Green Business

Sometime in the next few days, BP says it will officially launch what it is calling a "Top Kill" operation.

Oil continues to gush from a broken pipe in the Gulf of Mexico, and, while BP, the company responsible, maintains that only 5,000 barrels are flowing into the water every day, one group of scientists thinks the leak could be dumping as much as 100,000 barrels a day.

Our friend Leilani Münter just sent us an update. She has spent the past week on the Gulf Coast, seeing the oil spill first hand, taking photographs, and talking to fishermen.

She says things are bad down there, and she has a strong message for BP CEO Tony Hayward:

I think I speak for all of the American people when I say that your cavalier and dismissive attitude towards this oil spill is not making you any friends. Maybe you should spend a little less time doing media interviews trying to reduce the perceived impact of your oil spill and instead spend more time trying to plug the leak and cleaning up the mess that you have made in our Gulf.

"Green jobs" - high-quality employment in renewable energy and other environmentally sustainable sectors - are uplifting communities while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, jobs in fossil fuel industries, particularly coal, continue to decline.

Worldwatch reports regularly on the growing field of green jobs across the globe.

For the past several years, my colleagues and I have been working on the water and energy connection -- specifically, the California Energy Commission’s conclusion that water systems consume 19 percent of California’s total electricity use.   Increasingly, this connection is shaping the thinking of water agencies. 

Florida residents may soon come face to face with what may become one of the worst oil spills in history.

Yahoo News reported today that the crude oil gushing out of British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon well may soon be swept up in currents that will take it through the Florida Keys and up Florida's Atlantic Coast. In about 10 days, sunbathers and beach bums in Palm Beach will think twice before donning bikinis.

An outpouring of support for climate legislation followed yesterday's introduction of legislative text by Senators Kerry and Lieberman. Here is a sample:

Drive south down Louisiana Route 1 to the tip of the bayou and you enter the heart of shrimping country. Some of the world’s finest seafood comes from these delicate grass and reed marshes that stretch as far as the eye can see. These are the great fertile estuaries that provide the nutrients for the bountiful seafood of the gulf.

But man has made its mark here.

BP has gone on the news and taken responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They have promised to send $25 million to Florida to help the state prepare for the oil that is about to hit its coastline. They have even tried offering fishermen immediate $5,000 payments and asking them to waive their rights to sue for more later.

In other words, BP's attempted PR cleanup is underway.

Oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Weather is making cleanup difficult. The US federal government talking tough. Rush Limbaugh is spreading ridiculous rumors. And BP is taking responsibility, at least partially.

On Monday, BP's CEO Tony Hayward made an appearance on NBC's Today Show. "It wasn't our accident," he said, "but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up, and that's what we intend to do."

As oil gushed out of an underwater oil well ruptured by a deadly explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) published an essay on April 26 by AEI scholar Steven Hayward that called the environmental threats from off shore oil "largely obsolete."

And no, that’s not out of context. Here is the full paragraph: