Understanding Government

Tidal Farm

Less than five months after California voters strongly rejected a Republican effort to neuter the state’s commitment to renewable energy, the California legislature doubled down yesterday, advancing a bill to the governor’s desk requiring a sharp increase in the use of renewable energy. (more…)

The beauty of this article from Julia Whitty in Mother Jones is that it gives us reason to worry about the Gulf of Mexico after the BP disaster.  Worry’s not wonderful, but its cousin Ignorance is definitely a problem.  Over the summer, some odd people — people like Rush Limbaugh, who is a lot of things, but who is definitely not an ichthyologist, ornithologist, or any kind of biologist — were telling us that because the spill had dissipated on the surface, we shouldn’t be concerned (Limbaugh said “oil is natural…as natural as the ocean water is.”)  Whitty explains just how healthy it is for the planet if we do worry, and moreover, if we try to understand what’s really going on in the ocean’s depths — with the help of actual experts. (more…)

Set aside some time to read Juliet Eilperin and Scott Higham’s insightful (and long) look in the Washington Post at the culture of permissiveness that developed over many years at the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency (now disbanded) that was responsible for overseeing mining and drilling of natural resources on federally owned lands.  MMS’s “consensus-based” approach to oil regulation, beginning in the 1990s, led to a decision to end royalty payments for certain deepwater drilling leases that required larger investments by oil companies. The Deepwater Horizon was built on one of those leases.

Ever wonder why more aggressive government regulation makes sense?  Read Ian Shapira’s minute-by-minute account in the Washington Post about seafood buyers for major supermarkets who are trying to make sure Americans have fresh, safe fish to eat.  Just the hint of petroleum in the fish Americans buy every day is enough to force seafood purchasing overseas, where suppliers don’t maintain as high food safety standards as U.S. companies.  The money goes abroad.  The fish may be worse in quality and come from rapacious fish harvesting practices. (more…)