Then, Jackson was defending the science behind climate change and making assurances that the President's climate policies and pollution preventions wouldn't hurt businesses.

Oh, how far we've come!

Here's the two-part extended interview:

Jackson defends the President's commitment to environmental protection, and is clear about the frustrations of playing defense against an ongoing Republican assault on the E.P.A.

On D.C's delusions:

I sometimes call it the "fact-free zone." Outside Washington, 95 percent of the American people…see one of the roles of government as protecting their air and their water...And yet time and time again, we’re having to go onto the Hill, oftentimes with people who privately tell me, "hey, I’m for the environment," and then they say "but…" and the "but" is a set of talking points from industry.

On mercury pollution regulations and the perceived threat to business:

The only thing we hear is "it can’t be done," and everything we know and every model that we run shows that it absolutely can be done, and that it would actually create jobs. Someone has to build all those scrubbers and filters that deal with mercury.

On the growing job of testifying before Congress:

I have testified more times in this Congress than any other cabinet member...There's a lot of agita around it...I don’t mind going up there...You should know that your Congress put more riders on the EPA than any other agency.

One positive signal that Jackson gives to environmentalists regards the mercury and dioxin standards for industrial boilers. Last week, the agency announced that it was delaying enforcement of those standards to honor some industry queries. Jackson said she knew people were worried about this, and that they were committed to "doing it right."

Unless you've been living in a monastery, you're well aware that, right now, there are some Christians getting awfully excited about the rapture. By some interpretations of the Bible, Jesus will return to Earth this Saturday, May 21.

While these May 21sters are being pretty widely mocked and in some cases exploited (to the point that I'm starting to actually feel bad for them), it turns out that the belief in the rapture itself isn't all that fringe. According to a Pew poll, four in ten Americans think Jesus Christ will return to Earth by 2050.

That means more than 100 million Americans believe that Judgment Day is just around the corner. It's no wonder then that a relatively long-term problem like climate change isn't a priority in the public's mind. 

This is actually really serious. While there are plenty of Christians who believe that it is our responsibility as a species to protect and care for all of God's creation—see the Creation Care movement for starters—well over a third of Americans don't believe that there will be a world that needs saving by mid-century.

Earlier this week, on the Climate Ride, we stayed with two devoutly religious hosts—an Amish-Baptist camp in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and a Jewish retreat in Maryland. In both instances, our hosts embraced and blessed our mission. Until the rational faithful among us succeed in preaching the importance of protecting God's creation and help subdue the fantasy myths, we don't stand a chance in finding the public will to combat climate change. They'll get their fire and brimstone one way or another.

Photo on Wikimedia Commons

Already, the Great Mississippi River Flood of 2011 has caused over $2 billion in damage, and the worst of the threat is still in front of us. Many are expecting that the total cost of flood damages—to crops, infrastructure, property destruction, and loss—to top $4 billion when all is said and done, which would make it anywhere from the fifth to the seventh most expensive flood since 1980 (PDF).

That $4 billion number is actually an optimistic estimate, considering the very real threat to the integrity of the Old River Control Structure, an absolutely massive and incredible infrastructure project built by the Army Corps of Engineers back in the 1950s that, basically, keeps the Mighty Mississippi from plunging into the Atchafalaya River bed, 

Jeff Masters calls the Old River Control Structure “America’s Achilles’ heel” in a post that is absolutely a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand what’s happening in the Lower Mississippi at this very moment.

Basically, any river always wants to take the shortest and steepest route possible to its outlet. The Mississippi is no different, and since long before humans were around, it has jumped its banks every 1,000 years or so and charted a new, more desirable course. The image above shows the contrast between the long history of change in the Mississippi, and the Army Corp's plans for peak flow rates during massive 1-in-500 year floods. (Peter ran a nice full-length version of that first map in his post about the flooding Mississippi's impact on fish.) Sometime in the 1970s, the Mississippi River would’ve jumped its course and dumped into the much more inviting Atchafalaya River basin.

Masters explains:

The mighty Mississippi River keeps on rollin’ along its final 300 miles to the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans—but unwillingly. There is a better way to the Gulf—150 miles shorter, and more than twice as steep. This path lies down the Atchafalaya River, which connects to the Mississippi at a point 45 miles north-northwest of Baton Rouge, 300 river miles from the Gulf of Mexico Delta. Each year, the path down the Atchafalaya grows more inviting.

