#Gulf of Mexico

– Overview – The Met Office in the UK reports that 2010 is on track to be the warmest or second-warmest year in the instrumental record.  Other science, based on massive data, supports that view.  (See graphic above and NOAA’s annual State of the Climate report.)  Meanwhile, the Post-Copenhagen international climate negotiations continued and culminated […]

When Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski proposed a change in how the Clean Air Act is administered, I was shocked but not surprised.  See The Reaction from January.  Thankfully, her resolution was defeated in the US Senate yesterday.  This was an attempt at a radical reconfiguring of how environmental law has been practiced in this country […]

Cuba continues to wait for the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf to reach its shores—to foul the pristine clear waters that attract tourists and scientists to the island and are the pride of locals. The island, which remains largely untouched by the environmental ills of modernity, has such clean waters that […]

OFAC authorizes more Cuban options (UPI) The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) did not authorize a single new service to do business with Cuba in 2009, but in 2010 has already expanded the list of authorized U.S. travel and remittance services allowed to do business with Cuba by 42, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. […]

In the spirit of yesterday’s photos of the Gulf of Mexico, this photo essay from Newsweek is also resonant. I would’ve added the Canadian tar sands and mountaintop removal mining. 

Here, courtesy of NASA, is a look at two Gulf of Mexico dead zones:  one well established, as a consequence of runoff  (manure, fertilizer, wastewater treatment plant effluent, etc.) from the breadbasket of the US, and the other in the making, from BP’s disastrous well blowout.

Another important “mutual concerns” pro-engagement argument is presented by the New America Foundation’s Anya Landau French in a recent Havana Note post. The jist: future prevention/mitigation of disasters like the April 20 explosion (and ongoing spreading mess of an oil spill) of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico is too important […]