Author Archives: Brain5176z

The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

by Brain5176z Posted on June 16, 2016

The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

By on Jun 16, 2016Share

The next president will decide the fate of pristine waters 3,000 miles away from the Oval Office — a decision that would resonate for decades.

Nearly 400 scientists sent a letter Wednesday calling on President Obama to close the Arctic to the oil industry. Right now, Obama’s five-year draft plan for offshore drilling offers two lease sales, one in the Beaufort Sea in 2020 and one in the Chukchi Sea in 2022.

But it’s not just Obama who will determine the fate of the Arctic; his successor’s choices will outlast his or her tenure by a long shot.

For her part, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has indicated that she would not allow oil and gas drilling in the region.

On the other hand, Republican nominee Donald Trump hasn’t taken a formal stance on the issue, though he has indicated support for offshore drilling in the Atlantic and that he would “absolutely” drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. “I’m a big driller,” he’s said.

For drillers, the Arctic is about the long game: From the time the leasing bid occurs, it usually takes about a decade for drilling to actually begin. 

“You’re putting into motion a process that will rattle on for decades,” Tim Donaghy, a senior researcher at Greenpeace who focuses on offshore drilling, told Grist.

Even if the Arctic were opened, no company has managed to prove that wading into its icy waters is a smart financial investment. Any project in the Arctic is bound to face similar hurdles and the kind of opposition Shell saw from climate activists, who blockaded the mouth of a river to stall the company’s ice breaker last year. Shell, after a series of mishaps, announced last May that it was packing up after blowing $7 billion in Arctic waters.

The Arctic Circle contains an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil, equivalent to 13 percent of Earth’s undiscovered oil, to be exact. Drillers (and future presidents) may be hard-pressed to let go of such a buried treasure.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Credit: 

The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

Posted in alo, Anchor, Brita, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, solar, solar panels, The Atlantic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The next U.S. president could save or destroy the Arctic

Russia Is Going After McDonald’s. (Can We Give Them Jack in the Box?)

by Brain5176z Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Russia’s health inspection agency is scrutinizing more than 100 McDonald’s locations and has forced the company to temporarily close multiple others in the country. The agency says McDonalds outlets are getting inspected because some have violated sanitary regulations— but others see retaliation for US sanctions on Russia.

“This is a prominent symbol of the U.S. It has a lot of restaurants and therefore is a meaningful target,” Yulia Bushueva, managing director for Arbat Capital, an investment advisory company, told Bloomberg. “I don’t recall McDonald’s having consumer-safety problems of such a scale in over more than two decades of presence in Russia.”

McDonald’s was the first fast food chain to enter Russia, and it holds some symbolic importance in the country. The first location opened in Pushkin Square in Moscow in January 1990 to one utterly massive line (see video below). This was shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall but nearly two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union when Western brands of any stripe were a rare sight in Russia. At the time, the site of the Golden Arches in the center of Moscow signaled the arrival of a new era of prosperity and integration with the world economy.

Today, there are more than 400 McDonald’s outlets in the country. Many are owned locally. The company employs more than 37,000 people in Russia and sources 85 percent of its products from Russian suppliers, according to its website.

But as Russia and the West began facing off over Ukraine this spring, McDonald’s has fallen victim to their power struggle. In April, McDonald’s announced it would close it’s three company-owned locations in Crimea “due to operational reasons beyond our control,” according to their statement to Reuters.

That decision was praised by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a prominent legislator and Putin supporter, who suggested the chain should leave Russia as well. “It would be good if they closed here too, if they disappeared for good,” he said in Russian media. “Pepsi-Cola would be next.” Zhirinovsky also proposed instructing members of his Liberal Democratic party to picket outside McDonald’s until they closed.

Since August 20, McDonald’s has temporarily closed 12 locations throughout Russia, including four in Krasnodar, near the black sea, and the iconic first-ever location in Moscow. Burger King, Subway, and KFC— which have all seen big expansions in Russia in recent years— have remained unscathed.

Original source:

Russia Is Going After McDonald’s. (Can We Give Them Jack in the Box?)

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Russia Is Going After McDonald’s. (Can We Give Them Jack in the Box?)