Exposed: Canadian Oil and Gas Workers, Major Union Oppose Keystone XL Pipeline

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Alberta Tar Sands, Barack Obama, Canada, Canadian oil and gas workers, Canadian Tar Sands, CEP, Dirty Fossil Fuels, environment, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, exports, greed, Gulf of Mexico, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, Leaks, mayflower arkansas, oil spills, tar sands oil, TransCanada, U.S, unions, United States

As President Obama weighs whether to give the Keystone XL pipeline his approval, climate scientists have warned that the volume of greenhouse gases released by the pipeline could push the planet over a climate tipping point. Proponents of the pipeline — which would pump 900,0000 barrels a day of bitumen crude from Alberta’s boreal forests to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico — promise that the economic benefits far out weigh whatever environmental damage ensues. Touting jobs numbers that have long been debunked, a large portion of American labor leadership is still providing working-class cover for the project’s corporate backers.

Amidst the ongoing jobs-vs-environment debate, however, one voice is noticeably absent: the bitumen workers in Canada who are largely against long-term tar sands extraction and the building of the pipeline.

“We’re diametrically opposed to the construction of it,” said David Coles, president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP), which represents 35,000 Canadian oil and gas workers, including thousands laboring in the country’s tar sands. “The Keystone XL is not good for the economy, it’s not good for the environment, it violates all kinds of First Nations rights.”

Read more here:  http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16700-exposed-canadian-oil-and-gas-workers-many-unions-now-oppose-keystone-xl-pipeline

 

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True Definition of Terrorist!

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Americans, Big Oil, Conservation, Dirty Fossil Fuels, eco-terrorists, environment, environmentalists, Finite Energy Source, Iraq, Iraq War, natural gas, oil, Peace, terrorism, U.S, U.S. citizens, U.S. Government, United States, War

The U.S. will go to war with any country that has a lot of oil! Iraq was a classic example of the U.S. Government raping a nation for a finite, dirty fossil fuel! Any U.S. cizen who opposes Big Oil or Natural Gas is considered an “Eco-terrorist.” How can the U.S. Government make up a word that is totally contradictory when they are the real terrorists, and environmentalists are called “conservationists” who are trying to save the environment in a peaceful manner unlike the U.S. Government?! – John Loeffler, Fountain City, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

 

10 Shocking Facts About The Koch Brothers!…And More!

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Big Oil, buyout, Cancerous, Carcinogenic, Cato Institute, Charles Koch, colleges, communism, creation, David Koch, Dirty Fossil Fuels, DOD, formaldehyde, investments, Joseph Stalin, Keystone XL Pipeline, Koch, Koch Brothers, Koch family, Koch Industries, lobbyists, mass media, natural gas, pollution, Super-PACS, Tea Party, United States, universities

10 Shocking Facts on the Kochs

1. Koch Industries, which the brothers own, is one of the top ten polluters in the United States — which perhaps explains why the Kochs have given $60 million to climate denial groups between 1997 and 2010.

2. The Kochs are the oil and gas industry’s biggest donors to the congressional committee with oversight of the hazardous Keystone XL oil pipeline. They and their employees gave more than $300,000 to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2010 alone.

3. From 1998-2008, Koch-controlled foundations gave more than $196 million to organizations that favor polices that would financially enrich the two brothers. In addition, Koch Industries spent $50 million on lobbying and some $8 million in PAC contributions.

4. The Koch fortune has its origins in engineering contracts with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union.

5. The Kochs are suing to take over the Cato Institute, which has accused the Kochs of attempting to destroy the group’s identity as an independent, libertarian think and align it more closely with a partisan agenda.

6. A Huffington Post source who was at a three-day retreat of conservative billionaires said the Koch brothers pledged to donate $60 million to defeat President Obama in 2012 and produce pledges of $40 million more from others at the retreat.

7. Since 2000, the Kochs have collected almost $100 million in government contracts, mostly from the Department of Defense.

