Fossil Fuels
Fossil fuels are substances that are derived from the fossilization and decay of ancient plant matter and other organic materials. They can be burned to provide energy for transportation and electricity generation.
See also Energy as well as for environmental issues related to energy production, see Global Warming and Fracking.
See also Environmental Justice and Sustainability and Transportation. Grist.org has excellent coverage of energy issues.
Contents
Fossil Fuels
What A Year: 45 Fossil Fuel Disasters the Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know About 12/13.
The End of the Conflict-Creating Oil Age Is Coming Into View -- Here's What the Future Looks Like, by Avery Lovins. 11/13.
300 Years of FOSSIL FUELS in 300 Seconds and what to do now ***
Phillips 66 kills hundreds of birds in Texas, gets fined by feds 11/13.
International Energy Outlook 2013 to 2040 9/13.
Great short animated overview of Tar Sands.
Peak Oil Overview. More Signs of ‘Peak Us’ in New Study of ‘Peak Oil Demand’ 7/13.
The Third Carbon Age: Don’t for a Second Imagine We’re Heading for an Era of Renewable Energy, a fine historical overview of fossil fuels by Michael T. Klare.
Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world (book).
Coal 101 short video.
Peru Declares Oil Contamination Emergency In Remote Amazon Region 3/13.
Native Americans are taking the lead in protecting natural resources from oil, including Keystone XL Pipeline spill (infographic).
Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill audio interviews. Antonia Juhasz is an oil and energy analyst and author and journalist. She's the editor of free alternative annual reports for Chevron and the author of three books on the oil industry.
Where does your electricity come from? The answer might well surprise you.
Extreme Energy Means an Extreme Planet (editorial) 10/12.
National Academy of Sciences has concluded that deep cuts in oil use and emissions of greenhouse gases from cars and light trucks are possible in the United States by 2050, but only with a mix of diverse and intensified research and policies far stronger than those pursued so far by the Obama administration. 3/13.
Sadly, much of the report has a “same as it ever was” feel, including a push for “feebates” on efficient vehicles balanced by a surcharge on gas guzzlers
In his new book Greedy Bastards, Dylan Ratigan explains how "vampire industries" like oil and coal have forged "an unholy alliance with government based not just on the money that they contribute to political campaigns and spend on lobbying, but on their ability to hypnotize us with false prices."
NPR's Burn: An Energy Journal see also (video)
Worst oil spills in history.
Blood and Oil (video).
Environmental Debt. Would you rather pay more for electricity, gas and mass transit infrastructure today or try to rebuild and recover from ever more extreme droughts, hurricanes or wildfires in the future? Guess which will be more expensive and painful? In 2011, a Harvard study showed that in just the United States, the full costs of coal extraction and combustion on top of the coal companies' costs were between $350 - 500 billion a year....Add together the external costs of coal and oil, and it is well over $1.1 trillion, the annual 2012 United States deficit and the trigger for the sequester. Clearly, environmental debt is already a serious contributor to fiscal instability. And it is never even debated by Congress 3/13
== Natural Gas == (see new Fracking page)
60 Minutes segment on Fracking, injecting chemicals under high pressure to extract natural gas. 11/10.
T Boone Pickens TEDtalk on energy policy 3/12.
Vanity Fair article and video on water affected.
Natural gas' (mostly methane) role in Gulf oil spill. from Mojo
Drilling Down on Fracking loe.org 7/10
Gasland a documentary about drilling for natural gas. official site.
Coal
Grist has excellent coverage of green issues, and energy and climate in particular. Here's a sample on the real cost of coal. See also Current news from Democracy Now.
Coal 101 short video.
Is this the beginning of the end for coal? 9/13.
Study Links Mercury Levels In Fish To Coal-Fired Power Plants 9/13.
Powder River Basin Coal Lease Auction Receives No Bids For First Time In Wyoming History
Fearless Coal Slurry Protests Launched: Activists Paddle Boat Across Deadly Impoundment (Photos) 8/13.
Images 7/13.
