David Brower must be wincing from the grave

Sierra Club Foundation writes "Enough is Enough!" and urges people to write Obama to stop coastal oil drilling. Today Jane Hamsher has an excellent post up at FDL:

Josh Gerstein has an article in Politico on the massive silence coming out of the enviros on the BP oil catastrophe, which has been notable ever since the rig collapsed. This weekend the groups took out an ad in the Washington Post, not to criticize the administration for their response, but to praise the President for putting a hold on a drilling project in Alaska:

“President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told the Bangor Daily News last week. “He obviously did not take the crisis in the Minerals Management Service adequately seriously, that’s clear. But his agencies have done a phenomenally good job.”

If they aren’t saying anything negative, it’s because they believe there’s nothing to criticize:

Asked if Sierra Club has any concerns about the administration’s response to the spill, [Sierra Club's Dave] Willett said, “Overall, we’re satisfied with the cleanup and recovery effort.”

[...]

These groups have demonstrated by both their action and inaction that they do not deserve that public trust. Unlike the Center for Biological Diversity, fawning groups like the Sierra Club have been successfully manipulated both by corporate money and by partisan gamesmanship. They’ve become such complete Washington DC creatures that they don’t know how to be advocates from the outside any more — their primary function is to give political cover in the midst of a PR battle. They have abdicated the role of non-partisan watchdogs, and the public should find new organizations independent of party control in which to place their trust.

While the SC may push for clean energy, however, as the the FDL link shows, big money and access to governmental power corrupt. The Sierra Club is included (implicit) in that equation. David Brower must be wincing from the grave.

Interview: Naomi Klein on oil spill

Frustration is growing among residents of the US Gulf of Mexico coast over the pace of efforts to combat the growing oil spill in the region. Author and activist Naomi Klein has been visiting the state of Louisiana. She told Al Jazeera that patience is running very thin. Video, via The Real News Network.

Hey! Hay!

Watch this video: A cool solution to clean up the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.

20 Gallons

In the time it takes to read this short sentence, another 20 gallons of crude oil will have escaped from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon well into the Gulf of Mexico.