8. Koch Industries has an annual production capacity of 2.2 billion pounds of the carcinogen formaldehyde. The company has worked to keep it from being classified as a carcinogen even though David Koch is a prostate cancer survivor.

9. The Koch brothers’ combined fortune of roughly $50 billion is exceeded only by that of Bill Gates in the United States.

10. The Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs accused Koch Oil of scheming to steal $31 million of crude oil from Native Americans. Although the company claimed it was accidental, a former executive in this operation said Charles Koch had known about it and had responded to the overages by saying, “I want my fair share, and that’s all of it.”

Source:  http://www.kochbrothersexposed.com/about

Note: Here is a full list of all universities as of August 2011 to which the Kochs donate — some of which accept strings attached to hiring decisions:

University Programs Supported by
the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
August 2011
*Funding for Kansas schools is provided by the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation.
Alma College
American University
Andrew College
Arkansas Tech University
Ashland University
Athens State University
Azusa Pacific University
Ball State University
Barton College
Baylor University
Beloit College
Berry College
Bethel College – Indiana
Boise State University
Brown University
Buena Vista University
California State University – East Bay
Campbell University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carthage College
Chapman University
Charleston Southern University
Christendom College
Christopher Newport University
City University of New York
Claremont McKenna College
Clemson University
Coastal Carolina University
College of Charleston
College of New Jersey
College of William and Mary
Colorado College
Dartmouth College
Delaware State University
Duke University
Duquesne University
Fayetteville State University
Florida Atlantic University
Florida Gulf Coast University
Florida State University
Friends University*
George Fox University
George Mason University
George Washington University
Georgia College and State University
Georgia State University
Georgia Tech University
Grove City College
Hamilton College
Hampden-Sydney College
Hanover College
Henderson State University
High Point University
Hillsdale College
Jacksonville State University
James Madison University
Kansas State University*
La Sierra University
Lake Forest College
Lakeland College
Lindenwood University
Linfield College
Louisiana State University
Loyola University – Chicago
Loyola University – New Orleans
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
McGill University
McKendree University
Mercer University
Metropolitan State College of Denver
Michigan State University
Midwestern State University
Milligan College
Montana State University – Bozeman
Montclair State University
Morehead State University
National University
Nicholls State University
North Carolina State University
Northeastern State University
Northern Illinois University
Northwestern Oklahoma State University
Northwestern University
Northwood University – Florida
Northwood University – Michigan
Northwood University – Texas
Oglethorpe University
Ohio University
Patrick Henry College
Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University – Erie
Pepperdine University
Presbyterian College
Providence College
Randolph-Macon College
Regent University
Rhodes College
Robert Morris University
Rockford College
Saginaw Valley State University
Salisbury University
San Jose State University
Sarah Lawrence College
Seton Hall University
Skidmore College
Southern Illinois University – Carbondale
Southern Methodist University
St. Ambrose University
St. Cloud State University
St. Edwards University
St. John Fisher College
St. John’s University
St. Lawrence University
St. Vincent College
State University of New York – Binghamton
State University of New York – Buffalo
State University of New York – Plattsburgh
Stephen F. Austin State University
Stillman College
Stonehill College
Suffolk University
Texas A&M University
Texas Christian University
Texas State University – San Marcos
The King’s College
Trinity College
Troy University
University of Akron
University of Alabama
University of Alabama – Birmingham
University of Alabama – Huntsville
University of Alaska – Fairbanks
University of Arizona
University of Arkansas – Little Rock
University of California – Davis
University of California – Los Angeles
University of California – Riverside
University of Central Arkansas
University of Colorado – Boulder
University of Dallas
University of Dayton
University of Hawaii
University of Houston
University of Illinois – Springfield
University of Kansas*
University of Kentucky
University of Louisville
University of Maine – Machias
University of Memphis
University of Michigan
University of Missouri – Columbia
University of Nebraska – Omaha
University of Nevada – Reno
University of North Alabama
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Oklahoma
University of Richmond
University of Rochester
University of San Diego
University of South Alabama
University of South Florida
University of Texas – Arlington
University of Texas – Austin
University of Texas – El Paso
University of Texas – Pan American
University of Texas – San Antonio
University of Tulsa
University of Virginia
University of Virginia – College at Wise
University of Washington
University of West Florida
University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Utah State University
Villanova University
Wake Forest University
Wesleyan College
West Virginia University
Western Carolina University
Western Kentucky University
Western Michigan University
Wheaton College
Whitman College
Winston-Salem State University
Yeshiva University