Environmental Debt. Would you rather pay more for electricity, gas and mass transit infrastructure today or try to rebuild and recover from ever more extreme droughts, hurricanes or wildfires in the future? Guess which will be more expensive and painful? Add together the external costs of coal and oil, and it is well over $1.1 trillion, the annual 2012 United States deficit and the trigger for the sequester. Clearly, environmental debt is already a serious contributor to fiscal instability. And it is never even debated by Congress 3/13
Coal plants could be linked to thousands of North Carolina suicides 5/13
State-by-State Guide to Information on Coal in the United States
Coal at the Crossroads KQED series (text and audio).
Coal Consumption Booms Amid Rising Climate Concerns: IEA Coal Report 2012 12/12.
Coal export to China being fought in Northwest by Native Americans.why it matters (video).
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has released a report that documents the disproportionate health impacts of coal-fired power plants on low-income communities of color. 11/12 (audio and text)
West Virginia coal activist Maria Gunnoe is used to intimidation. Gunnoe has been an activist for years, in 2009 winning the Goldman Environmental Prize (video} for her work trying to stem mountaintop-removal mining (her slideshow). The prize came with a $150,000 award – money she planned to use modestly: to extend the city water system to her house. But she was recently threatened with child porn charges by Republican legislators for showing a picture of a toddler being bathed in very orange water. She is in the documentary Burning the Future.7.12
Where does your electricity come from? The answer might well surprise you. (interactive map)
Coal ash dumped on poor people. 6.12
U.S. Coal Industry May Be Pushed Aside As America Switches To Cheap, Clean Energy Alternatives 6.12.
Burning the Future is a powerful documentary shown on PBS.
‘Peak Coal’ comes to Appalachia 9/11.
Coal Ash slurry overview. 6/12.
News: Nazi-era coal gasification bills are moving through Congress. Activists are recreating the Blair March 90 years ago which resulted in women and children being machine gunned (from a train by hired thugs) and bombed from airplanes (the Army did aerial reconnaissance). RFK Jr editorial These events are in John Sayles' Matewan (UCSC Media Center DVD3923) trailer and an award-winning novel Storming Heaven by Denise Giardina. This event prefigured the Ludlow Massacre.
Robert F Kennedy Jr (see Eco-heroes) has been a major activist on coal. Local 6/11 interview (video).
Time lapse images of mountaintop coal removal
Dirty Business: "Clean Coal" and the Battle for Our Energy Future, a documentary film. (review) Link.
Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal (American RadioWorks)Apr 9, 2011.
Carbon Capture update 7/11 (text and audio). 12/11 article
The Last Mountain, directed by Bill Haney, shines a light on the dark side of our use of coal in the U.S. The film begins with the scary statistic that half of all the electricity used in the U.S. comes from burning coal, which is also the number one source of greenhouse gases globally. It then takes us to Appalachia, where 30 percent of U.S. coal is extracted through mountaintop removal. Sundance selection.
Living on Earth (NPR) coverage of coal power text and audio.
Graph of Massey safety violations and fines.
Black Lung makes a comeback. 70K coal miners have died. 7.12 (audio and text).
Time to bury cheap coal (editorial, but good data) 3/15 More from Grist. This all becomes more urgent and relevant after the second recent Massey fatal coal mine disaster. 4/10
Slideshow of coal ash disaster.
Clean Coal: Myth or Reality? 2009 video.
Jeff Biggers is the American Book Award-winning author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland. interview (video) 2010
Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future author interview (text).
Dirty Business reveals the true social and environmental costs of coal power and explores the murky realities of "clean coal" technology.
Coal River by Michael Shnayerson. 2009 book
Coal Swarm is a online project you can participate in to share info on coal. A project of Sourcewatch.org
Toxic sludge 3/10
Can Coal be Earth-Friendly? PBS Now 4/09 "Clean coal" explored.
Fighting Goliath follows the story of farmers, ranchers and Mayors fighting against the construction of 18 new coal-burning power plants in Texas. TXU Corp. withdrew eight of the 11 permit applications shortly before the case went to court, when it was announced that shareholders would sell the utility to private equity firms.
