TagAlaska

The long hot summer…in Alaska

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Once every few weeks or so, it’s a good idea to remind yourself that man-made global warming isn’t just some abstract idea supported by nearly 100 percent of the world’s climate scientists (even if the idea is, of course, supported by nearly 100 percent of the world’s climate scientists.) The reality is that all over the world, in many different ways, climate change is...

Climate change and the new civil disobedience

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Friday marked the 86th anniversary of Mr. Martin Luther King’s birth (even though the national holiday will be on Monday). As time marches along, the brilliance of his efforts to bring freedom and civil rights to African-Americans during the 1950s and 1960s grows brighter and brighter. The cornerstone of his campaign to end desegregation in the Deep South was civil disobedience — the...

RIP, Arctic drilling…but is it too late?

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There’s been a lot of news on the environment this week — some of it very good and some of it very bad. Like the old joke, let’s start with the good news first. Since the dog days of summer, when disappointed protesters called “kayaktavists” watched Shell’s massive drilling rig depart Seattle’s harbor for the Arctic waters off Alaska,developments on that...

The good guys win on Arctic drilling

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A band of ferocious protesters called “kayactivists” were unable to stop it, at first. And the Obama administration, which had the power to at least delay it and probably halt it, didn’t bother to try. But in the end, it turned out that time and Mother Nature have accomplished what environmentalists at first did not. Offshore drilling in the Arctic waters off Alaska is dead for...

Finally some good news in the fight against Arctic drilling

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It’s easy to get discouraged about the future of environmentalism when you’re following news of the 2016 presidential race. After all, with an astounding 17 “major” candidates throwing their hats into the ring, and with only nationally televised debate so far, the Republican Party is drawing the lion’s share of the news coverage. And when it comes to the fate of...

Obama’s hypocritical Alaska trip

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President Obama landed in Alaska last night to begin a 3-day trip though the 49th state, his first extensive visit there since entering the White House. The trip is fascinating, important, very historic — and highly hypocritical. Most of the visit is dedicated to highlighting the problem of climate change, and what better backdrop than Alaska, where glaciers are melting amid record high...

A new chapter in the insanity of Arctic drilling begins

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So far, 2015 has been a mostly gloomy year in the arena of fighting back against fossil fuel. Neither the plunging prices for oil and gas nor the growing realization — even embraced this week in the corridors of the Vatican — that greenhouse gases threaten the health and welfare of entire planet have made much of a dent in our mad rush to drill deep under the sea, in bitter...

Can citizens in kayaks stop Shell when President Obama won’t?

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Everyone knows that drilling offshore for oil in the unforgiving waters of the Arctic is a fool’s errand. Three summers ago, Shell’s initial foray into this extreme quest for crude oil was an unmitigated disaster, ending with the bizarre yet tragically predictable saga of its oil rig the Kulluk breaking loose and slamming into the rocky coastline of Alaska. Now, Shell has been making...

Why are we still discussing the folly of Arctic drilling?

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William Faulkner once wrote, famously: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Faulkner — who’d probably be appalled at the environmental havoc that Big Oil has wreaked upon his native state of Mississippi over the years — could easily have been describing the saga of British Petroleum. Here on the Gulf Coast, we are forever talking about BP’s...

25 years to the day after Exxon Valdez, oil is still spilling…and killing

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History keep repeating, and not in a good way. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez accident and massive spill in Alaska, which for years was the standard by which all oil spills were judged…until BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster came along. Ironically, the four-year anniversary of that accident — which killed 11 people and spewed 5 million barrels of oil into the...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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