Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
RESOLVED: Shareholders request that an independent committee of the Board prepare a report (at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information) on the environmental damage that would result from the company’s expanding oil sands operations in the Canadian boreal forest. The...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Several new reports came out today all with a common message: tar sands is not the right choice for our energy future. These reports are especially timely since the United States is considering a proposal to build yet another...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
The BP deep oil rig accident in the Gulf Coast is a tragic example of the very high dangers and costs of going after fuels that in the past we considered too difficult, dangerous or expensive to access. I have...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today, I’ll be speaking at the Green Jobs, Good Jobs conference in DC. When we first envisioned the topic for the U.S.-Canada climate policy panel, we did not realize that we would be in the midst of a political impasse...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
We all watched with horror as the oil rig accident took the lives of eleven workers of the Deepwater Horizon rig and injured more. The still uncapped oil spill is growing and heading on a path of devastation...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today a letter went from 17 Members of the European Parliament to the European Commission in protest of tar sands oil. This is the second letter protesting tar sands oil coming from Parliamentarians in the past half year and it...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Environmental Justice , Health and the Environment , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
It is depressing that a topic as vast as 50 square miles of tar sands oil tailings waste lagoons from strip-mining the Boreal forest should be even murkier than the toxic waters stored in them. In order to clear the...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Late this afternoon, the State Department made available on its webpage its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The DEIS is oddly dated one week from now and it seems as though no...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Last summer, Audubon Magazine reporter Barry Yeoman travelled north to the open pit mines in Alberta, Canada where a dense form of oil is dug from the earth like coal. He saw the devastation caused by these tar sands mines...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday in Canada, one of the tar sands oil giants went to court to defend itself. The charge: killing 1,600 ducks. The oil company: the aptly named Syncrude a joint venture whose owners include ConcoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Murphy Oil....
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Many people think of Canada as large tracts of pristine forests and a strong environmental ethic. Indeed, the Canadian people and provincial governments such as Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia are working hard to fight climate change. Yet, the...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Over the next few days, Canadian provincial leaders are visiting Washington, D.C. for the National Governors Association conference – finding common ground with their neighbors to the south that they are not finding with Canadian tar sands provinces and the...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
With Elizabeth Shope, NRDC advocate One of Canada’s largest pipeline companies, TransCanada, is proposing to build a 1,800-mile-long pipeline that would cut through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas (map). This high-pressure pipeline, the Keystone XL, would carry the...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday, the State Department issued a permit for a new transboundary pipeline that will bring heavy tar sands oil to the U.S. Midwest for upgrading and refining. The United States is preparing for the Copenhagen meeting having made a commitment...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
From a birds eye view, the Syncrude tar sands mining waste ponds stretch out glistening attractively in the sun. On a long migration north to nest, I can see how 500 ducks would decide to land on one of...
