At Shell Oil’s annual Results Conference in London, Shell CEO Peter Voser delivered a prepared address on the company’s global performance during 2012. It included little information about the energy giant’s 2012 Alaska Arctic drilling season fiascos we don’t already know.

I almost fell off the barstool when I read that it was Bain Capital (Mitt Romney, former CEO) that told oil giant BP it was a good idea to cut costs. The cuts would lead to death, mayhem and the destruction of the Gulf Coast (not to mention BP poisoning of Alaska, Africa, Central Asia and Colombia).

It’s painfully ironic that Dagwood Bumstead finally got around to celebrating Earth Day today, by napping instead of mowing the lawn, at the same time Earth Day became more of a wake than anything to celebrate. Thanks to our brain-dead media and bought-off politicians in both parties, fewer Americans than at any time since the 1970′s give a tinker’s damn whether or not our planet turns into an uninhabitable, sweltering, toxic cesspool.

A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current issues that may be of interest.

A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current issues that may be of interest.

BP settled with 120,000 victims of the oil disaster in the Gulf coast for a sum of $7.8 billion, all of which will come from the already allocated $20 billion oil spill fund. This result works well for BP, which can now get back to the business of exploiting world resources for profit. Meanwhile, after the moratorium there’s now a resurgence in offshore drilling worldwide; in the Gulf, it’s about to surpass pre-disaster levels.

Palast takes us on a fast paced, kick ass narrative that globe trots from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, to the coast of Alaska, to New Orleans, to Liberia, to Azerbaijan, to Fukushima, Japan. It’s the real-deal investigative reporting of corporate irresponsibility. As Greg Palast said himself in an interview,” This book is a story of the 1%. It’s why we occupy.”

It’s interesting to go back and read someone like John D. MacDonald‘s Travis McGee series these days. Here I am, 45 years later, quoting his words from 1965 decrying the state of the environment. The biggest disconnect is when I read him complaining about the world population being overburdened at 4B when we recently passed 7B.

There may be ongoing claims that will drain out a bit more money. But it won’t be much more than 20% of the total funds negotiated that will be used. I don’t know whether this can be attributed to program eligibility or a lack of publicity or bad design. But that number seems quite low compared to the devastation that BP wreaked upon the Gulf Coast.

Antonia Juhasz’ Black Tide drills into our past, our present, and all too possibly, our future. Black Tide gives us the chance to learn from Antonia’s years of expert work on the oil industry and the industry’s effects upon us all and the planet we all depend on. This book goes far beyond history and policy – the book draws on the months Antonia spent with Gulf Coast residents living with the consequences of the oil catastrophe BP and partners brought upon them and the Gulf one year and thirteen days ago. The result is a powerful, compelling work of non-fiction that reads like a novel. But unlike a novel, Black Tide brings us into the lives of real people, and Antonia brings them to us in their own words.