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Offshore Drilling In Virginia Would Threaten Coastal Economy, Environment, And Naval Operations

Shiva Polefka is a Research Associate for Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress where Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy.

Fleet Composite Squadron 6 conducts boat operations off coast of Naval Station Norfolk, VA. (Credit: U.S. Navy)

Yesterday Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, revealed newfound support for oil and gas exploration off the Commonwealth’s coast. The Washington Post reported that he now backs legislation sponsored by Virginia’s Democratic U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine that would open offshore areas to oil and gas exploration.

Offshore oil drilling is viewed by Virginia politicians on both sides of the aisle as a budgetary panacea, in part because of the economic activity drilling would create, but perhaps more so because the Warner-Kaine bill would direct a portion of drilling royalties back into the commonwealth’s coffers. But the bottom line is that any development carries with it massive risk to the state’s environment and the current economic drivers that rely on healthy and accessible oceans and coasts.

A recent PricewaterhouseCoopers analysis of Virginia’s tourism industry reported that the sector supports more than 200,000 jobs, yielding an economic impact of more than $20 billion in 2011, and that Virginia’s beaches alone attracted nearly 10 percent of the state’s tourists. Virginia’s coast and ocean also support thriving fisheries; in 2011 fishermen landed 247,000 tons of seafood in Virginia, worth more than $191 million, ranking it the third largest seafood producer in the country by weight.

As Gulf Coast states painfully learned in 2010’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, offshore drilling accidents can devastate robust tourism industries, the health of marine ecosystems, and both the productivity and the reputation of the marine fisheries supported by those ecosystems. Unfortunately, Congress has so far failed to pass any reforms to reduce the risk of spills or blowouts, meaning the few regulatory reforms made by the Department of the Interior to improve offshore drilling safety in the aftermath of the Gulf spill could be rolled back by a future administration.

Drilling offshore Virginia would also be incompatible with another vital activity carried out along the state’s coast — keeping our nation safe. Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval complex in the world, is one of the state’s primary economic engines, supporting more than 71,000 military and civilian employees. Overall the Navy was responsible for more nearly $15 billion in economic impact in Virginia in fiscal year 2009.

In 2010 the US Department of Defense determined that 74 percent of the areas eyed for oil and gas leasing offshore Virginia would directly interfere with the extensive military activities that are carried out in the region, including ordnance training and aircraft carrier operations. As Virginia Representative James Moran put it, “When you come down to it, the Navy’s operations are much more important to the Virginia economy, let alone national security, than … drilling operations.”

Furthermore, most of the areas where the Navy did not find potential conflicts are either in major shipping lanes or off the northern part of the coast where Virginia’s desire to drill would come into conflict with their neighbors in Maryland where the sentiment is distinctly anti-drilling. After watching the oil gush in the Gulf of Mexico unchecked for more than a month, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley took an unequivocal stance, saying “I would be opposed to any drilling off the Chesapeake Bay.”

Virginia can still look to the ocean to shape its energy future, but rather than drilling for oil, the Commonwealth should be pursuing offshore wind energy development. McAuliffe’s campaign website notes that Virginia’s offshore wind resource could generate up to 3,200 megawatts of electricity “in just the 25 most promising offshore parcels” — development that would support as many as 11,600 jobs. Furthermore, the Department of the Interior’s “Smart from the Start” program has already identified sites for wind turbines off Virginia’s coast that would not conflict with either military operations or the shipping industry. As CAP has reported, offshore wind holds vast promise for producing clean energy at modest prices that will be stable over the long term — much more than can be said for oil or natural gas.

Rather than looking to the industries of the past and falling victim to another black gold rush that would compromise Virginia’s robust blue economy, Virginia’s leaders should instead look to a proven source of homegrown energy development that will create new jobs without jeopardizing current ones or contributing to our nation’s unsustainable thirst for climate-altering fossil fuels. Prioritizing development and protection of the state’s existing coastal-dependent industries like tourism, and fishing, and its world class military emplacements, while boosting support for renewable energy development is a common-sense approach to moving one of America’s most historic states toward a brighter economic future.

The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power

Hillary Clinton may no longer be the U.S. Secretary of State, but she is still a going political concern. Given her boundless ambition and widespread name recognition, her name always tops the list of potential presidential candidates in 2016. If she chooses to run, her success or failure may very well rest on how voters view her tenure as President Barack Obama’s diplomat-in-chief. Her political opponents seem well aware of this. Even though she is now a private citizen, congressional Republicans continue to allege that Clinton covered up facts associated with the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya at the hands of Islamist militants. Still, the charges do not seem to be hurting her popularity much: A recent Washington Post/ABC poll showed that 62 percent of Americans approve of her job performance.

