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 , 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 , 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 Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
The political opposition in Manitoba, Canada has revived a proposal to run a major hydropower transmission line directly through the boreal forest on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. It’s an odd choice for an election issue. The current...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Today the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Cornell Lab and many others released the second annual report letting us know how birds are doing in the United States. The report focused on impacts of climate change and it is...
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 , 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 Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
Bird watching is the number one hobby in America. And when we flock together, bird-lovers have a strong voice in protecting birds and bird habitat. That is why NRDC has joined together with Cornell Lab of Ornithology to create a...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
I have been working on U.S. - Canada environmental issues for almost ten years - and many of my colleagues have done so for much longer. We have close and daily coordination among environmental groups on both sides of our...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Last week the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) released a new report The Canadian Oil Sands: Energy Security vs. Climate Change. The report attempts to address a debate about whether the United States needs further expansion of tar sands oil...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) consulting firm released a new report today about growth in the Canadian tar sands. The report acknowledges many of the environmental problems with tar sands, but then still somehow concludes that we need this source...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Moving Beyond Oil , Nuclear Weapons, Waste and Energy , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
We greeted Canadian Environment Minister Prentice in DC at the start of this week. Minister Prentice has been a strong proponent of expansion of Canadian tar sands oil development, despite the high global warming pollution, and the extensive damage to...
Posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz in Moving Beyond Oil , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming
When President Obama travels to Canada tomorrow, he will be met by cheering crowds eager to greet him along with a welcoming banner from Greenpeace that reads "climate leaders don't buy tar sands oil." Canadian tar sands oil development strip-mines...
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...
