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Hackers are messing with the oil and gas industry

by CoryDescoteaux Posted on November 18, 2015

Hackers are messing with the oil and gas industry

By on 18 Nov 2015commentsShare

The best part about an oil and gas addiction — besides all the pollution, environmental degradation, and crippling income inequality, of course — is how pathetically vulnerable it makes us to cyber attacks.

Say you’re a hacker. Pick a cool name — something like Krazy Keys or The Epidemic. Now, say you want to really fuck with the U.S. economy (you’re still reeling over those damn Starbucks cups). What better way to take down Uncle Sam than to target the slick, gooey oil that is his life blood? Fortunately for you, Cyber Satan, a growing number of oil and gas companies are making that pretty easy to do.

By connecting their infrastructure to the ever-expanding network of internet-enabled devices known as of the Internet of Things (check out our explainer video here), these companies are automating their operations and thus improving efficiency, but they’re also opening themselves up to cyber attacks. Here’s more from Motherboard:

The industry has a lot of different moving parts and processes, including pump control, blow-out prevention, and managing gas storage. Unexpected changes to these processes or the operations technology systems that run them can have a major impact like production stoppages or even damage to the infrastructure.

“Maybe the hackers’ intentions may not be to destroy something, but by not understanding the full picture of the system or what component of it they are messing with, they can have a real catastrophic effect,” said (cyber security expert Jasper Graham). This could be anything from bringing productivity to a standstill to disabling alarm systems or communications between workers on the field, which could put their safety at risk.

Already, there have been a number of attacks on oil companies around the world. In 2012, a group called The Cutting Sword of Justice (real name) attacked Saudi Aramco, partially or fully wiping files on 35,000 computers, Motherboard reports. The hackers didn’t manage to tamper with any pumping or drilling operations, but the company did have to temporarily shut down all of its computers. And last year, dozens of oil companies in Norway fell prey to unidentified internet marauders. Even Anonymous is getting in on the action, according to Motherboard. The notorious hacking group targeted gas stations earlier this year.

Unfortunately, oil and gas companies aren’t the only ones failing to protect themselves against cybersecurity threats. The Internet of Things is taking over a lot of our infrastructure, and most of that infrastructure isn’t ready to take on hackers. On the plus side, the oil industry is pretty evil, so as long as Queen Crypto and The Wackadoodle aren’t hurting anyone or creating serious economic mayhem, more power to them. And besides, the environmental movement is always in desperate need of a little badassery. These Hackers might just do the trick:

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The Internet of Things Is Making Oil Production Vulnerable to Hacking

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Hackers are messing with the oil and gas industry

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This Was the Most Important Exchange of the Democratic Debate

by ImaCardoza Posted on November 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders may have enjoyed a detente during the foreign policy portion of Saturday’s Democratic debate, but when the subject turned to Wall Street, the gloves came off.

It started when the CBS moderator, John Dickerson, asked Clinton how voters could trust her to rein in Wall Street given her close ties to the financial services industry. Clinton was ready for it. “Well I think it’s pretty clear that they know that I will,” she said. She described “two billionaire hedge fund managers who started a super-PAC and they’re advertising against me in Iowa.” Why? Because “they clearly think I’m going to do what I say I’m gonna do.” She then invoked her Senate career and pointed to legislation that she introduced to limit compensation and increase shareholder oversight and continued:

I’ve laid out a very aggressive plan to rein in Wall Street—not just the big banks, that’s a part of the problem, and I’m going after them, it’s a comprehensive plan. But I’m going further than that. We have to go after what’s call the shadow banking industry. Those hedge funds—look at what happened in ’08. AIG an insurance company. Lehmann Brothers, an investment bank, helped to bring our economy down. So I want to look at the whole problem, and that’s why my proposal is much more comprehensive than anything else that’s been put forth.

But when Dickerson asked Sanders for his response, the Vermont senator was unimpressed:

“Not good enough!”

“Here’s the story, I mean let’s not be naive about it,” he said. “Over her political career, why has Wall Street been a major, the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? Now, maybe they’re dumb and they don’t know what they’re gonna get, but I don’t think so.”

Dickerson pressed Sanders on what specifically he believed Wall Street would get for the industry’s campaign contributions to his opponent. Sanders explained:

I have never heard a candidate—never—who’s received huge amounts of money from oil, from coal, from Wall Street from the military-industrial complex, not one candidate, who doesn’t say, ‘Oh, these contributions will not influence me, I’m going to be independent.’ But why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something. Everybody knows that. Once again, I am running a campaign differently than any other candidate. We are relying on small campaign donors, 750,000 of them, thirty bucks apiece. That’s who am I indebted to.

Clinton was ready with a sharp response. “He has basically used his answer to impugn my integrity, let’s be frank here,” she began. “Not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors—most of them small—and I’m proud that for the very first time, a majority of my donors are women—60 percent.” She said her support for Wall Street is because “I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked.”

Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York, it was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country. Now it’s fine for you to say what you’re gonna say but I looked very carefully at your proposal. Reinstating Glass–Steagall is a part of what very well could help. But it is nowhere near enough. My proposal is tougher, more effective, and more comprehensive because I go after all of Wall Street, not just the big banks.

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This Was the Most Important Exchange of the Democratic Debate

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New Dietary Guidelines Won’t Include Sustainability

by TahliaCJVchx Posted on October 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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When the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines are released later this year, they’re sure to make waves in the nation’s food economy. Updated every five years, the rules—the government’s official line on what Americans should eat to stay healthy—inform decisions on everything from agricultural subsidies to government food assistance programs to school lunch.

But there’s one thing the new guidelines won’t touch: the health of our environment.

In a statement posted Tuesday on the USDA website, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwel announced that the guidelines will not include recommendations about how to choose foods with the lightest impact on the planet. The dietary guidelines, they wrote, are not “the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation.”

The decision came despite the fact that in its February report, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee—the team that reviews scientific and medical evidence and offers advise on what should be included—highlighted the ties between environmental impact and healthy eating. “Access to sufficient, nutritious, and safe food is an essential element of food security for the US,” the report stated. “A sustainable diet ensures this access for both the current population and future generations.”

As my colleague Maddie Oatman noted when the committee released its recommendations, those ideas didn’t go over well with Big Ag backers. Industry groups sent letters to Secretary Vilsack arguing that environmental impact is outside the scope of the Dietary Guidelines and spent millions of dollars trying to dissuade the USDA from including sustainability in its update.

Director of the Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs, who is a Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, called Tuesday’s announcement a “shameful abnegation of political responsibility,” after heralding the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report as a key breakthrough.

“For US government officials to suggest that this chapter should be deleted would be to argue for deleting science itself; a shameful abnegation of political responsibility in the face of lobbying pressure,” he said in a press release. “Secretaries Burwell and Vilsack will be remembered for whether they stand up for science or for corporate lobbies.”

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New Dietary Guidelines Won’t Include Sustainability

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A Big Week for the RFS

by Posted on September 16, 2015

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A Big Week for the RFS

Posted 16 September 2015 in

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Earlier this week, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack both expressed support for the Renewable Fuel Standard at the annual Growth Energy fly-in. Biofuels industry leaders followed up with a letter to President Obama, urging him to support a strong RFS.

McCarthy told attendees that “The biofuel industry is the great American success story,” and that “the EPA is are working hard to make sure we are moving towards the [RFS] levels intended by Congress.” Secretary Vilsack also offered praise for the RFS and encouraged the industry to promote more positive news about ethanol.

Find more coverage of the conference here and here.

In their letter, industry leaders reminded the President that the EPA’s draft proposal endangers the progress our country has made toward bringing cellulosic ethanol, the cleanest motor fuel the world has ever known, to market.

