Regulation
Reforming the Reforms: Building Safe Alternatives into Safety Standards
Chemical policy reform is heating up at the federal level. Senator Lautenberg has introduced a comprehensive reform bill in the Senate, and Congressmen Rush and Waxman are circulating a discussion draft bill in the House. In their current form, both the Lautenberg bill and the Rush/Waxman discussion draft rely upon risk-based safety standards to protect against toxic …
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CONTINUE READINGThree Ingredients of Disaster
The organizational failures that led to the Gulf blowout were similar to those that resulted in the failure of the New Orleans levees during Katrina.
CONTINUE READINGNot So Good At Safety But Great Lobbyists
It’s no surprise that the petroleum industry has political heft, but the number (courtesy of the Times) are impressive: The oil and gas industry is a formidable presence in Washington. It spent more on federal lobbying last year than all but two other industries, with $174.8 million in lobbying expenditures, according to the Center for …
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CONTINUE READINGEngineering Life Itself
I was interested to learn that Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, up the hill from where I work, has the world’s first department of synthetic biology. Berkeley’s bioengineering department also has a program focusing on systems and synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is genetic engineering but on a more ambitious scale, explains a very useful NY Times …
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CONTINUE READINGWe’ve Known the Risks in the Gulf for Forty Years
We’ve known all along that offshore drilling in the Gulf placed at risk exceptionally valuable and sensitive coastal areas. We need look no further than a forty-year-old court decision on Gulf oil drilling, which made the dangers abundantly clear. In 1971, President Nixon announced a new energy plan involving greatly expanded offshore drilling. In a …
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CONTINUE READINGMMS needs more than a facelift
The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has brought new attention to the Minerals Management Service, the obscure branch of the Department of Interior responsible for overseeing offshore oil and gas production. MMS has been on the hot seat together with BP, Transocean, and Halliburton as Congressional committees and others have begun to …
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CONTINUE READINGHeads in sand, oil in water
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. As oil drifts on and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, forcing the closure of wildlife refuges and more fishing grounds, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has called a temporarily halt to new offshore drilling while his staff prepare a report on the disaster and even Republicans in Congress are calling for new …
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CONTINUE READINGAnother Lesson from the BP Disaster: The Need for Better Risk Assessment
Apparently, the lease grant to BP was exempted from environmental review, according to the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin: The decision by the department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP’s lease at Deepwater Horizon a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 — and BP’s lobbying efforts just 11 …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Looming Political Battle Over AB 32 & California’s Environmental & Economic Future
Today, proponents of an initiative measure designed to “suspend” California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) are scheduled to submit signatures to state election officials designed to qualify the measure for the November 2010 ballot. Bankrolled by two Texas-based oil companies, Tesoro Corporation and Valero Energy Corporation, the initiative measure would preclude …
CONTINUE READINGA great case for worst case analysis
Cross-posted at CPRBlog. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is the nation’s look-before-you-leap environmental law, intended to make sure that we understand what environmental problems we might result before we act. To that end, federal agencies must prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) before they take, authorize, or provide funding for actions that may have …
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