and our Military Families Outdoors program. The Department of Interior in particular is very eager to work with us because they see it as part of their own campaign for the Obama Administration to pursue.

Such arrogance suggests a blatant disregard for the impact of [Massey's] mining practices on our communities, residents and particularly our children. These are children's lives we are talking about.

Change has been a constant throughout the history of our coal industry. West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. One thing is clear. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose.

To be part of any solution, one must first acknowledge a problem. To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say "deal me out." West Virginia would be much smarter to stay at the table.

The Murkowski "Disapproval Resolution" overturns the "endangerment finding." This in essence is like voting to assert that there is no climate change or global warming going on, and to dismiss scientific facts that already exist.

I admire the determination and dedication that Ed and Debbie Wiley have shown. The Bible teaches that if we have faith of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. I believe that the Wileys have that faith.

And if you haven't already added your flag online, you can still join the crowd -- and you won't have to go through airport security to be a part of it.

"The view out the window for most of the two hours was either the sheen of oil, looking for the next sheen of oil, or seeing the tritest of the clean-up of vessels, skimmers, shrimp boats that have been retrofitted with booms to lay out in the open water. [...] and we've seen where they have lost the battle."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We all know smokers who live into their eighties, and health nuts who drop dead in their forties, but these examples are not taken seriously in discussion of health issues. Most people understand and accept anomalies in fields like health care and economics, and we need to do the same with climate issues.

A landmark study by 12 leading ecologists, hydrologists, and engineers concludes that the damage done by mountaintop removal mining (MTR) goes far beyond the already-horrendous practice of blasting off entire mountaintops and burying nearby streams under the rubble, referred to by mining companies as "overburden."

Photo by Vivian Stockman, courtesy of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

Proponents of MTR argue that the method is safer, faster, and cheaper than underground mining, and that the ecological impacts are localized and short-lived. Faster and cheaper it may be, but strip-mining, like deep mining, remains a dangerous profession, and the ecological impacts of MTR appear to be anything but localized and short-lived.

Photo by Mary Anne Hitt

Published in the January 8, 2010, issue of Science, the study found that MTR not only kills off aquatic life in the immediate vicinity of the "valley fills," but poisons the ecosystem well downstream, altering biological communities, reducing biodiversity, and causing a host of human health problems due to both waterborne and airborne contaminants. Below, contaminated water emanating from a valley fill in Wise County, Virginia.

Photo by Tom Valtin

The study, "Mountaintop Mining Consequences," represents "the first attempt to collect and assess the best available science on the potential ecological and human health impacts of mountaintop removal"

[All quotes and graphics that follow are taken from the article Mountains of Controversy by Tim Lucas, of Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.]

"The current regulatory framework treats mountaintop removal as if it was a local disturbance and ignores any impacts on downstream or downwind ecosystems," says Emily Bernhardt, an assistant professor of biogeochemistry at the Nicholas School, who co-authored the study.

Bernhardt joined eight other Duke faculty members in a 2-year, $1.5 million project to map the extent of mountaintop removal mining in southern West Virginia, and assess its impacts on ecological and human health. Below, Bernhardt (at center) collects water samples with Duke chemist Helen Hsu-Kim and professor of earth and ocean sciences Avner Vengosh.

Photo by Megan Morr

One example of ecosystem damage the study uncovered was a 2009 fish kill in Dunkard Creek, in the Monongahela Mountains, that extended more than 30 miles downstream of the MTR site. West Virginia state biologists determined it was caused by toxins released by a species of algae normally found only in salt or brackish water. The algae were able to live in a freshwater stream due to significant amounts of mining salts from the MTR operation upstream.

"There's a saying: 'Dilution is the solution to pollution,'" says Bernhardt. "But the more mines we build, especially in the same watershed or on the same headwaters, the less dilution we have."

The Science study cites studies showing that chronic exposure to pollution in mining-contaminated air and water is associated with learning disabilities and lower birth weights in children, and kidney disease, breast cancers, and lung disease in adults. Compare map of mine sites in southern West Virginia, above, with chart showing cancer rates by county, below.

"There are a whole suite of contaminants that are elevated in the water and air," Bernhardt says. "It could be that none of them are over the legal limit, but individually or collectively these contaminants are generating significant chemical stress for organisms living in, or drinking, contaminated water or breathing contaminated air."

Learn more about mountaintop removal mining and take action to help stop it.

This announcement comes more than a year after a March 2009 U.S. District Court decision ruled these permits illegal.

The nationwide permits, created in 1982, gave a blanket authorization to mountaintop removal coal mines to dump their mining waste in streams and waterways. The District Court ruled that this overly generalized permitting process could not guarantee compliance with the Clean Water Act and that mining companies must apply for individual permits in order to be able to fill streams with mining waste.

• July 8 in Fort Worth, Texas
• July 13 in Denver, Colo.
• July 22 in Canonsburg, Pa.
• August 12 in Binghamton, N.Y.

What inspired you to start writing music about the environment?

What are your thoughts on the BP oil disaster?