They won’t find much to challenge that view in Kim Ghattas’ new book, “The Secretary: A Journey with Hillary Clinton from Beirut to the Heart of American Power.” Ghattas covered Clinton as a correspondent for the BBC, and her book is a generally sympathetic account of Clinton’s time as America’s top diplomat. The book combines elements of memoir with reportage, borrowing from Ghattas’ personal life, her time in the diplomatic press pool and her journalistic efforts to make sense of American foreign policy.

At times, one wonders if Ghattas’ mix of personal history and reporting conceals a lack of inside information about the secretary. Though she traveled hundreds of thousands of miles with Clinton, Ghattas never seems to have discovered what makes Hillary tick. Her characterization of Clinton’s diplomatic principles is largely gleaned from press conferences, and she often chooses to highlight style over substance. She mentions Clinton’s chic pantsuits and admires the “impeccably styled jet-black hair” of the secretary’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Huma Abedin. She also notes Clinton’s penchant for wearing sunglasses on cloudy days, the somewhat shabby state of the secretary’s aging plane and the quality of the chocolate chip cookies provided by the U.S. Air Force. Deep insights, these are not.

But for all that, “The Secretary” also takes a serious look at the United States’ changing role in the world and Clinton’s attempts to mend fences following the Bush administration’s often heavy-handed approach to international relations. The book makes it clear that both Clinton and Ghattas believe America’s ability to act alone in world affairs is quickly ebbing and that the secretary’s greatest challenge was to effectively utilize soft power to strengthen relations with key strategic allies, including Russia, a notoriously volatile partner.

Still, in the end, “The Secretary” is a better measure of the discipline practiced by both Clinton and her entourage than it is a successful account of her diplomatic endeavors. As Ghattas points out, many members of the team that Clinton brought with her to the State Department also worked on her unsuccessful 2008 presidential run. Team Hillary clearly impressed Ghattas with its gravitas, charmed her with its style and refused to let her get any unguarded moments with Clinton. Ultimately, such message discipline underscores the fearsome political strength of Clinton and company. A subject who hews to a relentless drumbeat of talking points may make for a weak book, but perhaps without realizing it, Ghattas has shown us why Hillary will be the person to beat if she does throw her hat in the ring in 2016.

Photo courtesy of sskennel via Compfight cc

Poll Finds Strong Support For Clean Energy, 68% Of Independents Want To Regulate CO2 As A Pollutant

The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University released their most recent survey this week:

The Yale survey, “Public Support for Climate and Energy Policies in April 2013,” dates back to 2008 and is an important barometer for public opinion on clean energy and climate issues.

In general, the year’s survey finds that support for prioritizing clean energy remains high, albeit with a recent dip, due in part to the increasing polarization of the American electorate.

Still, strong majorities support renewable energy and regulation carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Here is more from what’s in the report, by the numbers:

• 87 percent say President Obama and Congress should make developing sources of clean energy a priority.

While there are some programs at the federal level that have aided the development of clean energy and transportation, such overwhelming support shows that the government could and should do more. After all, fossil fuel extractors make bad neighbors. Some states are getting the message and clean energy development creates jobs. Colorado recently moved to strengthen its Clean Energy Standard. Other states’ clean energy sectors face threats. North Carolina has been fighting off efforts to repeal its clean energy standard this year (that fortunately failed).

• 70 percent say global warming should be a priority for the President and Congress.

There are billions of reasons to make it one. President Obama has more than three years left to make it a big one.

• 59 percent think the U.S. should cut greenhouse gas emissions on its own — even if other countries do not.

33 countries and 18 sub-national jurisdictions will price carbon in 2013. This comprises 850 million people and nearly a third of the global economy. China has a pilot carbon trading program in 7 cities and provinces, and is seriously considering an absolute cap on its carbon emissions. The EU has had one for years. The ball is in America’s court, and there are some easy solutions to pursue.

• 70 percent think industry should be doing more to address global warming, and 52 percent think the President should.

So does Steven Chu, the last Energy Secretary.

• 68 percent want to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Putting a price on carbon finds support in unexpected quarters, such as conservative economists, prominent Republicans, and large corporations.

• 61 percent want to regulate it through a carbon tax on fossil fuel companies that pays down the debt.

Other polls have found similar support for putting a price on carbon as a way of paying down the debt — yet even larger majorities support making clean energy a priority. The Congressional Budget Office recently released a report making the budgetary case that doing nothing about climate change will cost more than spending money now to regulate carbon.

• 59 percent want to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies.

Which is important, as the U.S. is the world’s largest fossil fuel subsidizer. It would help the budgetary situation, not to mention help level the playing field for new renewable industries.

• 55 percent support requiring utilities to produce more than 20 percent renewable power, even if it costs more.

