Monthly Archives: November 2012

Offshore oil drilling in Virginia: undead and ugly

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Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

Drilling for oil off Virginia’s coast is once again a possibility, popping up like a zombie when we thought it was dead (again). As the New York Times reported, “Efforts are focusing on Virginia because the public, politicians in both parties and energy companies all favor opening the waters to drilling.”

It will be news to many members of the Virginia public that we favor drilling off our coast, but there’s no doubt that oil companies are itching to open the Atlantic coast to drilling rigs, and plenty of Virginia politicians make it a talking point. Senators Warner and Webb are on board, as is Senator-elect Tim Kaine. Most famously, Governor McDonnell came into office dreaming of the highways he would build when his tanker ship came in.

For oil companies, Virginia is the thin edge of the wedge. Our share of federal waters is quite small because of the odd way that boundary lines are drawn. Virginia is targeted mainly as a means of cracking the line of resistance created by other eastern states. It’s a shame so many of our politicians are eager to help in the cracking.

It used to be that when Democrats and Republicans agreed on something, that improved the odds of it being a good idea. These days, it often just means they are taking money from the same corporations. Money alone may not buy a politician’s votes, but it most certainly buys lobbyists access to politicians, and access has a way of producing votes. So perhaps the surprise is not how many politicians have jumped on the drill-baby-drill bandwagon, but how many have not.

Some naysayers, including Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Fairfax), point out that drilling off our coast is opposed by the U.S. Navy, which uses most of Virginia’s leasing area for its operations. These include testing air and surface missiles and bombs, which traditionally don’t pair well with oil rigs and tankers. (On the other hand, the Navy supports offshore wind farms, which would be located away from operations.)

Other legislators, like Congressman Bobby Scott (D-Newport News) oppose drilling because of the environmental hazards, and the danger posed to fishing and tourism.

Of course, no politician will admit to being unconcerned about the environment, including the ones who are very obviously unconcerned about the environment. This is why they say they support “environmentally safe offshore oil drilling.” The phrase is so familiar that we have come to take it for granted, but it actually bears some thinking about. Saying he supports “safe oil drilling” suggests a politician has in mind another kind of oil drilling–the unsafe kind–that he would not support.

But you’d be hard-pressed to find any restrictions on the drilling industry that the drill-baby-drill crowd supports. These politicians considered offshore drilling “environmentally safe” right up to the day millions of barrels of oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage. Drilling methods haven’t changed since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and oil spills have continued to occur in the Gulf and elsewhere.

So let’s put in a plug for Truth in Advertising. Politicians, if you think extra American oil is worth the occasional catastrophic oil spill, then say so. Pretending there will never again be another Deepwater Horizon makes you look out of touch with reality, and the fact that a significant proportion of the voters are also out of touch with reality is not an excuse.

If you’re okay with drilling, tell us your Plan B for Virginia: how you would deal with the effects of a spill that fouls our coastline, kills wildlife, and contaminates everything that lives in the ocean, over an area that could be hundreds or thousands of square miles. If winds and tides spread the contamination onto Assateague Island or into the Chesapeake Bay, what’s your plan?

The folks in our commercial and fishing industries, and all the people who live and work in beach towns, should hear you talk about how confident you are in their ability to get by for a season on government handouts; if there’s longer-lasting damage, how maybe they can move to Northern Virginia and work in retail. I’m sure you can make it sound appealing.

And if you can’t, then maybe it’s time to kill the drilling zombie for good. You may be taking money from oil companies, but your job is to look out for Virginia.

Mother Nature to be sued for copyright infringement

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Hurricane Sandy, in an image clearly copied from “The Day After Tomorrow”

To: Mother Nature, d/b/a “Hurricane Sandy”

Re: Copyright infringement

Dear Ms. Nature,

It has come to our attention that you and/or your agents have made unauthorized use of certain intellectual property belonging to our client, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation (“Fox”), including images, illustrations, plotlines, audio and video unlawfully appropriated from “The Day After Tomorrow,” a motion picture owned by Fox. This letter is to notify you that we believe your actions constitute a violation of U.S. copyright law, 17 U.S.C. § 101 et seq.