My main thought is, the sooner we get off fossil fuel the better. Politically what’s happened over the last ten years was basically a giveaway to all the energy companies. It was a free-for-all. I hate to see this happen, but I hope this is a wake-up call for everyone. Like what the president said, there’s no better time to get off fossil fuels. It’s not sustainable and we can’t continue to fight wars for cheap oil.

I went to the premiere of Gasland and it's the same thing -- we are at ground zero for that (hydraulic fracturing) right now. It’s in my home county and all the counties around us. It’s like the Wild West; there are no regulations. I went to the showing in Pittsburgh and a few of my friends from high school showed up. When they show up, to me that’s a success, because it’s all about educating people.

What do you do in your daily routine that's green?

We live in an area where public transportation, walking, and biking are easy to do. I have a Subaru, which isn’t very efficient, but more fuel efficient than SUVs. We buy organic. We belong to the East End Food Co-op. We’ve planted our own garden -- basics like tomatoes, peppers. I’m just putting in some raised beds. I’ve been a vegetarian for the past year. I’m desperately trying to get off of fossil fuels and thinking of ways around it. My ideal is to get off the grid completely.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mike Ellis is a boat captain who's been rescuing the endangered Kemp's Ridley sea turtles near Deepwater Horizon. He's got some pretty horrifying news to share: BP is burning turtles caught in the oil spill and turning away rescue workers who want to save them.

You can watch the hearing live at that link above - as of 10am ET, it was underway.

UPDATE: Two quotes of note from this morning's hearing thus far. First up, the big one - Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the government making them create a $20 billion liability fund to pay for the impact of the disaster on Gulf residents.

Yes, you read that right. Barton pretty much said, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" Or as a Twitterer Delrayser paraphrased, "We're sorry we got all that seawater in your oil, Mr. Hayward." Here's video of that apology:

One reason the BP oil disaster makes us sick is the flood of heartbreaking images of dead or dying wildlife and despoiled wetlands coupled with an infuriating sense of helplessness. BP's “handling” the crisis, so there's nothing we can do -- right?

Wrong.

Oil has infiltrated our daily lives to an astonishing degree, but that doesn't mean we can't significantly reduce our use of it. Americans burn nearly 20 million barrels of oil every single day, most of it for personal transportation.

Even for the most committed environmentalist, to go completely oil-free overnight would be next to impossible. But taking the first step toward an oil-free future -- by simply reducing our current daily consumption -- is actually incredibly easy. It's also one of the most significant things you can do to wrest control of our energy future back from the Big Oil companies, which have enjoyed cozy political relationships and big government subsidies for far too long.

Each day this week, we'll highlight a different strategy for getting oil out our lives.

1. We Are What We Eat

If the oil disaster makes you angry and you eat a lot of meat, one powerful solution is sitting right on your plate. The U.S. meat industry is a major consumer of petroleum. In fact, raising one cow in a factory farm requires about 35 gallons of oil -- just under a barrel (according to The Omnivore's Dilemma, p. 84). Processed foods and corn syrup also heavily depend on petroleum.

* Cutting meat out of your diet for just one day each week is equivalent to driving 1,000 miles less per year.

* When you do buy meat, consider the source. Grass-fed, sustainably raised livestock are a breath of fresh air compared to the filthy, industrialized feedlots that have taken over the U.S. Click here for a directory of responsibly raised meat.

* Location matters. The label “organic” doesn’t necessarily mean “oil free.” Organic apples from Chile, for instance, use as much oil as non organic domestic apples because of the required transportation. Look for produce that’s grown as close to home as possible first, then consider whether it's organic or not.

* Farmers rule! The easiest way to get healthy and low-oil-use foods is to take you reusable bags to a local farmers' market. Most of the market vendors are local, seasonal, and sustainable.

Have you got other ideas for how we can get the oil out of our diets? Share them in the comments.

The new estimate is 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day. That range, still preliminary, is far above the previous estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

These new calculations came as the public wrangling between BP and the White House was reaching new heights, with President Obama asking for a meeting with BP executives next week and his Congressional allies intensifying their pressure on the oil giant to withhold dividend payments to shareholders until it makes clear it can and will pay all its obligations from the spill.

BP's attempt to cap its undersea gusher may have made matters worse, President Obama says he'd fire CEO Tony Haywood if he could, and BP may be headed for bankruptcy.

There's a lot about BP not to like. But they do produce really cool graphics! The company just released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy, with no end of eye-opening statistics about the world's production and consumption of petroleum products. This graphic shows which countries are sitting on how much oil; check out an interactive version here:

First, there is a very important vote in the Senate scheduled for Thursday - on Senator Lisa Murkowski's (R - Oil) disapproval resolution that would block Environmental Protection Agency authority to regulate global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act.

This move is a total sham - the Supreme Court ordered EPA to regulate carbon dioxide after EPA ruled it as harmful to humans. EPA Administration Lisa Jackson is speaking out in opposition to Murkowski's resolution as well.

Looks like Senator Murkowski just wants to protect Big Oil and Big Coal from cleaning themselves up. Have you asked your Senator to vote against this resolution yet?