The legislation is there — whether Congress will act is another story.

• 50 percent have not heard of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Evidently more reporting is required.

Were your opinions reflected in the poll?

Exclusive: New York Sandy ‘Climate Resilience’ Plan Won’t Address Climate Pollution

by Brad Johnson, campaign manager for Forecast the Facts

The nearly $300 million climate-resiliency initiative established by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg using Sandy relief funds will not address climate pollution, according to a city official.

The New York City Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency (SIRR), formed in November 2012, will release a report this month indicating how $294 million in federal funding from the Superstorm Sandy relief act should be spent to increase the city’s “climate resiliency.” The report “will present policy recommendations, infrastructure priorities, and community plans, and identify sources of long-term funding” in addition to the emergency federal funds — but it apparently will not include an accounting of the carbon footprint of that infrastructure development.

In an email, SIRR spokesperson Daynan Crull told Forecast the Facts that because the initiative’s job is to “protect New York City against future climate threats,” it “does not directly address energy generation vis-à-vis fossil fuels”:

SIRR’s directive is rebuild and protect New York City against future climate threats, so it does not directly address energy generation vis-à-vis fossil fuels. However, New York City has been a global leader in environmental urban policy, pioneering PlaNYC — one of the most comprehensive sustainable and environmentally conscious policy programs ever established for a major city. It is upon this foundation that SIRR is built. Indeed PlaNYC established the New York City Panel on Climate Change, which is supporting SIRR’s work with the best climate science available.

Crull’s statement makes no sense — if SIRR’s plan is to “protect New York City against future climate threats,” it must necessarily “address energy generation vis-à-vis fossil fuels.” One cannot wall off energy use and infrastructure planning into separate boxes. This announcement is especially troubling because it is not clear that New York City is increasing any of its investments in renewable energy or carbon pollution reduction in response to Sandy. Instead, the city is moving forward with new fossil-fuel infrastructure, including a fracked-gas pipeline planned to cut through the Rockaways.

In 2011, PlaNYC set relatively strong climate-pollution goals for the city: a 30 percent reduction from 2006 levels of carbon pollution by 2017, with hopes of achieving an 80 percent reduction by 2050. However, much more ambitious targets are technologically possible — Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson has detailed a strategy for getting New York State’s energy use carbon-free by 2030. And no climate plan for New York City is complete without goals for divesting the financial industry from fossil-fuel producers like New York’s richest man, David H. Koch.

SIRR’s work will update 2011′s NYC Vision 2020 Comprehensive Waterfront Plan, which included a chapter on climate resilience, defined incompletely by the planners as “adaptation strategies” to climate change impacts such as sea level rise and more intense storms. The devastation of Superstorm Sandy gives the waterfront plan’s recommendations new and tragic urgency — one of the stated goals was to “develop a better understanding of the city’s vulnerability to flooding and storm surge.” The waterfront plan did not explicitly call for resilience measures to emphasize carbon reduction, an unfortunate oversight that looks to be continued.

It is possible that the public word from SIRR is misleading. The climate-resiliency plan is being developed in consultation with the New York City Panel on Climate Change, co-chaired by climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig and urban environmental scientist William Solecki; the NYC Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, led since December 2012 by Sergej Mahnovski, a renewable-energy expert; and Goldman Sachs vice president Marc Ricks, a lead architect of PlaNYC.

Despite the official word that the SIRR plan will not address fossil-fuel energy generation, there are reasons to hope that the plan will promote infrastructure investments that are intended simultaneously to protect New York City residents from the damages of climate-change-related threats and to reduce the pollution that fuels those threats — and provide true climate resilience.

Rising Energy Dependency Endangers Europe’s Economy

The issue of energy may have been overshadowed by that of tax at yesterday’s EU summit of Heads of State in Brussels, but its growing importance and impact on Europe’s economy is one that cannot be ignored. As the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, Europeans are paying a lot for their energy – prices are 37% higher than those in the US and 20% hi

May 24 News: Autsch! Fracking Threatens The German Beer Industry.

(Credit: Andreas Gebert/EPA/Corbis)

German brewers are sounding the alarm that allowing fracking could pollute water and ruin German beer. [Telegraph]

German brewers have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that any law allowing the controversial drilling technique known as fracking could damage the country’s cherished beer industry.

The Brauer-Bund beer association is worried that fracking for shale gas, which involves pumping water and chemicals at high pressure into the ground, could pollute water used for brewing and break a 500-year-old industry rule on water purity.

Germany, home to Munich’s annual Oktoberfest – the world’s biggest folk festival which attracts around 7m visitors – has a proud tradition of brewing and beer drinking.