The only thing preventing the river from taking that path is the Old River Control Structure. If that is compromised or breached, the impact would be enormous. The Mississippi would probably have a permanent new route to the Gulf of Mexico, and Baton Rouge and New Orleans—and all the towns in between—would be “stranded on a salt water estuary, with no fresh water to supply their people and industry.”

I really can't recommend highly enough that you read Masters' post in full. America's Achilles' heel is about to face its greatest test.

Top photo by NOAA. Bottom image by Weather Underground.

We've been spending a lot of time explaining why neither offshore drilling nor oil industry tax breaks have much of any impact on gas prices. Our friends at 350.org just released a great and incredibly comprehensive infographic that ties it all up nicely with a bow. Click on the image below to see the larger version.

Someone too cynical (or too lazy) might gripe that a rolling gang of cyclists in goofy spandex aren't going to change anyone's mind about climate change. Personally, I'm of the opinion that actions and stunts and awareness really do matter. When you start to feel defeated and quiet down, you pretty quickly get forgotten, and a perfect example of that is the climate bill that fell dead in Congress last year. We don't have a decent climate law today because a lot of swing state senators felt  more pressure from the fossil fuels industry than they did from those of us who demand clean air, clean water, and a safe climate. If there is ever to be hope for a real nationwide mobilization on climate, politicians are going to have to feel vulnerable for voting against anything that compromises our climate and our future. Showing up at their offices (we'll have changed out of the goofy spandex for that) and telling them to their faces that they will lose your vote is one pretty powerful way to make them feel vulnerable.

Of course anyone could (and everyone should!) show up at an elected official's office and do just that—no bike ride required. But I will also make the case that—in this age of e-petitions and no-impact "clicktivism"—there is something to be said for getting your ass out from behind the computer and putting your body (and time) where your morals are. When people commit their actual time and energy to something in which they believe, it actually stands out these days. At least I believe it does.

Besides, Climate Ride has another very real, very tangible impact. Everyone participating in the ride had to raise at least $2,400 for a bunch of beneficiary organizations whose work helps combat climate change. In that way, it's sort of like a Susan B. Komen or Jimmy Fund walk, but a lot longer and a lot more grassrootsy.

The organizations benefiting from the charity money. You can read more about all the beneficiaries here.

So I'm awfully proud to be involved with Climate Ride. And though I wasn't able to mount up with everyone in New York City this morning, I'm catching up with the whole crew in Princeton tonight.

If you want to follow along during the ride, there's a news and updates blog at ClimateRideLive.org

Today in the Senate, Majority leader Harry Reid is kicking off an assault on the roughly $4 billion per year of subsidies granted to the oil industry. Rather then redirect that money to programs that will actually cut our oil demand, immediately save American families money, and more efficiently ease gas prices (as we suggested), Reid is putting that $4 billion back in our national coffers, and daring Republicans to vote against reducing the deficit.

Fans of oil subsidies (and their conservative media echo chamber) have been arguing that they help keep gas prices down. Plenty of economists, journalists, policy wonks, and bloggers have been making the case that that is simply wrong. But yesterday, the impartial, non-partisan Congressional Research Service presented their research on the subject to Senator Reid. The CRS memo (PDF) further affirms the idea that subsidies don't have much of anything to do with gas prices. After evaluating all five of the major subsidies and tax breaks granted to the oil industry, the CSR determines:

Even if the changes in taxes did impact domestic, or overseas exploration and development activity, that does not necessarily imply that less oil would be available in the U.S. market. More might be imported, with little or no effect on gasoline prices.

Political unrest, expectations effects on financial markets, macroeconomic growth trends, the value of the dollar and a host other factors have contributed to fluctuations in the price of oil and gasoline. Any effect due to changes in the tax treatment of the oil industry would be hard to separate from the changes due to other factors, given the size of the relative magnitudes.

Whoever argues that subsidies to oil giants helps keep gas prices down is lying. All they do is go right to the coffers of the most profitable companies in the world, and to the pockets of their CEOs.

Photo on Wikimedia Commons

Want to know how serious a country is about clean energy? Look at the percentage of its Gross Domestic Product that the industry represents. Turns out: the windmill-savvy Danes are the world's most ambitious country in clean tech development, with a full 3.1 percent of their GDP coming from renewable energy technology and energy efficiency.