In coal news, Duke Energy is taking a long hard look at buying coal from mountaintop removal coal mining operations....really? Ah, because they're estimating how much it would cost to stop buying MTR coal, I see. In any case, here's another interesting fact from that article:

North Carolina is one of the nation's top users of mountaintop coal. About half the electricity used in this state comes from coal-burning power plants, and about half the coal for those plants comes from mountaintop blasting.

You can do better than that, North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Massey Energy (owner of the mine that blew up and killed 29 coal miners in early April) is now blaming the Mine Safety and Health Administration for making them install a ventilation system that's unsafe. And it just happens to be the same system that was in place at the mine that exploded.

And while some dirty tar sands company executives are saying this Gulf of Mexico BP oil disaster means we should switch to the much safer tar sands oil for our needs, we're saying No Way.

If you're in Houston this Thursday night, then check out the Houston Sierra Club Chapter's Air Quality forum, where they'll talk about plans for the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. That pipeline would bring Canada's dirty tar sands (see the photo) into the U.S., and you can send in your comment right now opposing that plan.

We just released a major report on tar sands with several other organizations, too. Go read "Tar Sands Invasion" and educate yourself on why this dirty energy source is not a wise choice for the U.S. Here is a good column on this issue, too.

Finally, today Yale University and George Mason University co-released a poll on public opinion about global warming. The results?

Since January, public belief that global warming is happening rose four points, to 61 percent, while belief that it is caused mostly by human activities rose three points, to 50 percent. The number of Americans who worry about global warming rose three points, to 53 percent. And the number of Americans who said that the issue is personally important to them rose five points, to 63 percent.

The polling also includes numbers on specific policy points to stop global warming. Check it out.

Gabrielle Burton, Sierra Club member who runs fivesistersproductions.com, sends us these shots from a BP pump station. Thanks, Gabrielle!

Take a closer look at that red warning sticker:

A lot of people are noticing these warning signs and taking pictures. There are more at Think Progress. If you have pictures related to the oil mess, post them at the BP Oil Disaster group's gallery here on Climate Crossroads.

While professional photographers are capturing horrifying images from the Gulf (BP's doing more to contain press coverage than its own oil disaster), Web sites that are good with numbers are putting together eye popping graphs that really put BP's conduct into perspective.

Take this graph, for example. Between June 2007 and February 2010, BP received 760 "egregious citations" across its six U.S. refineries. FlowingData.com illustrated that fact to create this bar graph of citations per million barrels processed per day. BP is in green while all other refineries are in grey. Click here to get a closer look.

InformationIsBeautiful.com is another site that I often visit to find graphs on current events. Here's their latest on the BP oil disaster:

BP has engaged in some graph making of its own -- albeit the making of misleading graphs.

The Gulf of Mexico spill has been pretty abstract, despite GusherCam images from the sea floor. Louisiana has many marshes and few beaches, so access to assess the spill’s onshore toll is difficult. That has benefited BP, which has been accused of restricting media coverage and barring contract workers from sharing images of what they’ve witnessed.

Then veteran AP photographer Charlie Riedel’s startling Armageddon-on-Earth photos appeared on Thursday. Blogger Digby found some hope in the anguishing images, referencing Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange: “Remember the scene where Alex was forced to watch violence with his eyes propped open? I'd think maybe all those people who gleefully chanted 'drill, baby, drill' as a tribal chant would benefit from a little of that aversion therapy." (For more arresting images, go here. For horror on video, go here and here.)

Meanwhile, in BP’s latest media effort CEO Tony "I’d like my life back" Hayward assures us that "thousands of people" are ready to clean up the mess. BP’s commercial, which began airing Thursday, reportedly cost $50 million. "That kind of money can pack a big punch," writes Steve Pendlebury of AOL News. "But in this case, a $50 million campaign is no match for the emotional impact of a few iconic pictures."

The beleaguered birds have already gotten much-needed attention: On Friday, Admiral Thad Allen, the official in charge of the federal response to the Deepwater Horizon spill, pledged the government would respond to the Sierra Club's complaint that too few rescuers had been deployed to help the oiled animals.

Today, the Minerals Management Service approved a new drilling permit for an offshore well in the Gulf of Mexico. Last week, the president extended his ban on deepwater drilling for an additional 6 months, but lifted the ban on shallow water drilling, allowing this project to move forward.

Whether the groups are there in person, like Mennonite Disaster Service or the United Church of Christ (their work is here, here and here), or there are various religious groups - from Christians to Jews to Buddhists and more - all talking about a faithful response and the morality of our oil dependence, there's been an article about it and I've posted it on the blog in that group. Here are links to those blog posts: June 2nd post, May 14th post, May 11th post, and the May 7th post.

If you know of any other faith groups talking about and/or responding along the Gulf, let us know in the comments section.

The following comment isn't from The Bizarro World. It's from Sarah Palin's Twitter account. Via TPM: "Extreme Greenies:see now why we push"drill,baby,drill"of known reserves&promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?"

Oh I get it alright: Twitter is not the best venue for a politician to CYA. I think it makes more sense to frame the BP oil disaster as an "act of God," which is what Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma did yesterday.

Click here, punch in your zip code, and find out how much area BP's oil disaster would cover if it happened in your backyard.