Source:  https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/bravenew/pages/554/attachments/original/1338417456/Koch_Family_Foundations-ListofFundedProgramsAugust2011.pdf?1338417456

Note:  Money talks!  The Koch Brothers have billions of dollars invested in various industries, mainly dirty fossil fuels, so what better way to knock some greed out of those dirty bastards than to divest in green, renewable energy that makes sense and cents!  John E Loeffler- Fountain City, Wisconsin

Only Dinosaurs Burn Fossil Fuels!

Tags

Billionaires, clean energy, climate change, dinosaurs, Dirty Fossil Fuels, Divest, Elite, Global Warming, greed, politicians, power-hungry, Renewable Energy, technology, Wealthiest

Stale politicians and rich, old billionaires are the only ones still investing in dirty fossil fuels! Let’s show them that clean energy is the only way to save our planet from their environmentally destructive practices!

 

Tea Party Created by Big Tobacco and Billionaire Koch Brothers

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Americans for Prosperity, Big Tobacco, climate change, corruption, deception, Dirty Fossil Fuels, dirty politics, fraud, Freedomworks, Global Warming, grassroots, greed, Health Care, Koch, Koch Brothers, lies, power-hungry, reforms, Tea Party, Tea Party Movement, United States

A new academic study confirms that front groups with longstanding ties to the tobacco industry and the billionaire Koch brothers planned the formation of the Tea Party movement more than a decade before it exploded onto the U.S. political scene.

Far from a genuine grassroots uprising, this astroturf effort was curated by wealthy industrialists years in advance. Many of the anti-science operatives who defended cigarettes are currently deploying their tobacco-inspired playbook internationally to evade accountability for the fossil fuel industry’s role in driving climate disruption.

The study, funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institute of Health, traces the roots of the Tea Party’s anti-tax movement back to the early 1980s when tobacco companies began to invest in third party groups to fight excise taxes on cigarettes, as well as health studies finding a link between cancer and secondhand cigarette smoke.

Published in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Tobacco Control, the study titled, ‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, is not just an historical account of activities in a bygone era. As senior author, Stanton Glantz, a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor of medicine, writes:

“Nonprofit organizations associated with the Tea Party have longstanding ties to tobacco companies, and continue to advocate on behalf of the tobacco industry’s anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda.”

The two main organizations identified in the UCSF Quarterback study are Americans for Prosperityand Freedomworks. Both groups are now “supporting the tobacco companies’ political agenda by mobilizing local Tea Party opposition to tobacco taxes and smoke-free laws.” Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity were once a single organization called Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). CSE was founded in 1984 by the infamous Koch Brothers, David and Charles Koch, and received over $5.3 million from tobacco companies, mainly Philip Morris, between 1991 and 2004.

In 1990, Tim Hyde, RJR Tobacco’s head of national field operations, in an eerily similar description of the Tea Party today, explained why groups like CSE were important to the tobacco industry’s fight against government regulation. Hyde wrote:

“… coalition building should proceed along two tracks: a) a grassroots organizational and largely local track,; b) and a national, intellectual track within the DC-New York corridor. Ultimately, we are talking about a “movement,” a national effort to change the way people think about government’s (and big business) role in our lives. Any such effort requires an intellectual foundation – a set of theoretical and ideological arguments on its behalf.”

The common public understanding of the origins of the Tea Party is that it is a popular grassroots uprising that began with anti-tax protests in 2009.