“Mr. President, the ramifications of your decision on this issue are substantial for America’s largest renewable energy sector. If the final rule includes distribution waivers, the global market signal will be that your Administration is backing away from its support of the most transformative U.S. energy and climate policy on the books today; and one that is widely regarded to be the best cellulosic and advanced biofuels policy in the world. While our companies will not fail to deploy advanced biofuels, we will continue to be forced to look overseas where renewable fuel policies are more stable.”

Read the full letter here.

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A Big Week for the RFS

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The Future of Renewable Fuel

by Posted on September 16, 2015

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The Future of Renewable Fuel

Posted 16 September 2015 in

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Biofuels industry leaders wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to support a strong Renewable Fuels Standard.

Dear Mr. President,

As leaders in the advanced and cellulosic biofuels industry, producers of the lowest carbon fuel in the world, we are writing to express our serious concerns about modifications your Administration is proposing to make to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

As a general matter, we commend your commitment to addressing climate change, and look forward to continuing to work with you to create innovative solutions to reduce GHG emissions. We stand behind your recent declaration that Americans are innovators by nature, and your statement that “there should be no question that the United States of America is stepping up to the plate,” as we head into pivotal climate talks in Paris later this year.

However, our industry is also dealing with the reality that on May 29th your Administration re- proposed to insert a loophole into the RFS – a Clean Air Act (CAA) program that is the most aggressive U.S. climate policy enforced today – that would allow oil companies to avoid their obligations under the law.

As you know, the point of the RFS was to require oil companies to buy and sell an increasing amount of renewable fuel to address the fact that the oil industry would otherwise use its market position to cut off market access for competitors and thereby smother investment in cellulosic ethanol and advanced biofuels that have the lowest carbon footprint in the world. And yet, for the first time in RFS history, EPA is proposing to change the rules in the middle of the game to allow challenges related to the “distribution” of renewable fuel by oil companies – i.e. the oil industry’s refusal to buy and distribute low carbon, renewable fuel and its willingness to block brand-licensed gasoline retailers from selling higher renewable content blends under their branded canopy – to be cause for waiving the RFS on a year-to-year basis. Such a provision would gut the core concept behind the law.

From an investment perspective, billions of dollars of private capital flowed into U.S. biofuel projects – in the face of an historic global recession – largely because the RFS was seen as breaking the chokehold the oil industry has on fuel distribution and market access. RFS implementation was predicated on a market-based system of credits, much like the cap-and-trade plan you supported, and the most likely compliance mechanism for your Clean Power Plan. If portions of the oil industry choose not to purchase and use renewable fuel, they are required to purchase “Renewable Identification Numbers” (RINs) from market participants that did purchase and use renewable fuel in order to encourage good behavior and ensure fairness. As such, as RIN prices increase, so too does the economic incentive to blend more biofuels into the system. In essence, the policy rewards actors who do their part to meet the policy’s objective, and ensures that no one gets a free pass. This is how so many oil companies reported profits from selling RINs in recent years.

As acknowledged by EPA and former economic advisors to your Administration, this regulatory dynamic drives consumer choice at the pump with more American-made, renewable fuel without increasing average fuel prices. But EPA’s decision to change its waiver methodology, under pressure from the oil industry, upends the system and sends the market signal that the RFS volumes can be lowered if the oil industry simply drags its heels. The point of the RFS was to reward those who made the investments necessary to use more renewable fuel. Parts of the oil industry refused to do so starting in 2013, and now they’re being rewarded. No market-based system can survive if regulators are willing to overhaul the system to reward intransigence among obligated parties.

It is important to note that our industry has fought and won this battle once before. In 2005, Senator Inhofe and other oil industry champions tried to get “distribution waivers” included in the RFS from inception. Congress considered this path, but the language was struck from the bill in conference because Congressional champions for our industry knew that providing such waivers would result in the oil companies continuing to use their market position to stop the growth of biofuels.

Mr. President, the ramifications of your decision on this issue are substantial for America’s largest renewable energy sector. If the final rule includes distribution waivers, the global market signal will be that your Administration is backing away from its support of the most transformative U.S. energy and climate policy on the books today; and one that is widely regarded to be the best cellulosic and advanced biofuels policy in the world. While our companies will not fail to deploy advanced biofuels, we will continue to be forced to look overseas where renewable fuel policies are more stable.

