Weekly Pulse: Rotten Eggs, Drowsy Doctors, and Expensive Insurance

These days, good-paying industrial jobs need not exact untimely deaths from pollution. In fact, development of clean renewable energy generators – the likes of wind turbines, solar cells, biomass – would create and support good industrial jobs in America. Blue collar union workers and green collar environmentalists are pressing lawmakers to pass comprehensive climate change legislation. The BlueGreens told audiences in August the choice for lawmakers is leaving a legacy of environmental hell or bequeathing climate unchanged.

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 for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.

Smart criticism = better organizations, better Presidents, better world

Mary Landrieu and David Vitter, the two Senators from Louisiana, speak out in favor of continuing oil drilling as the Horizon oil slick threatens their state’s environment and livelihood. Lieberman backs them up from his perch in the Senate. Pelosi signals no resistance from the vaunted House Democratic majority.

The political games worsen as the spill continues uncontrollably. BP has constructed a rusty, four-story steel box to deal with the disaster brought on by its 350 million dollar oil rig.

Conservation groups take huge donations from Big Coal, Big Oil and other corporations that make enormous profits while destroying the environment and the planet’s ecosystem. It’s time to expose this corrupt relationship and chart a new course to save the planet.

Mass media, industry, and Washington, DC have begun their inevitable hysteria and gamesmanship as the Horizon slick steadily grows and threatens more and more of the Gulf coast.

The world appears to have finally woken up to the vast and steadily growing disaster that is the Deepwater Horizon spill. We are seeing the start of a slow-motion replay of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Initial responses from some major environmental organizations one might expect to be very strong have been very tepid indeed. Let’s monitor these various organizations over time and see if they earn their donations and membership fees.