Under the “Reinheitsgebot”, or German purity law, brewers have to produce beer using only malt, hops, yeast and water.

“The water has to be pure and more than half Germany’s brewers have their own wells which are situated outside areas that could be protected under the government’s current planned legislation on fracking,” said a Brauer-Bund spokesman.

“You cannot be sure that the water won’t be polluted by chemicals so we have urged the government to carry out more research before it goes ahead with a fracking law,” he added.

Eugene Robinson: “President Obama should spend his remaining years in office making the United States part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem.” [Washington Post]

Former Republican Governor Jane Swift commends President Obama for choosing Gina McCarthy to run the EPA, and urges the Senate to confirm this “qualified nominee.” [Boston Globe]

New research says that Mount Everest’s glaciers have shrunk 13 percent in the last 50 years, and that rate is accelerating. [Guardian]

Budget woes, the sequester, and system failures have seriously impacted National Weather Service warning and forecasting capabilities. [Capital Weather Gang]

NOAA predicts a very active hurricane season in 2013. [Washington Post]

An economist’s take on climate change’s odds: “Prudence would seem to dictate taking action to cut back greenhouse gas emissions significantly.” [PBS]

CA Gov. Jerry Brown on climate change: “We’ve got a big challenge. It’s daunting. This is not just about science, this is about activism.” [AP]

Will a changing climate lead to increased plagues of locusts? [Guardian]

What China is doing about their serious air pollution problem. [NPR]

More than a hundred rallied against the potential LA Times sale to the conservative activist Koch brothers. [LA Times]

The interesting thing about this week’s Keystone vote was not that it passed, but that it lost Democratic support. [Washington Post]

The State Department has begun releasing the 1.2 million comments it received regarding the Keystone pipeline, revealing how controversial the project is. [The Hill]

Russia approved an incentive program to boost renewable-energy production, targeting almost 6 gigawatts of new capacity by 2020 and its first solar parks. [Bloomberg]

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signed legislation that included the state’s first solar energy standard. [Minnesota Clean Energy & Jobs]

Rural Australians who have been protesting coal seam gas reportedly encountered gunfire today, but are standing their ground. [The Chronicle]

Houston’s air quality is dangerous already — what happen should tar sands begin to flow from Alberta to Harris County? [DeSmogBlog]

The world’s first wind/current power system will be installed off the coast of Japan this year. [CleanTechnica]

How to Generate Better Intelligence, More Wind Power and Increased Profits

Since 2007, more than 40,000 MW of new wind generation has been built in the U.S., according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). Tens of thousands of new turbines are operating, a testament to the entrepreneurial and engineering spirit of renewable development firms, equipment suppliers and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) companies.

Read Todd VanDerWerff On What Makes Ray Bradbury’s Science Fiction So Distinct And Wonderful

As part of his Nerd Curious series, in which he goes back and explores artifacts of culture he missed in his youth, my friend and the AV Club’s television editor Todd VanDerWerff took a deep dive into Ray Bradbury’s short stories and emerges with what I think is one of the best summaries of what makes Bradbury’s work distinct, the element of nostalgia and emotional irrationality in decision-making, even in science fiction where we’re supposed to be enhanced–or at least, where rationality is supposed to rule:

In The Martian Chronicles, as happens so often in Bradbury’s work, people don’t look at the destruction of their world and run as far as they can from the mushroom clouds or the astronauts bearing chicken pox. Instead, they run toward them, trying in vain to preserve something that’s already gone. The Earthlings who have settled Mars decide to go back to Earth after nuclear war erupts there. That seems a very curious decision—wouldn’t those who had escaped such destruction by virtue of being so very far away count themselves lucky?—until it is situated in the context of Bradbury’s bibliography. The characters are haunted by memories of a past they can’t ever shake. In that context, their actions make perfect sense. They aren’t driven by practical sense; they’re driven by emotional sense, until both worlds are mostly dead and barren, a handful of survivors of two species straggling out a life on the margins.

You should really read the whole thing, which has too many big ideas to get into here. But I thought that was lovely and astute.

The Congressional Budget Office Says We Need A Price On Carbon Emissions

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) thinks putting off efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions risks “catastrophic” losses for the United States’ economy and society. That’s according to a new report on the economic and environmental effects of a carbon tax CBO published Wednesday.

The CBO is the group of analysts tasked with modeling and projecting the consequences of Congress’ proposed laws, so that lawmakers can have some idea of what the likely consequences of their actions will be. You may recall the CBO from the big role its scores played in the debate over health care reform a few years ago. They’re a highly respected, methodologically cautious, and strictly nonpartisan outfit that’s widely viewed as the go-to authority for refereeing policy disputes in Washington.