However, the Quarterback study reveals that in 2002, the Kochs and tobacco-backed CSE designed and made public the first Tea Party Movement website under the web address www.usteaparty.com. Here’s a screenshot of the archived U.S. Tea Party site, as it appeared online on Sept. 13, 2002:

CSE describes the U.S. Tea Party site, “In 2002, our U.S. Tea Party is a national event, hosted continuously online, and open to all Americans who feel our taxes are too high and the tax code is too complicated.” The site features a “Patriot Guest book” where supporters can write a message of support for CSE and the U.S. Tea Party movement.

Sometime around September 2011, the U.S. Tea Party site was taken offline. According to the DNS registry, the web address www.usteaparty.com is currently owned by Freedomworks. 

The implications of the UCSF Quarterback report are widespread. The main concern expressed by the authors lies in what they see happening overseas as the Tea Party movement expands internationally, training activists in 30 countries including Israel, Georgia, Japan and Serbia.

As the authors explain:

“This international expansion makes it likely that Tea Party organizations will be mounting opposition to tobacco control (and other health) policies as they have done in the USA.”

Freedomworks and Americans for Prosperity are both multi-issue organizations that have expanded their battles to include other policies they see as threats to the free market principles they claim to defend, namely fighting health care reform and regulations on global warming pollution. The report’s warning about overseas expansion efforts by Freedomworks should therefore also be heeded by groups in the health and environment arenas.

Finally, this report might serve as a wake-up call to some people in the Tea Party itself, who would find it a little disturbing that the “grassroots” movement they are so emotionally attached to, is in fact a pawn created by billionaires and large corporations with little interest in fighting for the rights of the common person, but instead using the common person to fight for their own unfettered profits.

Source:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brendan-demelle/study-confirms-tea-party-_b_2663125.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

 

The Koch Brothers “Astroturf” Tea Party Movement!

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Americans for Prosperity, Astroturf, Billionaires, Cato Institute, Charles Koch, corruption, David Koch, deception, Dirty Fossil Fuels, dirty politics, Elite, Facebook, fraud, Freedomworks, George Mason University, George W. Bush, greed, Koch Brothers, Koch family, Koch Industries, lies, Mercatus Center, money, power abuse, power-hungry, right-wing conservatives, Tea Party, United States, Wall Street Journal

Note:  This article was written in 2010.  Imagine all of the damage the Koch Brothers have done since then!

By funding numerous rightwing organizations, the mega-rich Koch brothers have duped millions into supporting big business

The Tea Party movement is remarkable in two respects. It is one of the biggest exercises in false consciousness the world has seen – and the biggest Astroturf operation in history. These accomplishments are closely related.

An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyze and direct real mobilizations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organized by the very interests they believe they are confronting. We now have powerful evidence that the movement was established and has been guided with the help of money from billionaires and big business. Much of this money, as well as much of the strategy and staffing, were provided by two brothers who run what they call “the biggest company you’ve never heard of”.

Charles and David Koch own 84% of Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in the United States. It runs oil refineries, coal suppliers, chemical plants and logging firms, and turns over roughly $100bn a year; the brothers are each worth $21bn. The company has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in fines and settlements for oil and chemical spills and other industrial accidents. The Kochs want to pay less tax, keep more profits and be restrained by less regulation. Their challenge has been to persuade the people harmed by this agenda that it’s good for them.

In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine: “I’ve never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me.” But a fascinating new film – (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham – tells a fuller story. Oldham infiltrated some of the movement’s key organising events, including the 2009 Defending the American Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. “Five years ago,” he explains, “my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It’s beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organization.”

A convener tells the crowd how AFP mobilized opposition to Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms. “We hit the button and we started doing the Twittering and Facebook and the phonecalls and the emails, and you turned up!” Then a series of AFP organizers tell Mr. Koch how they have set up dozens of Tea Party events in their home states. He nods and beams from the podium like a chief executive receiving rosy reports from his regional sales directors. Afterwards, the delegates crowd into AFP workshops, where they are told how to run further Tea Party events.

Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m, but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It has toured the country organizing rallies against healthcare reform and the Democrats’ attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organizing tools that set the Tea Party running.

The movement began when CNBC’s Rick Santelli called from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a bankers’ revolt against the undeserving poor. (He proposed that the traders should hold a tea party to dump derivative securities in Lake Michigan to prevent Obama’s plan to “subsidise the losers”: by which he meant people whose mortgages had fallen into arrears.) On the same day, Americans for Prosperity set up a Tea Party Facebook page and started organizing Tea Party events.

Oldham’s film shows how AFP crafted the movement’s messages and drafted its talking points. The New Yorker magazine, in the course of a remarkable exposure of the Koch brothers’ funding networks, interviewed some of their former consultants. “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded [the Tea Party],” one of them explained. “It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud – and they’re our candidates!” Another observed that the Kochs are smart. “This rightwing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.”

AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers. They set up the Cato Institute, the first free-market thinktank in the United States. They also founded the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which now fills the role once played by the economics department at Chicago University as the originator of extreme neoliberal ideas. Fourteen of the 23 regulations that George W Bush put on his hitlist were, according to the Wall Street Journal, first suggested by academics working at the Mercatus Center.

The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C Marshall Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works for them. “If we’re going to give a lot of money,” David Koch explained to a libertarian journalist, “we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”

Most of these bodies call themselves “free-market thinktanks”, but their trick – as (Astro)Turf Wars points out – is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy that informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilize for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt. The thinktanks that the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team.

Astroturfing is now taking off in the United Kingdom. Earlier this month Spinwatch showed how a fake grassroots group set up by health insurers helped shape the Tories’ NHS reforms. Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is real any more. Nothing is as it seems.

Source:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/25/tea-party-koch-brothers

 

Tar Sands Tax Loophole Cost US Oil Spill Fund $48 Million in 2012, Will Cost $400 Million by 2017

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Alberta Tar Sands, Arkansas, bitumen, BP, Canada, corruption, crude oil, Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Dirty Fossil Fuels, Enbridge, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, Exxon, Exxon Valdez, ExxonMobil, Federal Government, gas, Kalamazoo River, Liability Trust Fund, loopholes, Mayflower, Natural Resources Committee, oil, Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, oil spills, Pegasus Pipeline, tar sands oil, Tar Sands Pipelines, taxes, taxpayers, U.S, United States

A tax loophole exempting tar sands pipeline operators from paying an eight-cent tax per barrel of oil they transport in the US is costing the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund millions of dollars every year. With expected increases in tar sands oil production over the next five years, this loophole may have deprived US citizens of $400-million dollars worth of critical oil-spill protection funds come 2017.

According to a report by the US Natural Resources Committee the federal government pays for immediate oil-spill response from the Liability Trust Fund which is supported by an excise tax on all crude oil and gas products in the US.

But in 2011 the Internal Revenue Service exempted tar sands oil from the tax, saying the substance did not fit the characterization of crude oil.

This exemption has come under scrutiny this week after Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, Arkansas, releasing 300,000 litres of tar sands oil and water into a residential neighbourhood and surrounding wetlands. Because the line carried tar sands-derived oil from Alberta, Exxon was exempt from paying into the spill liability fund for the corrosive fuel’s potential cleanup.

The Pegasus pipeline was built in the 1940s to carry regular crude north from the Gulf Coast. In 2006, Exxon reversed the flow of the 1300 kilometre line in order to transport tar sands diluted bitumen from Illinois to the coast.

According to the Natural Resources Committee, “the spill response fund is currently at risk from running out of money because of the combined costs of BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill and Enbridge‘s Kalamazoo spill of tar sands oil…And Enbridge could still file a claim against the fund to recoup some of its costs because the company has spent well over the liability cap of $350 million for such spills.”

The Enbridge disaster in Michigan’s Kalamazoo river has cost over $820 million, making it the most expensive onshore cleanup in US history.

Enbridge, the company currently vying to build a 1172 kilometre-long pipeline from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, currently has no spill-response plan – for either onshore or offshore spills – prepared for the project.