In second place: China, an impressive feat considering how massive their GDP is compared to most of the world's nations. The United States lags at an embarrassing 17th place, with a mere 0.3 percent of GDP coming from the clean, renewable sector.

The most vivid story told by the numbers, which come from a new WWF report commissioned by the journal Nature, is of China's incredible and rapid ascent to clean energy dominance. It hasn't happened by chance.

“The Chinese have made, on the political level, a conscious decision to capture this market and to develop this market aggressively,” said Donald Pols, an economist with the WWF.

Their production has grown an astounding 77 percent per year for the past three years, according to the report. The United States, by comparison, has been growing the sector by about 28 percent per year.

If you talk to anyone—seriously anyone—in any sector of the energy industry, they will tell you that 50 years from now renewable (or clean) energy technologies will dominate the industry, and thus the global economy. Even the CEOs of oil and gas companies well understand this reality. So if you're of the opinion that we should "drill here, drill now" and suck every ounce of fossil fuel out of this Earth, you still have to recognize the benefit of being on the forefront of the industry that will drive the economy through the mid-21st Century economy. It's becoming old news that the United States is falling far behind China, India, and many European countries in clean tech. But with every passing year that we get lapped by China, Denmark, Germany or anyone else, the chance of ever catching up shrinks smaller and smaller.

Photo (cc) by FaceMePLS on Flickr

And, honestly, who could resist this lyric?

Conservative talk radio host: “The Greenhouse effect is just a theory.. sucker”
Climate scientists: “Yeah, so is gravity. Float away MuthaF****”

Apparently, it's going to air on an Australian comedy show called Hungry Beast later this week. Hat tip to Graham Readfearn, one of Australia's best environmental journalists.

The only reason that this flood didn't set a new record was because the Army Corps of Engineers blasted levees and opened up two "floodways." The first was upriver, near Cairo, Illinois. As I wrote last week, this levee breach flooded thousands of acres of farmland in Missouri. (You can see incredible before and after satellite photos here.) While it seems like a tragedy for the Missouri farmers, in fact, flooding their land is exactly what's supposed to happen in this sort of storm. These floodways are part of the Army Corps' actual engineering plan. There's a reason the Army Corps calls this action "activating the floodway."

Earlier this week, the Army Corps opened up a second release valve—the Bonnet Carré Spillway, about 28 miles upstream from New Orleans. Here's a look at the Spillway when it's closed, in an Army Corps photo from 1999. When opened, water spills across that big rectangular field and into Lake Pontchartrain.

This Great Mississippi Flood of 2011 is a stark reminder to Americans of how the Mississippi River is not—and hasn't been for many decades—a naturally free-flowing body of water. It is, rather, a highly-engineered system of public works. (For the best piece I've ever read about how we try to wrestle these natural bodies into submission, read John McPhee's classic essay Atchafalaya.) And that highly engineered system is being tested by what Jeff Masters of Weather Underground describes as the "river's highest flood crest in history."

Masters explains what we can expect over the next couple of weeks.

Downstream from Memphis, flood waters pouring in from the Arkansas River, Yazoo River, and other tributaries are expected to swell the Mississippi high enough to beat the all-time record at Vicksburg, Mississippi by 1.3' on May 19, and smash the all-time record at Natchez, Mississippi by six feet on May 21, and by 3.2 feet at Red River Landing on May 22. Red River Landing is the site of the Old River Control Structure, the Army Corps' massive engineering structure that keeps the Mississippi River from carving a new path to the Gulf of Mexico...Its failure would be a serious blow to the U.S. economy, and the great Mississippi flood of 2011 will give the Old River Control Structure its most severe test ever.

In times like these, I can't help but think that we might have lots to learn from the Dutch, who have probably know the most about how to live with water. Four years ago, Dutch authorities came up with a water management plan called "Room for the River." Reversing generations of water control convention, the Dutch decided that rather than battle rivers with expensive dikes and levees and canals, they'd give rivers more room to flow freely. This video explains the program.

Here's the official "Room for the River" website.

Photo, public domain, by Army Corps of Engineers

Back in January, we wrote about the Google Global Science Fair, a big global competition to "help make today’s young scientists the rock stars of tomorrow." All students between 13-18 years old around the world were eligible.

This week, the top 60 projects were announced, and you can actually vote for the People's Choice Award.

