An earlier post on this blog pressed Google to donate money it was getting from BP for AdWords and search results around the Gulf oil catastrophe.  And full disclosure that Elizabeth Stillman, who happens to be married to me, independently came up with the idea and inspired the original CLF Scoop post.

Some people think that making this request of Google is  a good idea – including a certain Todd C who has launched a Facebook campaign aimed at this goal.

Taking action on this kind of thing is great – and almost as good an idea as calling your Senators and asking them where they have stood on maintaining the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and moving forward new comprehensive legislation to address our climate and energy crisis.

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA)  issued a statement about President Obama’s speech calling for a complete clean up of the oil spill and enactment of comprehensive energy and climate legislation that concluded with the following paragraph:

“Finally, the President called on America to begin a transition to cleaner, renewable energy. As people all across our nation watch the oil pouring into the Gulf, they are asking ‘isn’t there a better way?’ The answer is yes, there is a better way, and we must begin to lay that foundation now. Oil has paid tremendous dividends to our country. It helped us win World War II, it helped create an industrial revolution and it built the greatest middle class the world has ever seen. But, it’s time has come and is moving past us, and the transition to clean renewable energy is one our country has to begin immediately.”

The source of these powerful words is very important.  According to the Center for Responsive Politics Senator Landrieu has banked $751,744 from oil and gas interests since 1989.

The big question now is whether Senator Landrieu and other past friends of big oil are truly seeing the light and will spurn that greasy embrace in favor of clean energy and climate protection.

Writers on this blog have not been the only ones to take note of BP buying “AdWords’ from Google.  This PR strategy means that a search for “Gulf Oil Spill” or a related topic yields a page with a paid link from BP right at the top.

So here is a suggestion for Mr. Brin, Mr. Page, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Cerf and the rest of the leadership of Google:  Announce that revenue from BP will be donated to a good cause.  The options for what to do with the money are depressingly vast.

You guys decide.  Give it to advocacy groups like ours who work on preventing this kind of disaster and promoting clean energy.  Give it to the “Keeper” groups who are the first line of defense against the spill.  Give it to a local charity on the Gulf, like the this one in New Orleans, or someone else you find.  You could even just funnel it out the door as a grant to build energy efficiency or renewable energy through Google.org.  Or divvy it up among these different causes.

The point is – we are all accomplices in the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because or gasoline consumption drives forward offshore drilling, tar sands development and similar dangerous behavior but Google has a chance here to shed a little bit of that accomplice liability by giving away some of BP’s money.

And of course if Google announces it is taking this step the rest of us will feel compelled to get on our computers and use Google to search for “Gulf Oil Spill” and click on that BP ad, sending the money to a good cause – transforming Google from accomplice into a good guy, a conduit for donations.

If you agree that Google should donate it’s revenue from BP, click the “like” button below to share this message with your friends on Facebook.

While the oil continues to gush out of the wounded well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico a group is gathered here in Boston today to try to head off development of an important tool that would help move us away from oil.  In fact, these folks want us to shift to an even dirtier fuel that requires even more energy to extract than oil and has a whole different set of bad side effects for the public health and the environment.

The group in question is the Consumer Energy Alliance an infamous “astroturf” group that acts as a public face for the oil industry.  The fuel they are promoting, working with certain elements of Canadian provincial government, is oil produced by a messy and fuel intensive process from a gooey mixture of sand, clay, water and a tar-like substance called bitumen known as “oil sands” or “tar sands.”

And the policy they are opposing is the Low Carbon Fuel Standard – a reasonable policy that would gradually reduce the “carbon content” of the fuels that power our vehicles, helping to make the transition to cleaner fuels like clean bio-fuels and electricity from renewable sources.

The oil industry does not like the Low Carbon Fuel Standard because it is a tool for finally beginning the process of phasing out their enormously profitable product as the sole fuel for our transportation sector.  And the folks in the business of squeezing oil out of sand REALLY don’t like this standard because their product is really ghastly from a global warming perspective – putting at least 3 to 4 times as much global warming pollution into the atmosphere than conventional oil.   And just as the citizens and wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico suffer from continuing harm from oil production there is pollution that threatens the public health and environmental damage associated with production of this “unconventional oil” from tar sands.