The good news is, and notwithstanding claims to the contrary, the inclusion of distribution waivers is not necessary to put the RFS on a reasonable and stable path going forward. We would like to work with your Administration to forge a better path forward that is reasonable from an RFS implementation and motor fuel market perspective, protects U.S. investment in low carbon fuels, and ensures that the United States is true to its word going forward in Paris and beyond.

We hope to have your support on this important matter, and firmly believe that with your leadership we can get this critical innovation/climate program back on track.

View the signatures of all the leaders here.

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Will New Orleans Survive the Next Katrina?

by Myrna Posted on August 26, 2015

Take a bird’s-eye tour of the $50 billion battle to save Louisiana. I’m driving down a dirt road in the vast tangle of coastal bayous that stretch south of New Orleans, so that Reggie Dupre can show me his pride and joy. “This is the little silver lining on the very dark cloud that was over Louisiana,” he says. In front of us, construction crews are shaping mounds of rock and dirt into a mile-long, 12-foot levy. On one side is a canal, crammed with boat traffic for the offshore oil drilling industry. On the other side is Terrabonne Parish, a rural community of commercial shrimp fishermen and oil roughnecks who rely on these waterways the same way a city kid like me relies on the subway. The levy dead-ends into a shiny new $25 million floodgate, the last line of defense against storm surges that accompany the hurricanes that frequently slam this coastline. Dupre is the director of the Terrabonne Levy and Conservation District, a county agency tasked with keeping the homes here above water. A decade ago—when Hurricane Katrina forced 1.5 million evacuations, killed nearly 2,000 people, and caused $100 billion in damage—Dupre was the parish’s representative in the Louisiana legislature in Baton Rouge. After the storm, he became a key architect of the state’s overhauled flood-control agenda, pushing through legislation to create a new state agency to manage coastal issues and working to steer tax revenue from oil drilling into coastal protection projects. Now he’s back home, overseeing projects like the one in front of us. Since Katrina, his office has built 35 miles of new levees. But the levees are just a small piece of the unprecedented transformation taking place along Louisiana’s coast. Dupre is also an evangelist for a new, broader ethos that has washed over the whole state since Katrina. Experts here agree that levees and floodwalls like this are only effective if they’re buttressed by natural barriers further out in the delta: The barrier islands and marshlands that are rapidly disappearing thanks to erosion, land subsidence, and sea level rise. Because of those forces—driven in part by a century-old practice of sealing the Mississippi River in its course and thereby starving the adjacent wetlands of nutrients and fresh water—Louisiana loses coastal land area equal to the size of a football field every hour. Before the storm, hurricane protection and coastal restoration were treated as separate, or ever competing, interests. Now, they’re one and the same. “Without Katrina, this wouldn’t be happening,” Dupre says. “We’ve gone from being the laughingstock to the model for the rest of the country.” In 2012, officials in the state’s new Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority—Dupre’s brainchild—released their most recent 50-year, $50 billion “master plan,” a sweeping document that encompasses everything from wetland restoration to elevating at-risk houses. Already, according to CPRA chair Chip Kline, the state has reconstructed 45 miles of barrier islands and restored nearly 30,000 acres of wetlands. These natural barriers slow storm surge before it reaches the levees, the first in what are known here as “multiple lines of defense.” There are also 250 miles of new levees, a two-mile storm surge barrier wall, the world’s largest pumping station (it can drain an Olympic-sized swimming pool in less than five seconds), and a host of other projects designed to control floods and stymie land loss. Kline says he’s confident that New Orleans is now safe from at least a 100-year flood (that is, a flood so severe that it has only has a 1-in-100 chance of occurring in any given year). Katrina was a 150-year flood in New Orleans. But given the realities of climate change, most experts think the city won’t be truly secure until it reaches the 500-year level. President Barack Obama agrees: Earlier this year he signed an executive order stipulating that any flood protection measures supported by federal money must meet a 500-year standard. Louisianans like Kline and Dupre contend that that standard is unreasonable and could hamper vital projects that are too expensive for the state to roll out on its own. Either way, the Louisiana coast is now a massive laboratory for the kinds of measures that coastal cities like New York and Miami will need to survive climate change. For Dupre, the stakes are clear: “If I’m not successful, my whole culture disappears.” There’s no better way to see the coast’s plight, and the scramble to save it, than from a bird’s-eye view. So Climate Desk hopped aboard a pontoon plane for an exclusive flyover. Check out the video above. More:   Will New Orleans Survive the Next Katrina? ; ; ;