KilowattOurs Excellent documentary on energy use Watch online with script and links }}
20th Annual Goldman Environmental Prize which was awarded to grassroots activists from around the world today. We talk with recipients including Maria Gunnoe, a West Virginian who battled against King Coal and mountaintop removal, and Rizwana Hasan who worked to end the dangerous ship breaking industry in Bangladesh. 4/09 audio
Article on coal mining devastation in Appalachia
Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake about coal mining region of Appalachia
Everything in Its Path By Kai T. Erikson Recounts the devastating personal and communal effects of the 1972 Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, disaster on a tightly knit Appalachian community suddenly uprooted and dispersed.
Google Earth stops mountaintop removal.
EPA chief Lisa Jackson on mountaintop removal, climate legislation, toxics, and more (text and audio interview. 6/09)
Interview with Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, says coal isn’t going away anytime soon. (text and audio interview. 6/09 )
Ken Hechler, the 94 year old legendary West Virginia congressman (a former coal miner who has worked for their rights), was arrested in a non-violent protest with NASA's celebrated climate scientist James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, Michael Brune (executive director of Rainforest Action Network), and Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds (assaulted by coal supporter), and dozens of other coalfield residents after crossing onto the property of leading mountaintop removal coal mining company, Massey Energy. More 6/09 also video.
The Evolution of Byrd – Robert C. Byrd served as the Senator for West Virginia for 51 years. In that time, the coal state representative dramatically changed his opinions on a variety environmental issues. Audio and text. LOE.org 7/10.
Black Mesa Trust is Native People vs Peabody Coal.
Oil
The End of the Conflict-Creating Oil Age Is Coming Into View -- Here's What the Future Looks Like, by Avery Lovins. 11/13.
Shell Niger Delta Oil Spill: Company To Negotiate Compensation And Cleanup With Nigerians 9/13.
Shell to drill world’s deepest offshore oil well in Gulf of Mexico after blowing Arctic drilling.
"The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of," a project that began with a seven-month investigation into the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in 2010. It broadened into an examination of national pipeline safety issues, and how unprepared the nation is for the impending flood of imports of a more corrosive and more dangerous form of oil.related stories.
BP to Pay Largest Fine in U.S. History, Admit Guilt in Gulf Oil Spill Settlement also more on legal aspects video 11/12. Important trial ongoing 4/13. Three Years Later: Gulf Coast Still Recovering From BP Oil Spill. What BP Doesn’t Want You to Know About the 2010 Gulf Spill.
Oil drilling in the Arctic 8.12 Keep the Arctic Cold: Why the Rush to Drill Must Be Stopped overview 5/13.
Canadian Tar Sand aerial photo of carbon sink forests replaced by dirty oil (bad for climate) that's energy intensive to extract and will be shipped over Olglala Aquifer. See 350.org. More info on Tar sands.
Peak Oil Understanding Peak Oil (video). Roland Horne, Thomas Davies Barrow Professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University, discusses the future of oil (2009). Petroleum Geologist Jeffrey J. Brown provides an overview of the global energy picture, focused on oil supply and demand and the impact of peak oil exports (2008). Peak oil talk at UCSB (video) 2/08
The Peak: Oil, Water and Climate Change CHRIS MARTENSON Recorded Jan 26 2010 audio (Realplayer)
Peak Oil and a Changing Climate Series
Infographics: Worst oil spills in history. [US oil suppliers] 2006
TEDtalk video on tar sands. 3/12
Humor: Comedians Andy Cobb and Mike Damanskis have a new video about the ExxonMobil oil spill in Mayflower, Arkansas called Exxon - Energy Everywhere.
Advertising & the End of the World is a brilliant Big Picture analysis of how the culture of consumption drives eco-degradation. 2010 Update: Adverstising & the Perfect Storm: Global Warming, Peak Oil & Consumer Debt presented by Sut Jhally, Umass and Founder/Exec Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF).
New books include Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization and Peak Everything also Drowning in Oil: BP & the Reckless Pursuit of Profit by Loren C. Steffy.
The Spill A joint investigation by FRONTLINE and ProPublica into the trail of problems -- deadly accidents, disastrous spills, countless safety violations -- which long troubled the oil giant, BP. Could the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have been prevented?
Black Tide: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill audio interviews. Antonia Juhasz is an oil and energy analyst and author and journalist. She's the editor of free alternative annual reports for Chevron and the author of three books on the oil industry. slideshow of Gulf oil spill lest we forget.