BP CEO Tony Hayward is quite the character. He's the guy who blabbered that the spill is a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean's total volume. Now he complains that he wants his life back. Which life is that? I suppose it's the life in which his dirty-energy company turned record profits while bypassing basic safety standards and regulations. Hello! Your company has caused the worst spill in U.S. history (not to mention the loss of 11 people). Wake up, Mr. Hayward.

Today, President Obama pledged to consider criminal charges.

“If laws were broken, leading to death and destruction,” Mr. Obama said, “my solemn pledge is, we will bring those responsible to justice.”

Mr. Obama’s heightened rhetoric reflected deepening frustration within the administration at the inability of BP to stop the spill, along with wide concern that the government and Mr. Obama are appearing increasingly impotent as oil laps at the Louisiana shoreline with no end in near sight.

[O]n June 22, 2009, BP engineers noted concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use on the well could collapse under high pressure. BP used the casing anyway, after overriding its own design and safety standards. Other documents released this week reveal that the company knew that there was 'unlikely to be a successful cement job" on the site and that the casing would be "unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations."

This is part of an unbroken chain of disproportionate impacts. It’s as if the Gulf Coast is the one of our country’s major sacrifice zones.

It is essential that we hold BP fully accountable for the cleanup, for helping Gulf Coast families facing job losses in fishing and tourism, and for restoring the destroyed wetlands and marine ecosystem – just as we should hold any oil company accountable for the spills they cause.

I’m saddened that the total cost of response efforts so far is equal to just a few days of BP's profits. All that money, and another hit to a region that is unfortunately becoming too accustomed to tragedy and destruction. Hurricane season starts on June 1, and all anyone can do is pray there will not be any big storms this summer.

A top Obama administration official warned Sunday that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill might not be stopped until late summer after BP's latest attempt to plug the leak failed.

The "American people need to know" that it's "possible we will have oil leaking from this well until August, when the relief wells will be finished," said Carol Browner, the White House energy advisor.

Browner said on CBS that Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a team of scientists on Saturday essentially put a halt to BP's attempt to cap the spewing well through a process known as "top kill." The administration team worried that the increasing pressure from heavy drilling mud being forced into the well to seal it actually would make the leak worse.

Visit eBird's Gulf interactive map for information on the region's vulnerable bird populations and the impacts they face from the oil disaster. Earlier this month, Birding Phil over at Trails provided excellent insight on the Gulf's migratory bird population.

If executed incorrectly, however, the top kill could blow the fail-safe systems, dramatically increasing the flow of oil.

At about 2:50 of this clip, Sen. Alexander of Tennessee compares the BP disaster to an plane crash. "We can't stop flying just because we have a terrible airplane crash, but we can do everything we can to make sure we don't have another one," he says.

Does this analogy hold water (or oil)? I like Sierra Club's tweeted response: "Sen. Alexander, this BP oil disaster is more comparable to the Hindenberg -- when’s the last time you flew on a dirigible?"

The way to "make sure we don't have another" disaster is to end offshore drilling for good. Take action and let your elected representatives know that you mean business.

UPDATE (5/26): Amid pressure, BP has agreed to keep the camera rolling during its "top kill" attempt.

Click here to get a clear glimpse of BP's live shot of the leaking well before it goes dark. Yeah, that's right. BP plans to cut off the feed tomorrow before it moves forward with its so-called "top kill" procedure in which "heavy mud and cement are to be shot into the well to plug it up. The procedure has never been tried a mile beneath the sea, and company executives estimate its chances of success at 60 to 70 percent."

Don't miss The Big Picture's gallery of the BP oil disaster. The oil has reached Louisiana's shore and the sights are tragic and stunning. Of the photos, the one pictured here of a dragonfly with splotches of oil on its wings really stands out. Other images include a saturated crab, a dying heron weighted down by thick oily filth, and the bare foot of an eight-year-old beachgoer with small specks of oil on it.

Here's the president's weekly address. "Even as we continue to hold BP accountable, we also need to hold Washington accountable," he says. Obama adds that we cannot let this kind of thing happen again. But today's New York Times reports on several other offshore drilling projects moving forward since BP's explosion last month.

In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.

I've gathered a few videos from this past week about BP's oil disaster. In case you missed it, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune appeared on MSNBC's "Hardball" to discuss, among other things, Rush Limbaugh's hilarity.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BP's handling of its massive gash in the ocean floor has been less than exemplary. It's been a month since the deadly explosion. And one reason why there's so much outrage is that significantly more oil is flowing from the leak than what BP had claimed.

Even Fox News is dismayed by BP's conduct throughout this whole mess.



But senatorial candidate and Civil Rights Act critic Rand Paul of Kentucky seems to think that Obama's tough words for BP were "really un-American" (at around the six-minute mark).

This image by European Space Agency shows the Gulf's loop current and its role in how it'll influence the oil slick's path. The picture was taken by ESA's Envisat satellite. (h/t Space Gizmo.)

