Petrochemical

The crew of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, in the midst of their ICESCAPE mission, retrieves supplies in the Arctic Ocean in this July 12, 2011 NASA handout photo. Kathryn Hansen/NASA via REUTERS/File Photo

"Ultimately, realising resilience in the Arctic will depend on empowering the people of the North to self-organise"

CLICK HERE - Stockholm Resilience Centre - Dealing with Arctic tipping points

CLICK HERE - Arctic Resilience Report

Thomson Reuters Foundation - by Megan Rowling - November 25, 2016

Unless the world stops burning fossil fuels that are fuelling global warming, irreversible changes in the Arctic could have disastrous effects for the people that live there and for the rest of the planet, researchers warned on Friday.

The Arctic's ecosystems are fundamentally threatened by climate change and other human activities, such as oil and gas extraction, they said in a report for the Arctic Council, an inter-governmental forum working to protect the region's environment.

nationalgeographic.com - October 30, 2016

From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Fisher Stevens and Academy Award®-winning actor, environmental activist and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio, Before the Flood presents a riveting account of the dramatic changes now occurring around the world due to climate change, as well as the actions we as individuals and as a society can take to prevent the disruption of life on our planet.

CLICK HERE - National Geographic - Before the Flood

CLICK HERE - YouTube - Before the Flood

CLICK HERE - About the Film - Before the Flood

Image: A plane spreads fire retardent on the San Bruno fire.

huffingtonpost.com - August 2nd 2016 - Michael McLaughlin

Federal prosecutors quietly filed court papers Tuesday that may save a utility company from paying $562 million in fines for a pipeline explosion that killed eight people in 2010.

The stunning move, as a jury in a criminal case against Pacific Gas & Electric deliberated for a fourth day, means the company now faces a maximum federal fine of $6 million, instead of $562 million, if it is convicted in one of the worst disasters of its kind in history. The jury is considering 13 criminal charges stemming from the blowout and fire that destroyed 38 homes in suburban San Bruno.

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Pump jacks sit idle on a South Texas ranch near Bigfoot. Deserted drilling wells are the relics of every oil bust, and Texas is pitted with more than any other place in the U.S.  Eric Gay/AP

dallasnews.com - by Chris Siron - The Associated Press - by Paul J. Weber - June 19, 2016

The worst oil bust since the 1980s is putting Texas and other oil producing states on the hook for thousands of newly abandoned drilling sites at a time when they have little money to plug wells and seal off environmental hazards.

In Texas alone, the roughly $165 million price tag of plugging nearly 10,000 abandoned wells is double the entire budget of the agency that regulates the industry.

The state's regulators want taxpayers to cover more of the clean-up, supplementing industry payments.

As U.S. rig counts plunge to historic lows, and with at least 60 oil producers declaring bankruptcy since 2014, energy-producing states are confronting holes in their budgets and potentially leaking ones in the ground.

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