Disaster On The Horizon

Download or read book Disaster on the Horizon written by Bob Cavnar and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2010-10-22 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disaster on the Horizon is a behind-the-scenes investigative look at the worst oil well accident in US history, which led to the current environmental and economic catastrophe on the Gulf Coast. Cavnar uses his 30 years in the business to take readers inside the disaster, exposing the decisions leading up to the blowout and the immediate aftermath. It includes personal accounts of the survivors, assembled from testimony during various investigations, as well as personal interviews with survivors, witnesses, and family. It also provides a layman's look at the industry, its technology, people, and risks. It deconstructs events and decisions made by BP, Transocean, and the US Government before and after the disaster, and the effects of those decisions, both good and bad. Cavnar explains what happened in the Gulf, explores how we arrived at deep water drilling in the first place and then charts a course for how to avoid these disasters in the future.

Download or read book Deepwater Horizon written by Earl Boebert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 20, 2010, the crew of the floating drill rig Deepwater Horizon lost control of the Macondo oil well forty miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Escaping gas and oil ignited, destroying the rig, killing eleven crew members, and injuring dozens more. The emergency spiraled into the worst human-made economic and ecological disaster in Gulf Coast history. Senior systems engineers Earl Boebert and James Blossom offer the most comprehensive account to date of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Sifting through a mountain of evidence generated by the largest civil trial in U.S. history, the authors challenge the commonly accepted explanation that the crew, operating under pressure to cut costs, made mistakes that were compounded by the failure of a key safety device. This explanation arose from legal, political, and public relations maneuvering over the billions of dollars in damages that were ultimately paid to compensate individuals and local businesses and repair the environment. But as this book makes clear, the blowout emerged from corporate and engineering decisions which, while individually innocuous, combined to create the disaster. Rather than focusing on blame, Boebert and Blossom use the complex interactions of technology, people, and procedures involved in the high-consequence enterprise of offshore drilling to illustrate a systems approach which contributes to a better understanding of how similar disasters emerge and how they can be prevented.

Download or read book Black Beaches and Bayous written by Lisa A. Eargle and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Beaches and Bayous: The BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disaster provides a multidisciplinary, international perspective on one of the major disaster events within the United States during the last ten years. Scholars from various disciplines including sociology, political science, ecology, psychology, and criminal justice investigate the different components and issues associated with this event. The contributors address topics such as the social and historical context of fossil fuel use, steps within the technological disaster process, and similarities and differences between this disaster and other technological disasters. They also discuss the social and psychological impacts on Gulf Coast residents, the transformation of natural ecological systems, changes in risk assessment, and media portrayals of the Obama administration and its response to this disaster.

Download or read book Framing Environmental Disaster written by Melissa K. Merry and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The blowout of the Deepwater Horizon and subsequent underground oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is considered by many to be the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Interest groups, public officials, and media organizations have spent considerable time documenting the economic and ecological impacts of this spill as well as the causes of the spill, ostensibly to prevent future disasters of this magnitude. However, rather than an unbiased search for answers, such investigations involve strategic efforts by a variety of political actors to define the spill and its causes in ways that lead to their preferred policy solutions. Framing Environmental Disaster evaluates the causal stories that environmental groups tell about the spill and develops theoretical propositions about the role of such stories in the policy process. Which actors do groups hold responsible, and how do groups use blame attributions to advance their policy agendas? Constructing a creative methodological approach which includes content analysis drawn from blog posts, emails, press releases, and testimony before Congress and insights and quotations drawn from interviews with environmental group representatives, Melissa K. Merry argues that interest groups construct causal explanations long before investigations of policy problems are complete and use focusing events to cast blame for a wide range of harms not directly tied to the events themselves. In doing so, groups seek to take full advantage of “windows of opportunity” resulting from crises. An indispensable resource for scholars of public policy and environmental politics and policy, this book sheds new light on the implications of the gulf disaster for energy politics and policies while advancing scholarly understandings of the role of framing and causal attribution in the policy process.

Download or read book In Deep Water written by Peter Lehner and published by OR Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published by OR Books LLC, New York"--T.p. verso.

Download or read book Horizon Work written by Adriana Petryna and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book argues that a world characterized by runaway climate change needs radically new models of scientific and practical expertise to effectively address the emergency"--

Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.