The winner of the People's Choice Award gets a $10,000 scholarship from Google. Not too shabby.

Like Michael Cote, our favorite climate adaptation specialist, I'm partial to this underwater energy-producing turbine project by Gavin Ovsak, a very bright young high school senior from Minnesota. 

Wi-fi internet access and other communications are at risk from global warming unless measures are taken to protect them from rising temperatures and stormier weather, a government report warned on Monday...

"If climate change threatens the quality of your signal, or you can't get it because of extreme fluctuations in temperature, then you will be disadvantaged, which is why we must address the question," said Spelman, "and just imagine in the height of an emergency if the communications system is down or adversely affected."

The report actually warns of some much graver threats than WiFi disruption. It shows how all kinds of infrastructure—from rail tracks to roads to water pipes to freaking nuclear generators—are at risk. But the focus on WiFi no doubt got the Guardian some extra pageviews.

So, while I have you here, here are three much better reasons to care about climate change than your WiFi connection. (Don't worry, I'm pretty sure those crafty technologists will figure that out.) First, it's the biggest threat to public health that the world has ever known. Second, it's the biggest threat to global peace and stability, and also specifically to our national security, as the Pentagon and CIA are well aware. Finally, religious leaders and other ethicists call it one of the great moral and ethical issues of our time. The Vatican says that "humans must act decisively now to avert a coming crisis," and that "if we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us."

Catholics, you better start taking climate change seriously. There have been plenty of warnings and pleas from religious and faith-based groups about climate change, but maybe none as dire and direct as these from Vatican.

Last Friday, the Pontifical Academy of Science, the Vatican's science panel, released a report call "Fate of Mountain Glaciers in the Anthropocene" (PDF), in which they call for urgent global action on climate change, saying that "humans must act decisively now to avert a coming crisis."

As its title would indicate, the actual report is specifically about the high-elevation glaciers, which are melting because of man-made global warming. Glaciers aren't just tourist attractions—they provide drinking water to billions.

It's particularly interesting that the group opted to use the term "Anthropocene," which they explain like this:

The climatic and ecological impacts of this human interference with the Earth System are expected to last for many millennia, warranting a new name,
The Anthropocene, for the new “man-made” geologic epoch we are living in.

While geologists and others in the climate sciences have been using the term more frequently of late, it's powerful that a religious organization is recognizing that humans have so changed God's creation. Some kind of dominion we're keeping.

But besides the physical sciences in the report, the authors—a group of premier climatologists assembled by the Vatican—worked with the church to create a set of recommendations, and this strongly-worded declaration:

We call on all people and nations to recognise the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, and by changes in forests, wetlands, grasslands, and other land uses. We appeal to all nations to develop and implement, without delay, effective and fair policies to reduce the causes and impacts of climate change on communities and ecosystems, including mountain glaciers and their watersheds, aware that we all live in the same home. By acting now, in the spirit of common but differentiated responsibility, we accept our duty to one another and to the stewardship of a planet blessed with the gift of life.

We are committed to ensuring that all inhabitants of this planet receive their daily bread, fresh air to breathe and clean water to drink as we are aware that, if we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us. The believers among us ask God to grant us this wish.

The report makes three general recommendations: That we reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions without delay, reduce the concentrations of warming air pollutants (dark soot, methane, lower atmosphere ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons) by as much as 50 percent, and prepare to adapt to the climatic changes that society will be unable to mitigate.

The authors note that "The cost of the three recommended measures pales in comparison to the price the world will pay if we fail to act now." Amen to that.

Photo by DAVID ILIFF on Wikimedia Commons

If you spend any time at all browsing comments on articles about climate change (and bless you if you've managed to avoid it), you've likely read the same handful of long-debunked arguments against the reality of anthropogenic global warming (or "man-made" global warming). Recently, you've also almost definitely seen links to this website—"900+ Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming (AGW) Alarm"—created by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The problem is, of the top ten contributors of articles to that list, nine are financially linked to Exxon Mobil. Carbon Brief, which examined the list in detail, explains:

Once you crunch the numbers, however, you find a good proportion of this new list is made up of a small network of individuals who co-author papers and share funding ties to the oil industry. There are numerous other names on the list with links to oil-industry funded climate sceptic think-tanks, including more from the International Policy Network (IPN) and the Marshall Institute.