The political chemistry of oil: Lisa Margonelli shares her bold plan to wean America off of oil -- by confronting consumers with its real cost. (TEDtalk video).Her book about the oil supply chain, Oil On the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to Your Tank.
Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil By David L. Goodstein (20 min video interview). Recommended by 81C course.
Blind Spot is a documentary film that illustrates the current oil and energy crisis that our world is facing. Blind Spot is a documentary film that illustrates the current oil and energy crisis that our world is facing. Whatever measures of ignorance, greed, wishful thinking, we have put ourselves at a crossroad, which offers two paths with dire consequences. If we continue to burn fossil fuels we will choke the life out of the planet and if we don’t our way of life will collapse. (2008) 86 min. Also at MEF.org
15 Biggest Oil spills of all time (map).
Robotic Oil Spill Cleaning Sailboats
Richard Sears thinks hard about the post-oil world. He's a visiting scientist at MIT, after a long career as a VP at Shell. TEDtalk 2010.
Microbes that eat oil audio 7/10
Alan Richards' UCSC Blood and Oil course.
Oil Eating microbes video
The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other ...By James Howard Kunstler. Article A number of videos
Rob Hopkins reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out. He proposes a unique solution to this problem -- the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels. TEDtalk video.
The Adventure Ecology team is working alongside high profile artists, film makers and photographers in the first Adventures in Waste mini mission destinations: Toxico oil in Ecuador.
Amazon Watch oil campaigns. Chevron/Texaco damage in Ecuador (indigenous people) Video.
Images of oil. In stunning large-format photographs, Edward Burtynsky follows the path of oil through modern society, from wellhead to pipeline to car engine -- and then beyond to the projected peak-oil endgame. TEDtalk video.
Game/simulation: World Without Oil from Institute for the Future (see Superstruct on Games page.
How Much Oil Is Left? simulation
the 1969 oil spill of Santa Barbara was a wakeup call and led to laws to protect environment.
Chevron & Sierra Club: Drilling for Common Ground video
A Crude Awakening 2007 documentary. Maker site has some nice accompanying documentation.
Crude Impact: Oil Companies and the Environment from LinkTV Video.
Bill McKibben's recent review in the NY Times recommends Paul Roberts' The End of Oil link and others on Global Warming. Roberts interview 2004. Roberts on panel discussion 2008
Avery Lovins on the Oil Endgame, a TEDtalk. See also www.oilendgame.com
Blood and Oil Featuring Michael T. Klare (full preview online)
The notion that oil motivates America's military engagements in the Middle East is often disregarded as nonsense or mere conspiracy theory. In Blood and Oil, bestselling author and Nation magazine defense correspondent Michael T. Klare challenges this conventional wisdom and corrects the historical record. The film unearths declassified documents and highlights forgotten passages in prominent presidential doctrines to show how concerns about oil have been at the core of American foreign policy for more than 60 years -- rendering our contemporary energy and military policies virtually indistinguishable.
In the end, Blood and Oil calls for a radical re-thinking of US energy policy, warning that unless we change direction, we stand to be drawn into one oil war after another as the global hunt for diminishing world petroleum supplies accelerates.
Energy Wars? (from those wild-eyed Commies at the Financial Times) 3/10
Exxon Valdez comprehensive newspaper site
In the Wake of the Exxon Valdez : Devastating Impact of Alaska's Oil Spill by Art Davidson S&E Stacks - TD427.P4D39 1990
Cleanup workers continue to have health problems
Local Resources
College 8/EE 81C has lots of great resources, though you'll need to access via UCSC Library.
UCSC student-led projects. Wind on the Wharf is also a UCSC project.
Center for Remote Sensing (CRS)
Center for the Study of the Dynamics and Evolution of the Land-Sea Interface
Center for Sustainable Energy and Power Systems update on partnership with Hartnell.
Transitions Santa Cruz. "Our mission is to be a catalyst for Santa Cruz' relocalization—the development of local self-reliance in food, energy, transportation, media, systems of care, economy and the arts—through a broadly inclusive community-building process." Monthly gathering the third Weds of the month.
The California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating change for a clean energy future. Join us to learn about energy efficiency, renewable energy and clean transportation; take advantage of incentive programs and help promote sustainable policies and developing technologies.
