Bankers on Wall Street may be driving up gas prices. Photo courtesy of epicharmus

Wall Street speculation increases gas prices
Subscribers to the “drill, baby, drill” mantra may want to set their sights on bankers rather than environmentalists as the culprits driving up gas prices, reports Mother Jones. According to confidential regulatory data first leaked to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Wall Street speculators that hold investments in millions of barrels of oil helped artificially raise the price of gas to $4 per gallon in 2008. To put a stop to that practice, Sanders recently introduced legislation that would “set firm speculation rules for crude oil, gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and heating oil” designed to “diminish, eliminate or prevent excessive speculation,” reports Mother Jones. Of course, if passed the legislation will do nothing to stem the tide of all of the external costs of gas consumption—like increased asthma attacks and carbon pollution—but at the very least it will put a bee in the bankers’ bonnet of dubious business practices.

Coral could be key to sunscreen pill
In just a few years, sun worshippers tired of slathering sunscreen all over their pasty bodies before heading to the beach may be able instead to pop a pill that comes straight from the ocean, reports Mother Nature Network. Scientists have long known that coral reefs, which need sun for photosynthesis, make their own sunscreen to protect themselves against the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. Better yet, the fish that feed on the coral also get the sunscreen benefits. Recently, researchers at King’s College London cracked the code on the amazing genetic and biochemical processes behind this sunscreen compound and eventually hope to create a synthetic version of this compound for humans. Says project leader Dr. Paul Long, “We are very close to being able to reproduce this compound in the lab, and if all goes well we would expect to test it within the next two years.” Surf’s up! 

Bill McKibben

D.C. police have arrested 160 people and counting, in response to a non-violent protest against the Keystone XL Tar Sands pipeline. Among those arrested-- Bill McKibben, prolific environmental author and co-founder of 350.org. Released today after three days in jail, McKibben encouraged the continuation of the two-week protest, which is taking place in front of the White House.

The proposed pipeline, which would in fact be a network of pipelines spanning the U.S. and Canada, is a disaster waiting to happen – a plan to tap an enormous carbon reserve that would dramatically increase CO2 emissions and put millions of Americans and Canadians at risk.

Oil spills in America’s heartland and water contamination from drilling byproducts would become commonplace. Not to mention that oil from tar sands is an inefficient energy source, requiring enormous effort to extract – a desperate asset that oil companies plan to exploit only because they have nowhere else to turn. In May, Earthjustice filed a suit against the State Department, which refused to release communications with lobbyists for the pipeline.

Last summer, we were captivated by a live video feed of oil spewing from a broken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon disaster woke up America to the dangers of offshore oil drilling, and the government was quick to act.

Shortly after 11 workers lost their lives, the Obama administration shelved plans to drill for oil in America’s Arctic Ocean. If even a fraction of the 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico were to spill in the remote, fragile waters of the Arctic Ocean, the result would be devastating; there is no known technology to clean up oil spilled in these waters where 20-foot swells and huge chunks of ice are common.

But, clearly, those leassons have been unlearned.

A road and well pad bulldozed into roadless lands for a coal mine in Colorado. Ted Zukoski photo.

The Environmental Protection Agency found much room for improvement when it weighed in on the Forest's Service environmental impact statement that analyzes a proposed rule to weaken protection for roadless lands in Colorado. 

Among the EPA's concerns: the Forest Service proposed to grant the highest level of protection to about one-seventh of Colorado's 4 million acres of roadless lands. Not enough, said the EPA in its July 18 letter.

Further, the EPA said the proposal would allow three coal mines to bulldoze roads through roadless lands to get hundreds of millions of tons of additional coal.