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Will New Orleans Survive the Next Katrina?

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Renewable Fuel: A Decade of Progress

by Posted on August 10, 2015

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Renewable Fuel: A Decade of Progress

Posted 10 August 2015 in

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This GOP Presidential Candidate Actually Believes in Climate Change. But He Doesn’t Want to Fix It.

by NoeliaDrury Posted on July 21, 2015

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Ohio Gov. John Kasich doesn’t “want to overreact” to global warming. John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, is announcing his bid for the presidency Tuesday. Unlike most of his GOP opponents, Kasich actually believes that climate change is real. “I happen to believe there is a problem with climate change,” he told the Hill 2012. “I don’t want to overreact to it, I can’t measure it all, but I respect the creation that the Lord has given us and I want to make sure we protect it.” He made a similar statement in the video above, taken at a conference last month, but he added that the environment shouldn’t be “worshipped,” because that would be “pantheism.” Despite his comparatively reasonable views on climate science, Kasich has been pretty noncommittal about actually addressing global warming. And over the last few months, he has stepped up his opposition to President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. He’s rolled back Ohio’s clean energy goals and has joined a legal challenge against the Environmental Protection Agency. “Gov. Kasich seems less extreme than some other presidential candidates because he couches his views on climate change with uncertainty, rather than disagreement,” said Dan Weiss, a senior vice president at the League of Conservation Voters. Still, Weiss said, Kasich’s record tells a different story. It’s no surprise that climate change would be on Kasich’s radar. His state is a leading producer and user of coal, which is the country’s top source of carbon dioxide pollution. Kasich has said he is “not going to apologize” for burning coal. He’s also been a proponent of so-called “clean coal” technology, which aims to capture carbon emissions and store or repurpose them. (So far there’s only one commercial-scale CCS project in the country, at an astronomically expensive coal plant in Mississippi.) In the video above, Kasich claimed that his state “reduced emissions by 30 percent over the last 10 years.” According to federal data, total carbon emissions in Ohio fell only about half that amount between 2002 and 2012. (Rob Nichols, Gov. Kasich’s spokesperson, did not return multiple requests for comment about this statement and the governor’s overall climate record.) Either way, Ohio’s energy sector is among the nation’s dirtiest. It ranks fifth nationwide for total carbon emissions and has one of the nation’s highest rates of carbon emissions per unit of energy produced, a measurement that experts refer to as “carbon intensity.” That’s because of the state’s heavy reliance on coal, which provides 63 percent of its electricity (as opposed to just 2 percent from renewables). And Ohio is home to American Electric Power, one of the country’s biggest power companies and the number-two producer of electricity-related carbon emissions. The upshot of those statistics is that if the United States is going to “protect” the Earth, as Kasich claims to want to do, Ohio clearly has an important role to play. And yet, Kasich’s administration has been a leading opponent of Obama’s Clean Power Plan, a slate of regulations for power-related emissions that aims to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint 30 percent by 2030 and that forms the backbone of the president’s climate agenda. The rules, which set a different targets for each state, treat Ohio relatively lightly—according to a Bloomberg analysis, Ohio would be required to reduce its carbon intensity, but its overall carbon emissions could remain more or less unchanged. Last year, the Ohio EPA called the proposed rules “flawed” and said the federal EPA had “radically underestimated” their cost. Meanwhile, Ohio Attorney General Michael DeWine joined with a dozen other states in asking a federal court to block the EPA from implementing the plan. The court ultimately declined to hear that challenge, as the rules haven’t yet been finalized. Ohio may have a difficult time meeting the EPA target anyway, thanks to a law Kasich signed last year that effectively shelves the state’s own clean energy targets. The measure, which was backed by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, puts a two-year freeze on requirements for power companies in the state to procure more of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar, and to reduce energy demand overall. Clean energy targets like that would have helped the state meet the EPA mandate in a cost-effective manner; without them, the state may have to rely more heavily on curbing its coal use, according to one clean energy industry group in the state. So while Kasich might seem like a moderate on climate, undermining climate-friendly policies is hardly better than opposing the science outright. The quest for a climate-savvy GOP candidate continues.