In terms of recent media news -- in case you missed it -- radio clown Rush Limbaugh demanded to know when the Sierra Club will pay for the clean-up (yeah, he wasn't kidding) ; NYT's Thomas Friedman pondered why the White House hasn't toughened up on the country's oil addiction in light of BP's disaster; and we all marked our calendars for Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune's appearance tonight on MSNBC's "Hardball." We'll post it here when the segment becomes available.

Join the BP Oil Disaster group on Climate Crossroads for the latest news and pictures.

The foundation's creators are hoping to support organizations that meet the foundation's three standards: Money must go as directly as possible to beneficiaries, not operating costs; it must help either wildlife or people whose livelihoods were directly affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill; and it must target needs not being addressed by government...

First up is the "Advancing the Science of Climate Change" report:

The core phenomenon, scientific questions, and hypotheses (of global warming) have been examined thoroughly and have stood firm in the face of serious debate and careful evaluation of alternative explanations.

Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for - and in many cases is already affecting - a broad range of human and natural systems... It calls for a new era of climate change science where an emphasis is placed on "fundamental, use-inspired" research, which not only improves understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change but also is useful to decision makers at the local, regional, national, and international levels acting to limit and adapt to climate change....

The report recommends that a single federal entity or program be given the authority and resources to coordinate a national, multidisciplinary research effort aimed at improving both understanding and responses to climate change.

• Strong U.S. actions to reduce emissions will help encourage other countries to do the same.

• An inclusive national policy framework is needed to ensure that all levels of government, the private sector, and millions of households and individuals are contributing to shared national goals.

• The U.S. should establish a greenhouse gas emissions "budget" that sets a limit on total domestic emissions over a set period of time and provides a clear, directly measurable goal.

• The longer the nation waits to begin reducing emissions, the harder and more expensive it will likely be to reach any given emissions target.

• A carbon-pricing system is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions.

• Carbon pricing alone, however, is not enough to sufficiently reduce domestic emissions.

"(B)oosting U.S. adaptive capacity now can be viewed as 'an insurance policy against an uncertain future,' while inaction could increase risks, especially if the rate of climate change is particularly large."

Conclusions from this report include:

• Policymakers need to anticipate a range of possible climate conditions and that uncertainty about the exact timing and magnitude of impacts is not a reason to wait to act.

• A national adaptation strategy is needed to facilitate cooperation and collaboration across all lines of government and between government and other key parties, including the private sector, community organizations, and nongovernmental organizations.

• We must identify vulnerabilities to climate change impacts and begin to examine adaptation options that will improve resilience.

• Adaptation to climate change should not be seen as an alternative to attempts to limit it.

These reports were requested by Congress and funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Academy of Sciences will release two more reports later this year as part of the America's Climate Choices series.

Lisa Gautier, who co-founded Matter of Trust, is partnering with other organizations in an ongoing drive to deliver tons of hair stuffed in pantyhose to the Gulf to soak up the oil. Yesterday I had the opportunity to chat with her on the phone. She's a pretty busy person these days. Matter of Trust began its hair collecting drive 10 years ago. The effort really took off after the Cosco Busan spill three years ago. But it was only after the BP disaster last month that the hair idea exploded.

"My phone is just ringing off the hook," Gautier told me.

She told me that May 20 will be the day hair by the truckloads will be heading to the Gulf. And we're not just talking about human hair.

"Because this is the shearing season, sheep farmers and alpaca farmers are just trucking it in," she told me. "It's coming in droves."

It sure seems like a better idea than lighting the slick on fire. Hair naturally takes in oil. That's why we shampoo it out.

Gautier's efforts have paid off with press coverage. The New York Times, CNN, and Reuters are among the dozens of outlets that have provided coverage. (Gawker summarizes all the weird clean-up ideas in addition to hair.)

Here's a pretty great demonstration of what we're talking about:

If you want to donate your hair to help clean up BP's catastrophic mess, click here for the details.

Shell Oil Co. pledged Monday to deploy a prefabricated coffer dam ready for "immediate" use in the event of a blowout, with a full-scale oil spill response within an hour.

In a letter intended to reassure federal officials that offshore drilling can safely begin in the fragile Arctic in July despite the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Shell said it also would be ready to apply dispersant immediately underwater near the source of any oil flow and would have a remotely operated submersible and trained divers at the drilling site.

After the Sierra Club and our partners began campaigning to end JPMorgan Chase's coal financing in September of 2008, JPMorgan Chase conducted an internal review of their environmental policies and financial support for coal companies engaged in mountaintop removal. Starting in 2009 JPMorgan Chase began an "enhanced due diligence" process for any potential financial transactions related to mountaintop removal coal mining, which means extra review of potential risks to their bottom line or their reputation.

As a result of that process JPMorgan Chase decided not to conduct business in 2009 with any coal companies engaged in "significant" mountaintop removal operations, such as Massey. While Bank of America and Citigroup have similar policies in place, JPMorgan Chase still lags behind Credit Suisse and Wells Fargo which have policies that end or phase out any financial involvement with companies engaged in mountaintop removal, respectively.

Here is the most recent 72-hour trajectory map created by NOAA. Get a closer look here (pdf). Observers are worried the slick is going to head on over to the Florida Keys.

