Rise up, Louisiana!
Many Louisianans remain sore over a recent column suggesting, half in jest, that the state become a U.S. protectorate. I was accusing state officials, and by extension the electorate, of groveling before oil money — at the cost of despoiling their natural paradise.
Seeing local fishermen, having been ruined by the BP well disaster, also demand more deepwater drilling has become a rather depressing element of the reportage from the Gulf. 
But now we read of a churchwoman, Patty Whitney of Terrebonne Parish, talking back at the despotism of oil. So deep is the intimidation that friends call her brave for questioning the oil culture at public forums.
Whitney said that one of her brothers argued (as have countless readers), “America needs oil.”
And she responds:
Then let them drill. Let them drill in Yellowstone Park, in the Grand Canyon, in Puget Sound, off Martha’s Vineyard. Let them mess up their own places instead of just drilling in my beautiful Louisiana.
Boy, does she ever have it right.
And a note to all my Pelican State correspondents who take credit for heating my house in winter: I’d rather have their shrimp than their oil.
Tags: Arizona, energy, environment, Louisiana, Massachusetts, oil, Washington state, Wyoming
The survival of the meanest in the city backyard
Now for something completely different. . .
My new column describes the brutality of the birdbath — the fight for survival underneath the pastoral scene of a city garden.
WILD KINGDOM IN THE CITY BACKYARD
Tags: cities, environment, nature
Oil Addiction and the Art of the Passable
While cap-and-trade is tangled in a political brawl, there’s one excellent piece of energy legislation that most people agree on — the bi-partisan bill to promote electric cars. Let’s pass it fast:
Tags: energy, environment, oil, Washington
An apology to Joe Barton
After BP was pressured into putting up $20 billion for its environmental sins, Texas Rep. Joe Barton could have stayed silent – like the streetwalker who lies low after a roundup of the Johns.
But there’s no hypocrisy in the man about how he makes his living. Barton raises prodigious sums from the oil and gas industry — $265,000 in the 2008 election cycle and another $177,000 in this one, so far. When it comes to his benefactors, he has a heart of gold.
With great emotion, Barton apologized to BP, accusing the Obama administration of shaking down the company to compensate victims of the Gulf oil disaster. Hey, it’s his job to shake down oil companies.
For shining a light on this arrangement in a politically unhelpful way, Barton got beat up by fellow Republicans. Party leaders demanded that he retract his statement, or else. And so he apologized for his apology to BP.
To these expressions of regret I’d like to add my own apology — to Joe Barton. Barton is being persecuted for honesty. He defended the nature of his business without putting on pumps, pearls and a pillbox hat. Thank you, congressman.
POSTSCRIPT: We note that the 7th annual Joe Barton Family Fishing Trip fundraiser is still scheduled for October. Wonder where they’ll go for fish. Greenland, I suspect.
Tags: BP disaster, environment, Louisiana, oil, Texas
Louisiana can’t take care of itself
The time has come:
MAKE LOUISIANA A U.S. PROTECTORATE
Tags: environment, Louisiana, politics, Washington
Louisiana: Fat, happy and in constant pain
Baton Rouge September, 2008
Louisiana is said to have the fattest people in America and also the happiest.
Meanwhile, the pain never stops.
It’s time that the people started controlling that part of the pain they have power over. Time to get its economy off oil. Which is going to take some doing. Gov. Bobby Jindal has just asked Obama to lift the moratorium on deep water drilling, even as a deep-water drilling crisis threatens the state’s very future.
Tags: culture, energy, environment, Louisiana
Blaming Obama for oil disaster
Why are both the left and right criticizing Obama for not instantly fixing the BP oil disaster? My new column delves into that question:
BLAMING OBAMA FOR NOT BEING A GOD
Tags: environment, Louisiana, Obama, oil, Washington
Wrong, wrong, wrong on sun screens
Heavens to Helios!
Most everything I believed about sun screens is wrong, according to the Environmental Working Group’s report on same. The EWG report found many of the makers’ claims specious, and even more troubling, some of the products’ ingredients dangerous.
So here’s something new to worry about over the Memorial Day weekend.
Tags: cosmetics, environment
Yes, offshore drilling is an awful idea
A trip to the supermarket fish counter broke my heart. There among the many culinary gifts of the sea was one that I might not see again for a long, long time: Gulf shrimp.
That inspired a column arguing that there are values not measured in dollars. And understanding that some people simply can’t think that way, I made a case for values measured in dollars that are not tied to oil. Here is Why Offshore Drilling is a Terrible Idea.