With China on the verge of unilaterally putting a cap on its own carbon emissions, and with wide support for a carbon tax amongst voters, politicians, industry, economists and think tanks, the fact that CBO is using its position to highlight the risks of not addressing climate change is worth paying attention to.

Now, much of their report’s content wasn’t new. It projected that a price of $20 per metric ton on carbon dioxide emissions would bring in $1.2 trillion in revenues between 2012 and 2021, and cut emissions by roughly 8 percent over the same period, which came from work CBO did in 2011 (page 205). And the debate over what to do with the revenues from a carbon tax, which much of the report is dedicated to, is also familiar.

But one thing that is noteworthy is CBO’s blunt assessment that allowing climate change to continue unchecked could be very costly to both the United States and global society:

Climate change resulting from an increase in average temperatures is a long-term problem with global causes and consequences, including effects on humans and ecosystems. Significantly limiting the extent of future warming would require a concerted effort by countries that are major emitters of greenhouse gases. Nonetheless, U.S. efforts to decrease emissions would produce incremental benefits, in the form of incremental reductions in the expected damage from climate change.

Researchers have attempted to estimate the monetary value of the future damage from climate change associated with an increase in CO2 emissions in a given year — and thus the value of the benefits from a commensurate reduction in emissions — a measure referred to as the social cost of carbon (SCC)… Those values are highest when researchers attach significant weight to long-term outcomes and when they incorporate a small probability that damage from climate change could increase sharply in the future — causing very large, or even catastrophic, losses. Delaying efforts to reduce emissions increases the risk of such losses. Given the inherent uncertainty of predicting the effects of climate change, and the possibility that it could trigger catastrophic effects, lawmakers might view a carbon tax as a reflection of society’s willingness to pay to reduce the risk of potentially very expensive damage in the future.

Even CBO’s 2009 round-up of climate change science, which focused heavily on the uncertainty built into such projections, pointed out that the worst case scenarios for climate change “even if unlikely, would justify more stringent policies than would result from simply balancing the costs of reducing emissions against the benefits of averting damages from the expected or most likely degree of warming.”

As for the question of how to structure a carbon tax, the Center for American Progress’ Richard Caperton put forward a proposal last December for a tax of $25 per ton on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. That ought to put us on a course to reduce those emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by 2050, though the tax would ultimately need to be expanded to the entire economy. Caperton estimated the revenue from this tax — more limited than the one envisioned by CBO — would be in the vicinity of $55 billion annually. That could be split between the roughly $20 billion annually needed to fund research and development of clean energy, deficit reduction, and support for low-income Americans.

That last aspect is especially important, because on its own a price on carbon has a regressive effect, imposing more costs on the poor and the working class than the well-off. Reductions in the payroll tax, or refundable income tax rebates, would do the most good, mainly because they target support to the very people who would most need help shouldering higher energy costs. But CBO’s new report also found that a price on carbon would reduce overall growth slightly by reducing incomes throughout the economy, and by working through income taxes those two options would counteract that drag.

Google buys flying wind-turbine startup Makani Power

‘Copperhead,’ ‘To End All Wars,’ And The Marginalization Of War Resisters And Pacifists

The trailer for the upcoming Civil War drama Copperhead conveniently doesn’t mention that the movement its titular characters were affiliated with wanted the Union to make a peace with the Confederacy that would allow for the preservation of slavery, and that it was naive enough to believe the Confederacy would come back to the Union on its own terms. But given the pop culture trope of the sympathetic or victimize Confederate, I’m not actually surprised that a Civil War setting is one of the few ways we could get a movie about people who have been dramatically marginalized in our political conversations and even in civil society: war resisters.

Right now, I’m reading Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars, his terrific history of resistance to World War I. One of the things that’s striking about the book, particularly the section on the suffrage movement, is the reminders it offers that the things we do to people who have been designated enemies of the state now, Western countries did to their own citizens a century ago. Horrified by the forced feedings of hunger strikers at Guantanamo? The British government force-fed suffragettes, many of who it imprisoned for extended periods of time for civil disobedience. Angered by the treatment of people who oppose war as if they’re mentally ill or radical? Bertrand Russell lost his job at Trinity College for his pacifism and served time in jail under the Defence of the Realm Act, which among other things, forbid people from publishing writing that could cause alarm or “disaffection” among the British populace, and pacifist socialist Jean Jaurès was assassinated by a nationalist in France.

