Obama offshore drilling ban draws bipartisan criticism

Chris Graham

A bipartisan group of Virginia leaders will work to get the Obama administration to reverse its move to block drilling off the coast of Virginia until at least 2017. “As a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we learned a number of lessons, most importantly that we need to proceed with caution and focus…

Kathleen Rogers and Jigar Shah: Moving capital and winning the debate on climate

AFP

Disasters from climate change are becoming more frequent and more severe – consider this year alone, with the devastating flooding in Pakistan, the Russian heat wave, an incredible ice chunk calving off of Greenland – and New York’s hottest summer on record. Governments are becoming exhausted dealing with these impacts and realizing that adapting to…

New housing at BC makes campus go green

AFP

They don’t look like anything else on the Bridgewater College campus – and truth be known, they aren’t. The two new village-style residences that sprang up this summer on BC’s campus do far more than simply provide housing for students. By adhering to an internationally recognized green building certification system, they move the college forward…

Dr. Jeffrey Patterson: Lessons from the Gulf for nuclear reactors

AFP

Column by Dr. Jeffrey Patterson Submit guest columns: [email protected] One crucial lesson from the BP oil spill is that measures to speed licensing, cut corners on safety and undermine regulation can lead to tragic consequences. Yet Congress appears on the verge of repeating mistakes that led to the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf. Federal lawmakers…

McAuliffe: ‘I want to keep all of my options open’

Chris Graham

Is Terry McAuliffe running for something? Well, not technically, but he is traveling with the former executive director of the Democratic Party of Virginia, Levar Stoney, who now works for him in a sort of nebulous role that doesn’t have Stoney as a political aide, per se, but … And McAuliffe didn’t begin his talk…

Madeline Ostrander: Protect America’s coasts and waterways

AFP

Column by Madeline Ostrander Submit guest columns: [email protected]   Dave Rauschkolb took on the oil industry when it got personal—it threatened his beach and his business. Rauschkolb is not an environmental lawyer or professional Sierra Club-type. He’s an avid surfer and owns a pizza bar on the northwest coast of Florida, within range of the…

Dennis Markatos-Soriano: Gulf disaster calls for sustainable transportation revolution

AFP

Column by Dennis Markatos-Soriano Submit guest columns: [email protected]   The oil drilling explosion that killed 11 people on April 20th and the spill now killing massive amounts of wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico is a sign. It’s a sign of how bad our nation’s oil addiction has gotten and of how much we need…

Environmental group praises delay on offshore drilling

AFP

Edited by Chris Graham [email protected]   The U.S. Minerals Management Service announced today that it is postponing indefinitely the public-comment period and the public hearings that were scheduled in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina in the coming weeks on the proposed sale for oil and gas drilling off Virginia’s shore.