It is clear that the plotline of Hurricane Sandy has been substantially copied from portions of “The Day After Tomorrow.” The motion picture is a dramatization in which a storm of epic proportions bears down on the eastern United States, causing massive destruction and widespread flooding, including in Manhattan. Scientists in the movie say human-induced climate change is the reason for the storm’s unusual size and damaging force.

Your agent, Hurricane Sandy, was a storm of epic proportions that bore down on the eastern United States, causing massive destruction and widespread flooding, including in Manhattan. Scientists in real life say human-induced climate change is the reason for the storm’s unusual size and damaging force.

Certain scenes from Hurricane Sandy appear to be copied directly from portions of the motion picture. Photographs taken during and after your storm depict waves swamping buildings, taxicabs in floodwaters up to the windows, lower Manhattan completely dark, and a flooded subway system—images closely replicating events in “The Day After Tomorrow.” We believe this demonstrates a clear infringement of our client’s copyright.

Moreover, we feel it is incumbent on us to point out that your actions in turning a fictional and hypothetical entertainment into actual fact violate the expectations of the public that climate change is and will remain a matter of mere speculation concerning events that are firmly in the future. The American audience expects the continued burning of fossil fuels to produce entertaining epics like “The Day After Tomorrow,” while having no actual effect whatsoever on their lives. Your insistence on demonstrating that a warming ocean will produce larger and more damaging hurricanes is, frankly, in poor taste.

This letter will serve as notice of our intent to pursue any and all remedies available to our client under applicable law, including an injunction against further infringing activities.

Yours truly,

I.M. Cole

Law Offices of Cole & Oyle, LLC

Coal and the big lie

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Hurricane Sandy swept into town this week, reminding Americans that climate change may be the Issue That Cannot Be Talked About, but that doesn’t mean it has gone away. Suddenly the fact that the two presidential candidates have been trying to outdo each other in professing their love for coal comes across as unseemly, if not downright perverse. Surely this would be a good time to acknowledge the impossibility of preventing the catastrophic effects of increasing carbon emissions if we are unwilling to stop burning the things that emit carbon—chief among them, coal.

So a war on coal might be a good idea, although the idea that the Obama Administration has been waging one is nonsense. The reasons for the decline of the coal industry are primarily the flood of cheap natural gas, which is out-competing coal as a fuel for electric generation, and the increasing cost of coal, especially in Appalachia.

Indeed, the Appalachian coal industry has been on the decline for years. The richest and most easily-reached coal has been mined, leaving thin seams that take more effort and expense to extract, pushing the price of Central Appalachian coal well above that of coal from the Powder River Basin further west.

From 1990 to 2006–before the recession, before the Obama presidency, and before the price of natural gas collapsed–Virginia coal mining declined from about 10,000 workers to about 4,500.  The U.S. Energy Information Agency projects that Virginia coal production will continue to decline through the rest of this decade.

But coal executives prefer to lie to workers than admit they can’t compete in the free market, and the politicians who’ve taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the coal companies would rather parrot their lies than admit they have failed their constituents. Coal companies and their political bedfellows have been exploiting coal miners for two centuries; it’s no surprise to see them using these workers now as pawns in the presidential campaign.

But fingering the real culprits for coalworkers’ distress is the easy part; what’s harder is helping the residents of the coalfields areas find new jobs to replace the ones that are never coming back.

Ironically, in Virginia it has been environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices that have championed a plan to do just that. For several years they have been urging an end to the approximately $45 million annually in state taxpayer subsidies that currently go to enrich coal companies, and replacing them with incentives to support new jobs in tourism, technology, clean energy and other industries.

This proposal should have gotten traction last year, when a report by the state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) concluded that the subsidies do not achieve their goal of supporting coal employment, and indeed that  “changes in coal mining activity appear unaffected by the credits.”

One would have thought that Republicans especially might have jumped at the chance to cut $45 million per year of wasteful spending, or that Governor “Bob-for-Jobs” McDonnell would have gladly seized the opportunity to build a jobs program that did not add a new line-item to the budget.

Following the release of the JLARC study, the legislature and the Governor did act—to extend the coal company subsidies for several more years. The message to the residents of southwest Virginia could not have been any clearer: it’s the coal company executives and their money we care about, not the miners and their families.

The presidential election will be over in a few days. Regardless of who wins, the Virginia coal industry will continue its decline. The only question left is how long the miners will accept being lied to.