We’ve become very comfortable lionizing the risks soldiers take on the battlefield, in part because those celebrations feel like a way of paying back people who are willing to experience extreme danger and the trauma of killing other people on our behalf. But we’re still reluctant, apparently, to treat people who try and fail to keep us out of wars, or as was the case with many World War I activists, to point out the disparate impact of conscription along class lines, as if they’re reasonable, much less admirable. I’m not an absolute pacifist myself, but I do think that the courage to stand up against some conflicts is admirable, and the amount of it required is more considerable than we generally acknowledge, given the risk that you’ll be labeled treasonous or mentally ill. I just wish that instead of Copperhead, we were getting a biopic about Charlotte Despard, a wealthy British woman (and sister to British war leader John French) whose pacifism grew out of a range of social concerns, including her work on poverty and her suffragist activism–in other words, a movie that can put war resistance in its social context, rather than one that in its advertising is hiding the uncomfortable truth of the Copperheads’ acceptance of slavery.

Getting paid to drive an electric car? It’s possible…

The True Cost Of Gasoline: Memorial Day Driving By The Numbers

Washington, D.C. — As AAA estimates that nearly 35 million Americans are preparing to travel 50 miles or more this weekend, with nearly 90 percent of travelers filling up their tanks with expensive gasoline or diesel fuel to drive to their destination, the Center for American Progress released an analysis of Memorial Day driving by the numbers.

Gasoline prices averaged $3.66 per gallon nationwide on May 21, 2013, which is 2 cents per gallon lower than they were a year ago when the price per gallon was $3.69. But experts predict that prices will plateau or increase throughout the summer, providing little relief at the pump for American families during this vacation season. These high prices enable the five biggest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell — to reap huge profits even though they are producing less oil worldwide than this time last year.

Beginning with the Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, Americans will spend their hard-earned dollars traveling to visit family, friends, and the great outdoors. Meanwhile, Big Oil will be making huge profits off of these travel expenditures on fuel, while at the same time fighting for decreased public health and climate-change protections.

Here is a by-the-numbers look at what Big Oil will cost us this holiday weekend:

An expensive holiday weekend ahead for travelers

• 690 miles: Average distance Americans will travel this Memorial Day; 7 percent higher than the 2012 average.
• $105: Gasoline cost for an average trip this Memorial Day weekend.

Big Oil profits increase as Americans face high prices at the pump

• $30.2 billion: Earnings for the first three months of 2013—about $336 million per day—for the five biggest publicly traded oil companies: BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell.
• $1 trillion: Combined profits from 2001–2011 for the five biggest oil companies.
• $2.4 billion: Special federal tax breaks received by the big five oil companies in 2011.
• One minute: Big Oil makes more in one minute than what 95 percent of American households earn in an entire year.
• One-third: Proportion of the Big Oil profits used to repurchase their stock, which only serves to pad the pockets of senior executives and the largest shareholders.
• -2 percent: Reduction in worldwide oil production by the big five oil companies compared to one year ago.

Big Oil’s influence machine

• $71 million: Total direct federal campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry in the 2012 election cycle.
• 90 percent: Proportion of direct federal campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry that went to Republican candidates.
• $140 million: Total lobbying expenditures by the oil and gas industry in 2012.
• $50 billion: Total lobbying expenditures by the big five oil companies in 2012.

New Jersey’s tourism sector is essential for state’s economic growth

• $34.7 billion: New Jersey’s annual tourism revenue.
• 62 percent: Estimated percentage of tourism dollars that were spent at the Jersey Shore in 2008.
• 500,000: Number of Americans employed by New Jersey’s tourism industry.
• $1,420: Estimated additional annual tax that each New Jersey household would have to pay in the absence of state tourism dollars, in order to maintain current government revenues.

Climate-change fueled extreme weather impacts tourism

• 94 percent: Proportion of New Jersey beaches and dunes that were damaged by Superstorm Sandy.
• 27 million: Number of cubic yards of sand that the Army Corps of Engineers will replace along the New Jersey and New York coastlines to restore storm-damaged beaches. Thomas Herrington, professor of ocean engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, said the amount of sand lost to Superstorm Sandy is “unprecedented” and equal to what is typically lost over the course of a decade.
• 4: Number of states with significant wildfires in their national and state forests as of May 20, 2013. (The states: California, Florida, Minnesota, and Montana.)
• 3,800: Number of acres currently burning through the Los Padres National Forest in California. As of May 20, 2013, the fire was only 25 percent contained.
• 1 million: Estimated annual visitors to the Los Padres National Forest between 2005 and 2009.

Big Oil behaving badly, again

• 210,000: Total number of gallons of tar-sands oil spilled by a pipeline leak in Mayflower, Arkansas, in March 2013. The failure of the nearly 70-year-old pipeline owned by ExxonMobil forced 83 people to evacuate their homes.
• 126,000: Number of gallons ExxonMobil had yet to recover as of early May. The same pipeline ruptured a second time on May 1, 2013 in Ripley County, Missouri, spilling 42 gallons of oil.
• $14 billion: Estimated minimum cleanup costs for BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 that killed 11 oil-rig workers and gushed 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
• $75 million: Limit on liability that oil companies currently face for future offshore-oil blowouts regardless of actual damage.