During cross-examination in the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings in BC, Enbridge admitted they will have no spill response plan until six months before the proposed tar sands line will begin operation.

An investigation in the Enbridge Kalamazoo disaster found the company – due to “pervasive organizational failures” – improperly respond to the pipeline breach. The US National Transportation Safety Board likened Enbridge employees to the Keystone Kops – a clumsy, incompetent troups of cops from the silent films of the early 20th century.

The estimated cleanup cost for conventional oil run at about $2000 per barrel of oil. Tar sands diluted bitumen cleanup is estimated to cost an average $29,000 per barrel of spilled oil.

The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund was established in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, when the enormous costs of oil spill recovery were first understood on a grand scale, to ensure adequate cleanup funds were available to protect local residents and ecosystems.

As Climate Progress reported in 2010, Exxon refused to shoulder the cost of cleanup in the Valdez, where more than 11 million gallons of crude oil contaminated almost 3000 kilometres of shoreline.

“Exxon fought paying damages and appealed court decisions multiple times, and they have still not paid in full. Years of fighting and court appeals on Exxon’s part finally concluded with a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2008 that found that Exxon only had to pay $507.5 million of the original 1994 court decree for $5 billion in punitive damages. And as of 2009, Exxon had paid only $383 million of this $507.5 million to those who sued, stalling on the rest and fighting the $500 million in interest owed to fishermen and other small businesses from more than 12 years of litigation.

Twenty years later, some of the original plaintiffs are no longer alive to receive, or continue fighting for, their damages. An estimated 8,000 of the original Exxon Valdez plaintiffs have died since the spill while waiting for their compensation as Exxon fought them in court.”

And as DeSmogBlog’s Ben Jervey reports, Exxon has a long and litigious history of evading cleanup costs.

The US is facing a dramatic increase of tar sands oil imports. As the National Resource Committee estimates, production in the Alberta tar sands is projected to rise to over 2.7 million barrels per day in 2017. The tar sands industry projects figures as high as 5 million barrels per day in 2030 and 6 million per day in 2035. Currently approved projects have the capacity to produce 5.2 million barrels per day.

“Tar sands is already the dirtiest, riskiest oil around. It shouldn’t get a free ride from the U.S. taxpayer when it comes to paying into this vital spill response fund,” said Rep. Markey, the Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee. “Oil companies already receive outrageous tax subsidies that total billions of dollars and there is no defensible reason for this oil spill free ride to be added to that dubious list of loopholes.”

Regardless of how many barrels of tar sands oil will be traversing US soil, none of them should be exempt from spill liability taxes. If anything, corrosive diluted bitumen should be taxed more for the inherent dangers it present to local ecologies and communities during its production, refining, and transport.

Source:  http://desmog.ca/2013/04/03/tar-sands-tax-loophole-cost-us-oil-spill-fund-48-million-2012-will-cost-400-million-2017

 

The TRUTH Behind Gas Prices In 60 Seconds! (Video)

Tags

Dirty Fossil Fuels, Energy, Finite Energy Source, fossil fuels, gas prices, Global Dominance, green energy, infinite energy sources, oil, oil industry, technology, United States

As long as we continue to rely on the oil industry, and their global grip on price controls, we will continue to suffer the consequences! Go Green Energy!!

Do The Math – The Movie (Climate Crisis)

Tags

350.org, Big Oil, Bill McKibben, climate change, Crisis, Dirty Fossil Fuels, Do The Math, environmental catastrophe, environmental disaster, fossil fuel industry, fossil fuels, global crisis, Global Warming, greed, Keystone Pipeline, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, natural gas, oil, oil industry, pollution, power-hungry

Published on Apr 21, 2013
Join the Movement at http://www.350.org

Do the Math: A Movie to Spark a Movement

The fossil fuel industry is killing us.

They have five times the amount of coal, gas and oil that is safe to burn — and they are planning on burning it all. Left to their own devices, they’ll push us past the brink of cataclysmic disaster — life as we know it will be irrevocably altered forever. Unless we rise up and fight back.