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This GOP Presidential Candidate Actually Believes in Climate Change. But He Doesn’t Want to Fix It.

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Obama and the EPA’s Choice: American Jobs and Innovation, Or Oil Industry Profits?

by Posted on June 19, 2015

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Obama and the EPA’s Choice: American Jobs and Innovation, Or Oil Industry Profits?

Posted 19 June 2015 in

National

The EPA recently issued a proposed rule that sides with oil companies and puts the future of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) at risk, putting hundreds of thousands of American jobs in jeopardy. Sign our petition to tell the President Obama and the EPA to stand up to Big Oil and support a strong RFS.

The post below was authored by Brent Erickson, an Executive Vice President at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a member of Fuels America. It is cross-posted from Medium. Released before the EPA released its proposed rule, it lays out the stakes for rural economies and our energy future if the EPA sides with the oil lobby.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) hold the future of the nation’s renewable fuels policy in their hands. The future of America’s energy security and economy will turn on the EPA’s decision in the coming weeks whether to maintain the foundation of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) or give in to the oil industry’s construction of a “blend wall” when the agency proposes new rules for the 2014, 2015 and 2016 RFS obligations. The agency has a stark choice to make and two disparate options: either cave to the oil lobby and allow oil companies to maintain monopoly control of the motor fuel market or choose our rural economies and advance American innovation.

The RFS was enacted to stimulate investment in research, development and infrastructure for renewable fuel, particularly to produce advanced biofuels. The law gives the EPA responsibility for developing and implementing rules to ensure that there will be a market for all domestic renewable fuel produced up to the volumes prescribed in the statute. Back when Congress was considering the RFS, oil companies fought tooth and nail against a part of the bill that I call the “Consumer Choice Provision” (CCP). This provision directs the EPA to set annual Renewable Volume Obligation (RVO) levels based on the renewable fuel industry’s ability to produce and supply biofuels. The oil lobby instead wanted a law that would have allowed the EPA to set RVO levels below those in the statute if the oil industry simply refused to invest in renewable fuel infrastructure. Essentially, this would have allowed the oil industry to control the way EPA calculates renewable fuel volumes under the RFS — and block competition in our motor fuel marketplace. Had Congress granted the oil lobby what it asked for, oil companies would have had a regulatory mechanism guaranteeing their monopoly at the pump forever, leaving America with more foreign oil imports, more pollution and spills, and more jobs and investment shipped overseas.

Instead, Congress designed the RFS to increase America’s energy security, lessen our dependence on foreign oil (which often comes from hostile regions), extend its commitment to America’s rural communities and green energy investors and innovators, and encourage infrastructure development. The RFS now supports more than 852,000 jobs across America. And thanks to the promise of the RFS, green energy investors have brought three commercial scale cellulosic ethanol facilities online, producing the world’s cleanest motor fuels from agricultural residue.

In the face of this challenge to their market monopoly, the oil industry has grown increasingly reluctant to comply with the RFS. More and more, oil companies have refused to invest in infrastructure for renewable fuel, despite their obligation to do so under the law. Instead, the oil industry has invested in a lobbying effort with hundreds of millions of dollars behind it, pressuring the EPA to thwart the spirit and intent of the RFS. Even oil interests from Saudi Arabia have entered the fight.