The loop current could carry oil from the spill east and spread it about 450 miles to the Florida Keys, while the Louisiana coastal current could move the oil as far west as central Texas.

The depth of the gushing leaks and the use of more than 580,000 gallons of chemicals to disperse the oil, including unprecedented injections deep in the sea, have helped keep the crude beneath the sea surface. Officials report that more than 390,000 gallons of chemicals are stockpiled. Marine scientists say diffusing and sinking the oil helps protect the surface species and the Gulf Coast shoreline but increases the chance of harming deep-sea reefs.

If you didn't see "60 Minutes" last night, take a few minutes to watch these interviews.

This is part one of the segment:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Here is part two. "I can tell I was floating in oil."

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Here's a quick clip with the men who videotaped the explosion from a fishing boat:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

I'm not making this up, folks. Take it away, Tony Hayward, BP CEO:

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," he said.

Gov. Charlie Crist asked BP PLC on Wednesday to pay nearly $35 million for an emergency ad campaign to assure the world that Florida's beaches and coastal waters are untainted by the company's Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The spill off Louisiana so far has stayed well away from the Florida Panhandle shoreline but that hasn't stopped thousands of wary tourists from canceling or declining to make reservations.

Crist earlier Wednesday promised the panel that oversees state tourism promotion he would help find money for efforts to counteract those fears.

Visit Florida currently has more than $2.5 million for an emergency promotions campaign, part of it cut from another campaign to battle the bad press and erroneous word-of-mouth claims that the spill has arrived on Florida shores. But it’s not enough, the tourism board members insisted. The constant news of the spill, including an erroneous Twitter message Wednesday about tar balls washing up on Destin’s shores, are discouraging visitors.

“As of yesterday, I can tell you, restaurant and hotel owners in the Panhandle, most of them hit the 911 button,” said Carol Dover, president and CEO of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association.

Click here to read all about the BP-disaster protests that took place late last week. Great pictures!

Join the BP Oil Disaster group here on Climate Crossroads for all the latest on the disaster and the clean up.

(Thanks Nicole!)

An administration official who asked not to be identified because the plan is not yet public said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will urge that Congress approve splitting the Minerals Management Service in two. One agency would be charged with inspecting oil rigs, investigating oil companies and enforcing safety regulations, while the other would oversee leases for drilling and collection of billions of dollars in royalties.

Currently, the Minerals Management Service, an arm of the Interior Department, is responsible for collecting more than $10 billion a year from oil and gas drilling and with enforcing laws and regulations that apply to drilling operations.

Some critics have said the two roles are in conflict and are one reason the agency has long been accused of being too cozy with the oil and natural gas industry.

UPDATED:

• Dr. F.E. Beck - Associate Professor, Texas A&M University
• Mr. Danenberger - Former Chief, Offshore Regulatory Program, Minerals Management Service
• Mr. Lamar McKay - President and Chairman , BP America, Inc.
• Mr. Steven Newman - President and Chief Executive Officer, Transocean Limited
• Mr. Tim Probert - President, Global Business Lines; Chief Health, Safety and Environmental Officer, Halliburton

The Sierra Club has been holding a series of "Clean It Up!" events around the country calling on BP to clean up the disaster and demanding an end to new offshore drilling. Citizens have already turned out for rallies in Florida, Virginia, Seattle, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Houston.

On Saturday in New Orleans, the Sierra Club joined with fishing industry representatives, Gulf Coast leaders, and a crowd of more than 200 concerned citizens at a rally in support of Gulf Coast communities impacted by the BP Disaster.

"We are here to urge that President Obama dedicate every necessary resource his disposal to contain the well and stop the flow of oil," said Sierra Club president Allison Chin. "We need to clean up this disaster. The people who live in the Gulf Coast are looking at sweeping job losses and a destroyed ecosystem."

Last Thursday in Houston our Lone Star Chapter also held a brief presser and gathering outside an oil industry conference to call for more clean energy. They started the presser off with a fake speech from a fake oil industry spokesperson, "Oilivia Blackwater." Here's video of that:

Then the press conference got serious, as the group called for no more oil drilling, including a speech from a shrimper who spoke of the oil disaster's impact on her industry.

That message is present at all the "Clean It Up" rallies. "Offshore drilling is dirty and dangerous. This disaster could happen in Virginia, or California, or anywhere offshore oil rigs are allowed. We need an end to all new drilling off America's coasts. But that's not enough," said Chin at the New Orleans rally.

"We need our leaders to deliver a plan to get America off of oil and onto a clean, efficient, 21st century transportation system. We need to clean up the Gulf Coast, and we need to clean up America’s energy."

There are more clean energy rallies and events coming up to counter this terrible oil disaster - are you going to one? You can even sign up to host one!

New Orleans photos by David Graham-Caso. Houston photos by Zac Trahan.

What I saw flying over the gulf waters Wednesday, and what we've all been watching on television the last two weeks, is no spill. It's an endless explosion of toxic muck, a sickening creep of poisonous sludge that may soon blanket a national park, more than a dozen wildlife refuges and hundreds of miles of coastline, perhaps even oozing into the fragile Florida Keys and up the Eastern Seaboard.