Do The Math chronicles follows the climate crusader Bill McKibben as he works with a rising global movement in a David-vs-Goliath fight to change the terrifying math of the climate crisis.

This growing groundswell of climate activists is going after the fossil fuel industry directly, energizing a movement like the ones that overturned the great immoral institutions of the past century, such as Apartheid in South Africa. The film follows people who are putting their bodies on the line the Keystone XL Pipeline and leading universities and institutions to divest in the corporate polluters hellbent on burning fossil fuels no matter the cost.

The film also features a veritable who’s who of the climate movement including Dr. James Hansen (Director, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies), Naomi Klein (Author, The Shock Doctrine), Lester Brown (President, Earth Policy Institute), Michael Brune (Executive Director, Sierra Club), Majora Carter (Founder, Sustainable South Bronx), Jessy Tolkan (Co-Executive Director of Citizen Engagement Laboratory), Phil Radford (Executive Director of Greenpeace), James Gustave Speth (Co-Founder of Natural Resources Defense Council), Mike Tidwell (Executive Director, CCAN), Van Jones (CNN Correspondent & Author, The Green Collar Economy), Bobby Kennedy Jr. (President, Waterkeeper Alliance ), among others.

The Fossil Fuel Fight Of Our Lives!

Tags

2013, Antarctic, Arctic, Canada, China, climate change, Dirty Fossil Fuels, Divest, February, Fossil fuel, global, Global Warming, grassroots, Greenland, Gulf of Mexico, History, ice, Keystone XL, Keystone XL Pipeline, melt, Rally, scientific evidence, tar sands oil, TransCanada, U.S, United States, Washington D.C.

As the world burns, a new movement to reverse climate change is emerging – fiercely, loudly and right next door

It got so hot in Australia in January that the weather service had to add two new colors to its charts. A few weeks later, at the other end of the planet, new data from the CryoSat-2 satellite showed 80 percent of Arctic sea ice has disappeared. We’re not breaking records anymore; we’re breaking the planet. In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They’ll just ask, “So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?”

Here’s the good news: We’ll at least be able to say we fought.

After decades of scant organized response to climate change, a powerful movement is quickly emerging around the country and around the world, building on the work of scattered front-line organizers who’ve been fighting the fossil-fuel industry for decades. It has no great charismatic leader and no central organization; it battles on a thousand fronts. But taken together, it’s now big enough to matter, and it’s growing fast.

The Fossil Fuel Resistance: Meet the New Green Heroes

Americans got to see some of this movement spread out across the Mall in Washington, D.C., on a bitter-cold day in February. Press accounts put the crowd upward of 40,000 – by far the largest climate rally in the country’s history. They were there to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run down from Canada’s tar sands, south to the Gulf of Mexico, a fight that Time magazine recently referred to as the Selma and the Stonewall of the environmental movement. But there were thousands in the crowd also working to block fracking wells across the Appalachians and proposed Pacific coast deep-water ports that would send coal to China. Students from most of the 323 campuses where the fight for fossil-fuel divestment is under way mingled with veterans of the battles to shut down mountaintop-removal coal mining in West Virginia and Kentucky, and with earnest members of the Citizens Climate Lobby there to demand that Congress enact a serious price on carbon. A few days earlier, 48 leaders had been arrested outside the White House – they included ranchers from Nebraska who didn’t want a giant pipeline across their land and leaders from Texas refinery towns who didn’t want more crude spilling into their communities. Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham was on hand, urging scientists to accompany their research with civil disobedience, as were solar entrepreneurs quickly figuring out how to deploy panels on rooftops across the country. The original Americans were well-represented; indigenous groups are core leaders of the fight, since their communities have been devastated by mines and cheated by oil companies. The Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr. of the Hip Hop Caucus was handcuffed next to Julian Bond, former head of the NAACP, who recounted stories of being arrested for integrating Atlanta lunch counters in the Sixties.

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