In 2013, the EPA caved to oil lobbyists and issued a proposed rule that tossed aside the Consumer Choice Provision, changing the rules on renewable fuel investors midstream and threatening hundreds of thousands of jobs. Just as the advanced biofuels industry was reaching a commercial stage where new biorefineries could be built at lower capital costs, the EPA’s proposed rule chilled investment in the industry. The Administration later took the disastrous proposal off the table, but much of the damage has already been done; since 2013, an estimated $13.7 billion of investment in advanced biofuels has been frozen. $13.7 billion.

When the EPA releases the proposed rules for 2014, 2015 and 2016 in the next week, it must choose between rural economies and American innovation on the one hand and oil company profits on the other. Oil companies are pouring millions into a lobbying effort to convince EPA to do what Congress refused to do nearly a decade ago: propose a rule that would set lower RVO levels based on the oil industry’s refusal to comply with the law.

It isn’t just the biofuels industry that should be worried. If the EPA allows the world’s cleanest motor fuels — a product of American labor, innovation, and investment — to be threatened, simply because the oil industry refuses to live up to its commitments under the law, what can we expect will happen to other clean energy and climate policies? The choice is clear: America’s rural economies or more imported oil from hostile foreign regions; 852,000 American jobs supported by the RFS, or more pollution and spills. Let’s hope that instead of protecting the oil industry’s monopoly and stranglehold on our gas prices, the EPA decides to choose rural economies and American green energy innovation.

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Obama and the EPA’s Choice: American Jobs and Innovation, Or Oil Industry Profits?

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This Is the Degrading Bullshit Nail Salon Workers Put Up With Every Single Day

by MariamO55vkb Posted on May 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Scoring a cheap manicure or pedicure, particularly in New York, is incredibly easy. After all, nail salons abound on seemingly every other city block and thus keep prices low in order to compete. It all comes at a steep price, however. The New York Times has published an in-depth investigation looking into the disturbing culture of exploitation, racism, and low-wages salon workers endure throughout the New York region. Here are the most shocking bits:

Some workers are paid as little as $1.50 an hour. In Manhattan, where the average price for a manicure is $10.50, salons compensate for such low prices by severely underpaying workers and oftentimes hitting employees with surprise charges just to work there. On slow days, some worker aren’t even paid at all.

Among the hidden customs are how new manicurists get started. Most must hand over cash — usually $100 to $200, but sometimes much more — as a training fee. Weeks or months of work in a kind of unpaid apprenticeship follows.

Ms. Ren spent almost three months painting on pedicures and slathering feet with paraffin wax before one afternoon in the late summer when her boss drew her into a waxing room and told her she would finally be paid.

Race often determines how well a worker is paid.

Korean workers routinely earn twice as much as their peers, valued above others by the Korean owners who dominate the industry and who are often shockingly plain-spoken in their disparagement of workers of other backgrounds. Chinese workers occupy the next rung in the hierarchy; Hispanics and other non-Asians are at the bottom.

…

Many Korean owners are frank about their prejudices. “Spanish employees” are not as smart as Koreans, or as sanitary, said Mal Sung Noh, 68, who is known as Mary, at the front desk of Rose Nails, a salon she owns on the Upper East Side.

Workers are frequently subjected to physical abuse.

…the minichain of Long Island salons whose workers said they were not only underpaid but also kicked as they sat on pedicure stools, and verbally abused.

Salons rarely go punished because language barriers prove too difficult.

When investigators try to interview them, manicurists are frequently reluctant to cooperate, more so than in any other industry, according a Labor Department official involved who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official was not permitted to talk with reporters. “It’s really the only industry we see that in,” the person said, explaining that it most likely indicated just how widespread exploitation is in nail salons. “They are totally running scared in this industry.”

In all, the story paints a deeply disturbing portrait of income inequality literally an arm’s length away. To read the investigation in its entirety, head to the Times.

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