Keystone XL pipeline won’t lower gasoline prices

• 0 (zero, nada, none): Guaranteed percentage of oil transported by Keystone XL to Gulf Coast refineries that will remain in the United States after refining into gasoline or diesel fuel.
• 0 (zero, nada, none): Impact of Keystone XL pipeline on U.S. gasoline prices. Christopher Knittel, professor of energy economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified on May 16, 2013, in the House that, “There will be no appreciable changes in the world oil price, certainly not enough to base policy decisions on it.”

Read the full analysis: Memorial Day Driving by the Numbers by Jackie Weidman and Daniel J. Weiss.

Reprinted with permission from the Center for American Progress website.

Google Reels In Wind-Kite Firm Makani

Extending its already deep reach into renewable energy, Google reportedly has acquired a startup and its flying-kite wind turbines that promise to tap better wind energy resources at higher altitudes with far lower costs and more efficient output.

Chevrolet Spark EV to be priced $27,495 with lease starting at $199/month (119 MPGe!)

Giants Pitcher Jeremy Affeldt On How Playing Major League Baseball Helped Him Overcome Homophobia

In his writing here about the dearth of openly gay players on the active rosters of professional sports teams, Travis Waldron’s discussed a range of issues that have factored into the perception that athletics are a largely heterosexual pursuit. There’s the theory that the locker room is an unfriendly environment that’s been partially dispelled by straight allies like Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo. The persistent use of homophobic insults by fans suggests that the problem might be more in the stands than in players-only areas. And there’s the question of how being publicly out of the closet might affect a player’s negotiating power or sponsorship deals.

But this week’s given us a different kind of story about homophobia in sports, that of Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt. Raised in a conservative environment, playing professional baseball sent Affeldt to cities where he met actual gay people, and gave him experiences that broadened his horizons. In Cincinnati, a gay Starbucks employee welcomed Affeldt’s son. And as he came to know San Francisco, Affeldt also came to learn more about people who had previously frightened him so much that he literally hid from the public. As the AP reports:

The ex-military brat said Monday he was so uncomfortable in San Francisco that he would seclude himself. ”I didn’t leave my hotel room when we came to play the Giants or A’s. I didn’t want to go out or see anyone,” he said. ”There was a profession of being wrong. I’ve come to that from a deep angle. I’ll probably get a lot of flak from the church for it, but I believe I’m right.”…

”There’s a chapter in there of me coming to San Francisco and being hesitant because I had homophobia, and now I don’t,” he said. ”I see more San Francisco as a city of love and a city of passion and compassion. It’s unbelievable this city. To see that and to have my heart change as a city I didn’t ever want to come to, to a city that I’m so thankful I’m going to be part of for a long time, it talks about that. For me, it was an awesome deal.”

We normally think about sports in terms of their ability to give different kinds of people the opportunity to excel, and through that athletic success, to disprove stereotypes about, say, the masculinity of gay men, or the temperament of African-Americans. But sports also put us in the stands with people who are different from us, and take young men and women to places that they might never have been able to afford to go, or brave enough to go, on their own, and expose them to ideas and people they might otherwise have never encountered. Someone like Chris Kluwe might have come into the NFL a straight ally, but if Major League Baseball turned Affeldt into one, and specifically into someone who is publicly reconciling his Christian faith and his renunciation of homophobia, that speaks to the power of professional sports to change minds in a very different ways.

Tracking and Analyzing Energy Legislation Across the US

A new online database created by Colorado State University's (CSU) Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE) aims to serve anyone interested in clean energy legislation in any state in the U.S., or even those who are crafting policy themselves.

VRZ: The custom track bike you can (almost) 3D print

Oil Rigs Make Bad Neighbors: Americans Harmed By Oil And Gas Drilling, Seek To Be Heard

A coalition of people who live and work near the drilling rigs that have allowed the U.S. to see incredible booms in oil and gas production is in Washington, D.C. this week demanding that both government and industry be held accountable when drilling causes health and environmental problems.

Members of the “Stop the Frack Attack” coalition held a forum yesterday because, as their website states:

Impacted communities [are] “experts” schooled in the curriculum of hard knocks doled out by the oil and gas industry.

In total, 16 people spoke at the forum representing eight different states. They included ranchers, mothers, librarians, nurses, and former industry employees. They came from various political backgrounds — in fact, one speaker held up the Constitution, the Bible, and his badge from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this year to relate how he has pled with Republicans to help communities pushed to the wayside by oil and gas companies.

