We’ve been writing about Line 5, Enbridge’s 67-year-old twin pipelines under the straights of Mackinac for 5 years now: June 23, 2015 — Enbridge Line 5 pipeline beneath Straits of Mackinac – too old, unsafe, and a threat to the Great Lakes September 10, 2015 — As protesters call for Straits of Mackinac oil pipeline to be shut down, Enbridge […]

On June 21st of this year, an explosion rocked the Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery in Philadelphia causing a massive amount of damage to the facility. The gigantic fire ball was captured on video by @1NiceTownBean: @6abc @CBSPhilly @FOX29philly Philadelphia energy Solutions Refining Complex at about 4:15 am pic.twitter.com/vK1Vs2MEfR — hood’s favorite vegan (@1nicetownbean) June 21, 2019 This explosion was […]

Faced with the prospect of citizens in Michigan having the audacity, the gall, the nerve, the chutzpah to have a voice in how our state is run, Republicans decided it was high time to make it harder to amend the constitution or to put citizen initiatives on the ballot in our fine state. Today the House passed S.B. 776, a […]

A bill to shield oil and gas companies from having information about details of their pipelines and other infrastructure from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests was introduced as House Bill 4540 last May. It sat in the House Committee on Oversight and Ethics without action until last December. At that point, it was clear that supporters on the the […]

I’m adding my voice to the chorus of those who call for Governor Snyder and the legislature to protect the Great Lakes as required by law and as demanded in Liz Kirkwood’s excellent op-ed in The Detroit News this week. Kirkwood’s study group, For Love of Water (FLOW), delivered compelling arguments that Enbridge Oil’s 62 year-old oil pipeline 5 that […]

Senate Democrats, in a very weird bid to help Democrat Mary Landrieu’s reelection bid, allowed a vote on the mythologized Keystone XL pipeline yesterday. It failed by one vote. And that’s a very Good Thing. As I have written about before, the much-touted job creation promised by the pipeline’s ignorant or lying proponents, is wildly inflated: Let’s take the first […]

This past week a federal report came out saying the carbon emissions will not be increased by allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to run through the USA. This will rejuvenate efforts by the Big Oil proponents of the pipeline to keep up their political pressure. But this argument has, in my opinion, never been about increased carbon emissions. It’s about […]

Just a totally harmless cloud of heavy metal-laden black dust, no problem at all The large piles of petcoke that have been stored on the banks of the Detroit River delivered a little surprise to the residents of Windsor across the border last weekend in the form of a thick black cloud of dust kicked up by a storm. Here’s […]

The misinformation is rampant. Get informed.

The two biggest lies perpetuated by the fossil oil industry (“Big Oil”) and their corporatist minions in decision-making roles in our government are that TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline will bring thousands and thousands of jobs to the U.S. and, perhaps more importantly, will increase our national security by making us less reliant on oil imported from the Middle East and other foreign countries that aren’t allies like Canada.

Both are complete and utter lies and there is solid proof to dispel both.

Much, much more after the jump.

Big Oil subsidies are, simply put, indefensible

Conservatives who are dead set against making any investments in new technologies that can help propel our country and its economy forward are famous for using the argument that this is “picking winners and losers”. The irony is that, in order to even be considered for federal government subsidies, new technologies — like renewable energy projects, for example — must have already proven themselves as winners that are simply in need of a kickstart to make them affordable and profitable.

With negotiations over the upcoming sequester — automatic, across the board budget cuts — ready to dominate the headlines, both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Obama administration are suggesting that it’s time to end one the most glaring examples “picking winners” that we have in this country today: $4 billion in subsidies to Big Oil companies.

More after the jump.

It’s good to be the king Not only is Paul Ryan’s “Path to Poverty” budget going to give rich people tax breaks and cut benefits to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while maintaining current levels of military spending, it does something else, too. The GOP budget preserves massive subsidies to Big Oil companies while cutting investments in renewable energy. [I]t […]