A consortium of Northeastern States are working on moving the Low Carbon Fuel Standard forward.   The governors and environmental agencies of New England need to hear from their citizens that this a positive path forward and they will be hailed and supported for moving forward towards climate protection and away from dirty and dangerous oil.

Climate advocates breathed a collective sigh of relief today when the U.S. Senate rejected Senator Lisa Murkowski’s resolution to strip the EPA of its power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions with a vote of 53-47. Backed by big oil lobbyists, the defeat of the bill signified the triumph of science over politics—at least for now.

Earlier today, I discussed this ridiculous debate that occupied the Senate all day on the radio.  There was some interesting press in the run up to the vote.

And when the dust cleared, CLF issued this statement:

“The decision by the United States Senate to reject the Big Oil Bailout is a victory for science, the environment and efforts to build a new clean economy,” said Seth Kaplan, CLF’s Vice President for Policy and Climate Advocacy. “Senators Dodd and Lieberman of Connecticut, Senators Reed and Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts, Senators Leahy and Sanders of Vermont and Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire have all taken a stand against big oil and in favor of protection of our environmental, economic and public health and national security. We are hopeful that Senators Snowe and Collins of Maine, Senator Gregg of New Hampshire and Senator Brown of Massachusetts will realize they have made a mistake and join the effort to protect our environment and grow clean energy jobs.”

What is truly amazing is continuing denial about the science of climate change among the 47 senators who supported Murkowski’s resolution. The National Research Council, at the request of Congress, delivered yet another report (well, really a series of reports) that make it crystal clear that global warming is real, is caused by humans, is causing real harm and will cause very great harm unless action is taken. Meanwhile, senators and representatives continue to support initiatives that will back big polluters and limit the power of the EPA.

CLF acknowledges the 53 senators whose votes amounted to today’s victory, and thanks all of our members who responded to our Defend the Clean Air Act action alert.

New leaks?  New contamination?  Who knows?

The latest report from the Vermont Health Department is troubling.  Results from the monitoring test wells at Vermont Yankee show that the level of contamination is increasing in nearly half of the wells.  And at least one of these wells is OUTSIDE the area identified as the contaminated plume.

This news comes on top of news that soil at the site is contaminated and fish in the river are contaminated.

Pipes at the facility remain inaccessible.  There is no way to know if they are leaking.  It took over two months to find one leak.  And another leak was found just last week.

As of Saturday, Vermont Yankee is running again after a planned outage and a few mishaps.

I would feel better if they cleaned up the mess before they turned the plant back on.

Want to talk about Vermont Yankee?

Join me and other CLF staff at the River Garden in Brattleboro, VT on Thursday, June 10 from 6-8 PM for a community gathering and Q&A on Vermont Yankee.   See event details.   

Over the weekend a fish found in the Connecticut river near Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power plant was confirmed to be contaminated with strontium-90.  Only a few days before, it was revealed that strontium-90 is contaminating the soil at the Vermont Yankee site.  Strontium-90 is a dangerous radioactive substance. 

Don’t you think these events are connected?  I do.  Yet Yankee officials claim there is no connection.  The fish was four miles upstream.  Last I checked, fish swim upstream and can swim four miles.  Then they said the radiation levels are consistent with what would be present from long ago nuclear testing or Chernobyl.

Unbelievable.  There’s a saying that when you hear hoof beats, don’t think of a zebra.  It is probably a horse.  I think Vermont Yankee is seeing zebras everywhere — avoiding the obvious in hopes of avoiding responsibility.  

This is shameful.

I loved the newspaper headline that greeted me this morning.   Did we win in our request to shut the plant down until the leaks are repaired and the site is cleaned up?  Not yet.  It seems Vermont Yankee simply hasn’t figured out how to put the plug back in after refueling.  Yankee’s unexpected emergency shut down yesterday is just one of many failings that demonstrates Yankee’s incapacity to operate responsibly.

The  public hearing scheduled for tonight has been CANCELLED  – ironically due to a power outage.  

Recent news includes finding strontium-90 at the Vermont Yankee site and the NRC saying  don’t worry about the mess, it will be cleaned up when the plant closes.  As I told one reporter:

“This is a good example of lax oversight by the NRC. I expect to hear I will clean it up later from my teenager. When it comes to radioactive contamination, people in charge should be more diligent.”