All of the speakers described the impacts of oil and natural gas drilling on their health and property. For example, Kristi Mogen, whose community in Wyoming was evacuated after a well blowout in April 2012, spoke of her two daughters and husband who suffered nosebleeds and other health effects afterwards. And Rod Brueske of Longmont, Colorado explained how his “American dream was shattered by multinational companies” after a natural gas well across the street from his farm released chemicals into the air.

This is an important moment for oil and natural gas policy in Washington, D.C.  The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week is holding the final two of its three recent forums on natural gas policy issues. Of the 36 witnesses invited to share their opinions about natural gas in the U.S., none are citizens from affected communities.

And, last week, the Department of Energy announced the approval of a second facility to export natural gas to other counties, while the Department of the Interior released rules governing hydraulic fracturing on public lands that lack basic public right-to-know measures.

A new report released from the Center for American Progress shows that the five largest oil companies earned more than $30 billion in profits in just the first quarter of 2013. Put a different way, in only one minute these companies make more than “what 95 percent of American households earn in an entire year.”

And yet, citizens living near drilling rigs have to deal directly with the costs of drilling. As Jon Fenton, a rancher in Wyoming who admitted he hadn’t been on an airplane until six years ago when he began working on behalf of his community stated at the forum yesterday, “It’s us who have to bear that burden…but now I know that there are things worth fighting for.”

What Amazon’s Kindle Worlds Program Means For The Relationship Between Authors And Their Creations

Much has been made of the fact that E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel about a wealthy industrialist into BDSM and the young college graduate who falls for him, started out as Twilight fan fiction, and became a phenomenon once James changed the names. But she was hardly the first writer to hone her chops in fan fiction: Cassandra Clare, who started out in various fandoms, had a young adult fiction hit with her Mortal Instruments series, which has now spawned a movie adaptation with a $60 million budget. The Star Wars Expanded Universe is a professionalized version of fan fiction, giving authors space, within specific guidelines, to build out new stories and characters within a preexisting world. And given how many people have spent so many hours laboring over their keyboards for so many years, maybe the really surprising thing is that someone hasn’t figured out a way to monetize their work without changing the names or making them invent new stories before.

That changed yesterday, when Amazon announced its Kindle Worlds program, which is cleverly set up to benefit both the creators of original content and the people who write original stories set in the worlds invented by those creators and makes use of their characters. Authors of fan fiction published and sold through the Kindle Worlds program will be paid a royalty rate of 35 percent for works longer than 10,000 words, and 20 percent for short stories between 5,000 and 10,000 words. It’s not quite clear what percentage or flat fee the original creators of that licensed content will receive. But Amazon suggests that most of the pieces sold through the program will be priced in between $.99 and $3.99, though I can see those figures getting higher if Amazon gets its hands on some of the popular, book-length projects that have circulated in various fandoms for years.

Works can get rejected from the program–Amazon’s reserving the right to kick out submissions that provide a “poor customer experience,” and the guidelines for the program say it won’t accept pornographic material, which constitutes a significant percentage of fan fiction, work that uses racial slurs, employs excessive violence, or relies on heavily profane speech. And perhaps the biggest constraint right now is what fictional universes it’s possible for writers to work in. Kindle Worlds debuted with the rights to some of the content from Warner Bros. Television Group’s Alloy Entertainment, a notorious content factory, including Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and The Vampire Diaries.

It makes sense that Kindle Worlds starts with content from Alloy, a publishing house with a highly-defined style where authors have been known to be assigned to projects cooked up because they seem likely to sell well, and to adapt well for film and television, as proved to be true for the three properties that are kicking off the Kindle Worlds universe. And while Amazon’s announcement of the program said that they’d be announcing many new licenses for fan fiction writers to work in, I would bet that it’ll be difficult for the program to get access to some of the properties that have inspired particularly lively fan fiction communities, like Harry Potter or the West Wing. It might make sense that Alloy’s authors, who are part of a profit-oriented program, don’t have much anxiety about other people playing in the universes that they built out. But authors who are more proprietary about their characters might be more twitchy about the prospect of other people getting paid to play in the worlds that they created. I can see someone like Charlaine Harris, who is ending her Southern Vampire series because she feels the universe is wrung out, and is under enormous and irrational pressure from fans to continue, wanting to definitively close off the world they created.

The question, then, will be whether standard author contracts make it easy for publishing houses to sign the works they publish over to Kindle Worlds, or whether this is a provision they’re going to have to negotiate as an addendum, and find standard language for in the future. And it’ll be interesting to see which authors decide they’re interested in participating and which hold out, in part as an indication of how proprietary authors feel about their creations. It could be very strange to see authors of original works get eclipsed by writers playing in the worlds other people have created as has, to a certain extent, been true with Fifty Shades of Grey.