This catastrophe may also prove to be one of those rare events that rivets attention, bolsters resolve and encourages pivotal change — in this case, a national commitment to stop the expansion of offshore drilling immediately and end our dependence on oil and the other dirty fuels that are fouling our planet in a slow-motion environmental disaster every day.

In western Canada, monstrous earthmoving machines rip up forests and pollute freshwater supplies to produce dirty oil from Alberta's "tar sands." In Ecuador, billions — with a "b" — of gallons of oil-contaminated waste were dumped into the Amazon watershed by Texaco, now owned by Chevron. And here in the U.S., 90 million Americans live near 150-plus oil refineries. These refineries release into the air and water millions of pounds of cancer-causing chemicals, such as benzene, butadiene and formaldehyde, along with nickel, lead and other pollutants linked to heart disease, asthma and other health threats.

PBS is providing a widget that displays a ticker meauring the amount of oil that BP's disaster has pumped into the Gulf. We've embedded it into the BP Oil Disaster group here on Climate Crossroads. So check it out. Join the group for more updates and correspondence from the ground.

Halt U.S. Offshore Drilling After BP Oil Spill: Michael Brune
May 05, 2010, 9:30 PM EDT

May 6 (Bloomberg) -- The death of 11 oil workers and the devastation of the Gulf Coast’s ecosystems and economy by the toxic sludge gushing from a BP Plc accident site is a tragedy that may well change the course of our nation. Americans are horrified. Leaders who had been willing to give offshore drilling the benefit of a doubt have abruptly changed their minds, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said he no longer supports a plan to allow limited drilling for oil off his state’s coast.

They’re right. There is no safe way to drill for oil in oceans. This disaster is an impetus to halt our dependence on oil completely and move to a clean energy future fast.

Still, after every disaster, the oil industry promises that it could never happen again.

I don't think so. It's time to start phasing out offshore oil production now, as a first step to making America genuinely independent of oil.

Louie Miller, the Sierra Club's Mississippi State Director, was on The Ed Show on MSNBC yesterday. Some are calling the disaster "America's Chernobyl."

The oil slick has tripled and the ecological fallout is becoming more widespread.

Near Gulfport, Mississippi, 19 sea turtles were found dead and necropsies were being done by experts at the National Marine Fisheries Services. But they had no external oil soiling and it was not clear if the deaths were linked to the slick.

U.S. energy output from the Gulf has not been not strongly affected and shipping operations at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port were normal, a port spokeswoman said.

Many of the coastal communities in the path of the oil slick, including Venice on the west bank of the Mississippi River, were devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"It's just like Katrina, catastrophic," said Frances Lacross, a local resident.

Three House committees, including Energy and Commerce, Natural Resources and Oversight have scheduled hearings. A special House subcommittee that deals with global warming has called on executives from five major oil companies to testify. And three Democratic senators introduced legislation which would raise liability caps on oil companies from $75 million to $10 billion. Republicans, meanwhile, want to turn the focus back on the federal government, with one top House Republican calling for an investigation of the Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling.

Reports are surfacing that BP is offering folks along the Gulf $5,000 in exchange for giving up their right to sue. BP spokespeople have since said they are no longer asking people to sign waivers. Read the article at Talking Points Memo:

Sid Jackson, a Mobile-based lawyer representing a shrimper who last week filed suit against BP, claiming that the spill had already taken a financial toll on his business, told TPMmuckraker that he believed BP would be wise to back down. "I think they kind of drop-kicked that [waiver] clause into the fine print," Jackson said. But, "I think it would backfire" if BP tried to enforce it.

"This is the same company that told the coast guard there was no leak," Jackson added.

How are animals going to survive when their natural habitat has been contaminated by all this 02?!

If you're looking for the latest coverage of the oil spill, we got your back. My first suggestion is the New York Times:

The effort comes as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the oil slick appears to be drifting toward the Alabama and Florida coasts, including the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana’s southern tip.

President Obama visited Louisiana on Sunday afternoon for a firsthand look at the response effort, while officials for BP described in detail their desperate efforts to seal the gushing well.

“The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time,” Mr. Obama said. “It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.”

On Monday, BP said it would pay “all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs" from the disaster. "BP takes responsibility for responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We will clean it up," the company said in a statement.

If you're looking for some lunchtime reading read this: "Sierra Club on oil spill: 'We were right'". And take a listen to this NPR segment about the far-reaching implications of this catastrophe.

AP tells us here that the weather is not cooperating:



CBS shows us that wildlife will be devestated. Duh!

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune's column on CNN was front and center all weekend. Take a read. Here's a little snippet:

We are pleased that the White House is now saying it will suspend any new offshore drilling while the explosion and spill are investigated, but there should be no doubt left that drilling will only harm our coasts and the people who live there.

Taking a temporary break from offshore drilling is an important step, but it's not enough. We need to stop new offshore drilling for good, now. And then we need an aggressive plan to wean America from dirty fossil fuels in the next two decades.