Compiling these lists is dramatically different to the process of producing IPCC reports, which reference thousands of scientific papers. The reports are thoroughly reviewed to make sure that the scientific work included is relevant and diverse.

It's well worth reading the rest of the Carbon Brief analysis. According to the GWPF, the purpose of the post is to "provide a resource for peer-reviewed papers that support skepticism of AGW or AGW Alarm and to prove that these papers exist contrary to widely held beliefs." It's true that supporters of real climate science too often trot out the "peer-review" argument. While an essential cornerstone of science, peer-review "is not foolproof," as the founders of Real Climate explained a long while back.

Unfortunately, exposes like this one don't seem to matter much. Nearly four years ago, Newsweek ran a bombshell of a feature (the image above is from the issue's cover) that broke down exactly how fossil fuel companies—and specifically Exxon Mobil—were funding the climate denial machine. A couple years ago, Climate Cover Up gave a much deeper, book-length look at exactly that. Last year, Naomi Oreskes and and Erik Conway released Merchants of Doubt, that looks at how the very same tactics (and in some cases, the very same scientists) are being used in the anti-climate science field now as were used by those who denied the health risks of cigarettes half a century ago.

Anyone paying close attention knows that Exxon Mobil and others who profit from selling fossil fuels are underwriting "science" that calls the reality of climate change into question. But the money shapes the messaging that pollutes the minds of those who aren't paying quite as close attention. dd

Last week, the idea got a bit more traction, as the big five oil companies all announced massive first quarter profits (while gasoline hovers around $4 per gallon), and even some Republican leaders are paying the idea of cutting subsidies some lip service. Of course, most members of Congress receive so much funding from the oil companies that they'll make comments like Sarah Palin's: that $4 billion is a "drop in the bucket" and not worth eliminating.

As we noted last week, that "drop in the bucket" is 1,200 times the amount that Republicans fought so hard to strip away from NPR, and 13 times more than was fought tooth and nail to have removed from Planned Parenthood's budget.

Sometimes it's argued that these subsidies help keep gas prices down, which is simply not true. (See this Joint Economic Committee report (PDF) for pretty definitive proof. There's actually a strong argument to be made that these subsidies are a "big culprit in high gas prices.")

I couldn't help but wonder what we could get for this $4 billion per year that would actually help reduce our massive demand for oil, and, thus, help ease gas prices.

So here are some back-of-napkin calculations of how we could better spend that $4 billion:

• Weatherize 615,384 homes: Every year we could retrofit American homes, sealing windows and doors, blowing in new insulation, and ultimately saving families hundreds of dollars every year in energy costs. As an added bonus, this would help create thousands of jobs, as there are roughly 52 direct jobs and 23 indirect jobs created for every $1 million spent on weatherization. For $4 billion, that would mean around 300,000 jobs created.

  In all likelihood, the number of homes actually weatherized every year would be much higher. I used $6,500 per home as an estimate, which is at the top of the range. In 2008 in New Jersey, for instance, 3,000 homes were weatherized with a budget of just $5.7 million, or an average of $1,900 per home.

• Buy 99,304 Chevy Volts: With $4 billion, the U.S. government could completely underwrite the purchase of nearly 100,000 plug-in electric vehicles. This is at the current MSRP of $40,280.  Or, if we'd like to buy a few more conventional hybrids, the Ford Fusion hybrid gets 41/36 mpg (City/highway), and runs about $28,405. So we could buy 140,820 of those and start saving a whole lot of gasoline.
• Install 200,000 geothermal heat pumps: We could take the oil-burning furnaces out of roughly 200,000 American homes and replace them with geothermal heat pumps. Since these incredibly efficient devices use the constant temperature six feet under the Earth's surface to control climate in a home, families in the northern United States would immediately start saving thousands of dollars in heating expenses every year. And we'd reduce our demand of oil considerably. While geothermal heat pump costs vary considerably, I used a really highball estimate of $20,000 per house, so in reality we'd probably be able to install thousands more.

Remember, we could do any of these things every year for the next ten years for the same amount of money as we now give away to the oil companies in the form of subsidies and tax breaks. The biggest difference is that these proposals would all start saving families real money immediately, lining the pockets of working Americans and not helping oil companies set record profits.

Next week, the Senate may vote on ending the $4 billion per year in oil company subsidies. Last Thursday, the House GOP blocked a vote on the issue.

