President Obama’s recently announced moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is effectively a freeze on growth in US oil production. And short of a huge influx of synthetic oil from tar sands, similar moratoriums around the world will have the same implications for world oil supply. The well that the Deepwater Horizon [...]

Will the unfolding environmental catastrophe from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico become deep-water oil’s equivalent to the Three Mile Island nuclear accident? In terms of environmental degradation and economic cost, it’s already become much more. The real legacy of Three Mile Island wasn’t what happened back in 1979, though, but [...]

America’s dream of greater energy independence is rapidly turning into an ecological nightmare. Instead of filling empty gas tanks, BP’s Deepwater Horizon well miles offshore is oozing thousands of barrels a day of oil, already covering an area over 1,900 square miles in the food-rich waters of the Gulf of Mexico. With no way of [...]

Maybe it’s a gesture to the American right, which is still seething over the recent passage of Barack Obama’s national heath care package in Congress. Or maybe it’s just soma for increasingly anxious American motorists, so they can sleep at night without wondering how long their petroleum-based lifestyles can possibly last. But either way, President [...]

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Midwestern colleagues had better think twice before banning carbon-dirty fuels such as the oil made from Canadian tar sands. If they don’t like the fuel Canada has to offer, their only other choice is to get off the road entirely. Like it or not, synthetic oil from Alberta’s tar sands [...]