This BP offshore rig that exploded was supposed to be state-of-the-art. We've also been assured again and again that the hundreds of offshore drilling rigs along our beaches are completely safe. Now, we've seen workers tragically killed. We've seen our ocean lit on fire, and now we're watching hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic oil seep toward wetlands and wildlife habitat.

Here's an assortment of pertinent videos regarding the offshore oil spill disaster in the Gulf. With each passing hour, the prognosis gets worse. If you haven't taken action yet, click here.

Yesterday, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune made some great points on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama's team hit the airwaves this morning. Here's David Axlerod on ABC this morning. The White House issued an order to halt new offshore drilling plans at least until this disaster is fully investigated.

President Obama spoke this morning about the government's response:

Waveland, Mississippi prepares for the worst:

If all this has you down, Stephen Colbert might be an antidote -- his clip includes a mention of New England's plan for offshore wind:

Andrew Sullivan shares a reader's email about the smell in New Orleans:

I smelled something "funny" in the air about midday today and it got gradually more noticeable as the day went by. Then I saw this report on the local paper's website. My wife and I just walked our dog for about 20 minutes and my nose is now burning, not terribly, but it is burning. And the reports are saying this oil well won't be capped for at least 4 weeks! If there hasn't been outrage yet, there will be when the oil slick actually reaches the shore. The air is going to be twice as bad especially when it gets hotter.

We're also hearing that the smell of the oil is very apparent in coastal Louisiana now, too - this HuffPost article seems to confirm that one.

Peabody's Air Quality No. 1 coal mine in Knox County, Indiana, tops the U.S. in citations, with 1,419. The company's operation in Saline County, Illinois, has accumulated 1,217 citations, according to (Mine Safety and Health Administration) data.

The Knox County mine has more than twice the number of citations as the Upper Branch mine in West Virginia that was the site of the terribly sad mining disaster earlier this month. This track record of unsafe mines certainly does not support Mr. Palmer's claims that Peabody cares about safety.

Later in the debate, Mr. Palmer said that it is safer to work in mine than to work at Wal-Mart. I have to disagree, and I think most Americans would, too, especially after reading this article in USA Today about how "(d)ays missed because of serious injuries in the nation's mines have spiked sharply this decade."

Mr. Palmer's second inaccurate statement last night was that Peabody has not participated in mountaintop removal coal mining since he’s been there. Mountaintop removal is the irresponsible practice where mining companies blow the tops off mountains to reach a thin seam of coal and then, to minimize waste disposal costs, dump millions of tons of waste rock into the valleys below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem and landscape.

Despite Mr. Palmer's claim that Peabody does not partake in this hazardous mining practice, the facts show that he joined Peabody in 2001, and up until 2007, Peabody owned mountaintop removal coal mines in West Virginia and Kentucky.

Our country can do better than coal, and our college campuses for sure can do better than coal. I really enjoyed the time spent talking to the students at Washington University about the need to switch from coal to clean energy, and about not believing the 'green' coal babble the industry is spouting now.

I was also inspired to see so many young people at the debate last night who believe that our nation can and should be powered by clean energy. We even got a great example of that belief today when the Obama Administration approved the Cape Wind offshore wind project in Massachusetts. These students are a great reminder that our future is bright.

After the debate, this bright future was highlighted by student and debate organizer, Arielle Klagsbrun. "Our struggle to remove coal’s influence from our campus is a struggle going on all across America, and we will succeed," Arielle said in a press release the students put out earlier today. "In six years, our generation, the millennial generation, will make up one-third of the voting population. We are not asking for an end to coal, we are ending it."

If you missed last night's Great Coal Debate between Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Bruce Nilles and Peabody Energy VP Of Government Affairs Fred Palmer, Ustream TV recorded it. Click here to watch it.

Here's an article on the debate, and here are some photos. Did you watch the debate? What did you think?

Update: Here's the video. Enjoy.

Our own Bruce Nilles (now Sierra Club Deputy Conservation Director and former Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director) spoke at the conference and got the crowd roaring.

The Sierra Club also had a booth on the Mall during the rally to educate folks on all sorts of issues.

Treehugger also has a good write-up of the rally, including photos.

James Cameron is getting all avatar on tar sands. Join the Say No to Tar Sands group here on Climate Crossroads and get updates on this destructive practice.

Speaking of Cameron, word is that Avatar's sequel will take place under the sea. Perhaps plastic sludge will be the sequel's antagonist?

Spring came early, according to scientists. This simply means nature's ability to adapt will become increasingly important. Join the Resilient Habitats group here in Climate Crossroads.

The phenomenon known as "spring creep" has put various species of U.S. wildlife out of balance with their traditional habitats, from the rabbit-like American pika in the West to the roses and lilies in New England, the environmental experts said in a telephone news briefing.

"The losers tend to be our native plant species," said Charles Davis of Harvard University, who studied plant changes in Concord, Massachusetts, where American conservationist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived a century and a half ago.

"Climate change is not affecting species uniformly," Davis said. "Certain groups are hit harder than others, and those species that are not able to respond to climate change ... are being hit the hardest."

In Massachusetts, Davis said, those include some of the most charismatic species, such as lilies, orchids, roses and dogwoods.