Now you might be asking: Wasn't Power Shift just a couple weeks ago? Didn't we do this last year? And the year before? Does the world really need another climate change action?

To which I'll say: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

Woman suffragists didn't pack up the signs and quiet down after a few disappointing years. Civil rights activists didn't quit during a decades-long struggle, despite a steady record of legislative and moral defeats.

But, you're thinking, those are human rights issues, not environmental ones. Well, I'd argue that climate change is the greatest human rights crisis that the world faces. There's nothing else that stands to cause greater suffering to a greater number of people, and this is a crisis that disproportionately affects the very poor who are both most vulnerable and least responsible for the problem.

And the fact of the matter is, these localized events do make a difference. In the fall of 2007, a then-unknown group of kids hatched a plan called "Step It Up." The goal was to get the public to understand the "targets" set by the latest climate science: that we'd need to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050. What started as a totally ludicrous goal in a dorm room in Vermont wound up growing into more than 1,400 events in cities and towns all over the country, and by the time the presidential primaries were underway, every legitimate contender had publicly embraced these targets.

Of course, we know what has happened—and what hasn't happened—since. But the point is, the campaign moved the goal posts.

The target of this year's actions is less specific, but more direct: fossil fuels. We know the problem: extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. We solve that, we go a heck of a long way to preserving a livable planet.

In Sao Paolo, Brazil hundreds of activists will "take back" a viaduct that is locally notorious as a symbol of bad auto-centric traffic planning. In Johannesburg, South Africa, youth will join hands with trade union members and call for an end to coal mining and jobs training programs for transitioning miners. Check out the Moving Planet map to see if there's an event already planned near you—there are already actions planned from Abu Dhabi to Zimbabwe, and all throughout America—and, if not, plan one. The fossil fuel interests may have the money, but they're outnumbered by the rest of us who want clean air, clean water, and a safe climate.

It's no secret that our country is in something of an energy pinch. Unfortunately, because of the political movement towards austerity and budget cuts, we're now going to have less data to help us understand that problem and address it. The Energy Information Agency is being forced to cut a whole bunch of its data, analysis, and forecasting programs.

As oil analyst Gregor McDonald put it, "there goes the data."

What does this mean exactly? Well, it's helpful to know how much oil we're producing and where the rest of our oil is coming from. I could have never told you, for example, that this idea of expanding offshore drilling to lower gas prices was a total canard without the EIA's forecasts.

The Oil Drum has a candid piece of commentary that sums up the sad state of affairs nicely.

So, here we are in a mess. Generally when you’re in a mess it is a good idea to understand what the mess looks like, so that you can work out how to get out of it. But now that information is not going to be locally available. Yes there will still be the information from the IEA, though it is not really comparable, and OPEC itself provides Monthly Oil Market Reports, but that is a little less independent than most, and does not cover the internal production within this country that is a valuable tool to indicate how fast we are approaching the next crisis [...]

At some point in the future, perhaps even that soon, politicians and administrators are going to complain “but nobody told us!!” and rush to blame the industry yet again. But the truth is, there was a group that was keeping the records, and who could tell those with the responsibility to fix it when there was a problem. And the Administration just closed it down. We will regret that lack of information and the warning messages that it would have brought.

The EIA wasn't perfect. As many have noted, there was a systematic bias in its oil price forecasting. Year after year, it predicted more oil would be produced than actually was, and that prices would be lower than they actually were.

But the data is still crucial. Our energy outlook is bad, but it's better to see the bad so you can address it.

Image (cc) from Flickr user jeferonix

This afternoon, the House passed legislation that will fast-track lease sales for offshore oil production.

According to E2-Wire, the Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act would "set a deadline for holding delayed Gulf of Mexico oil and gas lease sales. It would also mandate the sale of leases off the Virginia coast, a plan the administration nixed after last year’s Gulf oil spill."

The first of three pieces of oil and gas drilling legislation being pushed by GOP leadership, it's being sold as a way to ease the burden of $4 per gallon gas.

“We’re in this situation because of this administration’s policies that have shut off energy supply,” Steve Scalise, the Republican representative from Louisiana, said.

He was totally wrong.

If we were to pursue the most aggressive possible plan of offshore drilling, the most we could reduce gas prices, compared to completely freezing all new leases forever, would only be $0.05 per gallon. In 2030.

