Challenging the Drilling Ban in Shallow Waters

  • The drillers say there’s a big difference between BP’s Deepwater Horizon, drilling at 5000 feet, and the rigs they operate in water less than a thousand feet. (Photo courtesy of Jann CC-BY)

Some smaller companies want to keep drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports… a group called the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition says its members’ rigs are different than the BP operation that’s polluting the Gulf.

Transcript

Some smaller companies want to keep drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports… a group called the Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition says its members’ rigs are different than the BP operation that’s polluting the Gulf.

The drillers want the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to lift the moratorium on drilling in the shallow waters. In an article for Greenwire, Mike Soraghan reports… they’re getting support in letters from members of Congress.

“They’ve got about ten senators that have signed on and about 50 House members, including Ken Salazar’s brother who’s a member of Congress from Colorado, John Salazar.”

The drillers say there’s a big difference between BP’s Deepwater Horizon, drilling at 5000 feet… and the rigs they operate in water less than a thousand feet.

“They would argue that what you’ve heard in the past few weeks from BP officials is, you know, if this was in 200 feet of water, we’ve could have dealt with it a long time ago.”

Interior Secretary Salazar is to send the White House a report on the drilling moratorium by this Friday – the same day President Obama will be visiting Louisiana.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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More Oceanic Garbage Patches Found

  • Marine researcher Marcus Eriksen says the plastic packaging that wraps nearly all consumer products is killing some marine animals.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA Marine Debris Program)

A giant field of plastic debris is floating in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean. Now researchers are finding more of these garbage patches in other Oceans. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A giant field of plastic debris is floating in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean. Now researchers are finding more of these garbage patches in other Oceans. Mark Brush has more:

Researchers say there are ocean currents that sort of swirl around like water in a toilet bowl. There called oceanic gyres.

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation was one of the groups that documented the problem in the North Pacific Ocean. This year they sailed to the gyres in the North Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean.

They found miles and miles of plastic fishing line, milk crates, spoons and forks, and bits of plastic bags.

Marcus Eriksen is with the group:

Eriksen: I challenge you to walk into Wal-Mart or a K-Mart and find a product that’s not made from plastic, packaged or labeled with plastic. And we’re finding more and more of this debris being lost onto the ground washing down rivers and streams out to sea.

Eriksen says the plastic is killing some marine animals. Fish, birds, turtles, and whales get tangled up in the mess – or they mistake it for food.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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CO2 Eats at Ocean Creatures

  • Healthy Reef Systems May Be a Thing of The Past(Photo courtesy of Mikael Häggström)

Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. When the pH gets too low, it dissolves the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Transcript

** The story as originally broadcast incorrectly referred to the publication as “Natural Geoscience.” It should be “Nature Geoscience.”

Some scientists think we might be headed for a mass extinction event
in the oceans. When carbon dioxide gets released into the atmosphere,
a lot of that CO2 soaks into the oceans. That makes the water more
acidic. It can dissolve the skeletons of
animals like coral and mussels. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Fifty-five million years ago, a mass extinction happened when the
oceans became too acidic.

Richard Feely is a chemical oceanographer for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration. He says that today’s ocean acidification
is happening too quickly for many species to adjust.

“Over the last 200 years we’ve seen a 30-percent increase in acidity
of the oceans, and about six percent of that increase of acidity of
the oceans has been in the last 15 years.”

Researchers at the University of Bristol in England ran simulations of
the acidification processes 55 million years ago and today. They found
that acidification is happening ten times faster these days than it
did before the prehistoric mass extinction.

That could mean that if we don’t slow our release of CO2 into the
atmosphere, life in our oceans could crash within a century or two.
The study is published in the journal of Nature Geoscience.

For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Toxic 100 Companies

  • A layer of smog over upstate New York at sunset on October 21, 2000 (Photo courtesy of the Earth Science and Image Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center)

Researchers have identified the top corporate
air polluters in the country. Mark Brush reports:

Transcript

Researchers have identified the top corporate
air polluters in the country. Mark Brush reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency identifies what factories around the country are
polluting. But sometimes it’s hard to know who owns those factories.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts sorted that out. They name the
companies on their Toxic 100 list. Turns out – a lot of the companies that make the most
money, are often making the most pollution.

DuPont, Nissan Motor, Archer Daniels Midland, the Bayer Group, and Dow Chemical
top the list.

Michael Ash is the co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute. He says
everyone has the right to know who is polluting their air.

“So in terms of the citizen seeing this report, I hope that she or he could use this as a tool
for thinking about exposure in her own community and to limit that exposure.”

But to limit your exposure – Ash says you first have to know what company is
responsible.

For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Moving Away From Tail Pipe Tests

There’s a new trend in how states with air quality problems carry out
vehicle emissions testing. Some say it will allow cars that give off
harmful pollutants to stay on the road. The Great Lake’s Radio Consortium’s
Amanda Vinicky reports:

Transcript

There’s a new trend in how states with air quality problems carry out vehicle emissions testing. Some say it will allow cars that give off harmful pollutants to stay on the road. The Great Lake’s Radio Consortium’s Amanda Vinicky reports:


States that are required to test emissions usually test a car’s tailpipe. Illinois is switching to “onboard diagnostics.” That means the vehicle’s onboard computer gives testers all the information they need.


But older cars don’t have computers, so the state’s exempting all cars made before 1996 from testing. Brian Urbaszewski is with the American Lung Association.


“When you stop testing them, people aren’t even going to know their cars are polluting. Or, even if they know, they’re going to be less likely to fix it because there’s no penalty involved.”


The Lung Association says the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s own documents show that air quality will get worse after the 2007 change.


State and federal EPA officials admit that’s true, but they say fewer of those cars will be on the road each year. They say computer testing is better because it detects problems before they happen and it’s cheaper.


For the GLRC, I’m Amanda Vinicky.

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