Here's the chart I created playing with the EIA's Annual Energy Outlook. You can get more details in my earlier post. Basically, the green line is the price of gas if we drill the hell out of offshore wells (three times what we're currently producing); the purple line underneath it is the price of gas if we never sell another offshore drilling lease; the light blue line, which is almost impossible to see, is the business-as-usual case.

As I wrote before:

If it looks like there's just one line there, that's because the three lines are virtually right on top of each other. Whether we dramatically expand offshore drilling or stop selling offshore drilling leases entirely, there will be essentially no impact on the price of gasoline until 2020. If we look out as far as 2030, the difference would only be $0.05—$3.59 per gallon as opposed to $3.64 per gallon. The idea that offshore drilling would significantly ease the pain of high gas prices is a canard.

You don't need to take my word for it. Watch Doug Holtz-Eakin, the White House’s Chief Economist under George W. Bush, tell Chris Matthews that "you can't change the oil price very much with the U.S. exploration."

The only thing that Holtz-Eakin is wrong about is his last line. Not everyone's being honest about that.

Photo, public domain, by Genghiskhanviet

Late Monday night, as we indicated that they might, the Army Corps of Engineers blew up a section of levee on the Mississippi in order to protect the town of Cairo, Illinois from record floods.

The blasts, which were strong enough to register at 3.0 on the Richter scale, breached the Birds Point levee, and sent water cascading over 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland. The decision wasn't without controversy. Or law suit, for that matter. The State of Missouri took the Army Corps decision up to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear it.

When asked whether he would "rather see Cairo or the farmland underwater," Missouri State House Speaker Steve Tilley, told reporters,

Cairo. I've been there, trust me. Cairo...Have you been to Cairo? OK, then you know what I'm saying then.

Tim Murphy, who has been to Cairo and surrounding towns has a great piece in Mother Jones that provides some background on the socioeconomic conditions in the area, as well as its heated racial history, which helps explain why folks on the "other" side of the levee were putting their farmland ahead of their neighbors' homes.

In this Wall Street Journal video, you can see the blasts that busted the levees, and the water flowing into Missouri. It also explains why farm owners have to take a healthy bit of blame—the land they bought and farmed was always clearly marked by the Army Corps as being an emergency flood zone.
 

As Jeff Masters explains, levees on the Lower Mississippi River "are meant to withstand a 'Project Flood'—the type of flood the Army Corps of Engineers believes is the maximum flood that could occur on the river, equivalent to a 1-in-500 year flood." The levees were all built after the Great Flood of 1927—the deadly event that was made famous in the song When the Levee Breaks.

On Sunday night, Army Corps Major General Michael Walsh, the man who ultimately makes flood control decisions, stated (PDF) "The Project Flood is upon us. This is the flood that engineers envisioned following the 1927 flood. It is testing the system like never before."

Here are images of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and the "floodway" before and after the breach.

Before:

After:

It was the first time in 74 years that the Army Corps blew up a levee on this stretch of the river, and by Major General Walsh's comments (PDF), you can tell it was an agonizing decision:

Everyone I have talked with—from boat operators, to labors, scientist and engineers, and truck drivers have all said the same thing—I never thought I would see the day that the river would reach these levels.

We have exceeded the record stage already at Cairo. We are on a course to break records at many points as the crest moves through the system. Sometimes people celebrate with "records"—but not this time. Making this decision is not easy or hard—it's simply grave—because the decision leads to loss of property and livelihood—either in a floodway—or in an area that was not designed to flood.

The destruction of the levee immediately lowered water levels by about a foot and half in Cairo, but only slowed the rise of the Mississippi River below the breach. It's already setting all-time records in the 70-mile stretch below Cairo. Over the next two weeks, this massive surge will snake its way down the rest of the Lower Mississippi, and the National Weather Service is predicting record or near-record flood levels in towns all the way down through Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The Army Corps is already discussing "opening up more floodways," or blasting other levees to ease the main surge.

In some regards, a long, slow disaster like this is easier to manage—there probably (hopefully) won't be any deaths, as towns are already being evacuated and there's plenty of advance warning. Contrast that with the horrible tornado outbreak last week, and this "flood" feels like less of an emergency. Let's just hope that the slow, lazy nature of this disaster doesn't make it something that's overlooked by the rest of us.

Top photo: screenshot from Wall Street Journal video; Satellite images from NASA Earth Observatory