Tag / Oil
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When Oil Companies Crowdsource [UPDATED]
UPDATE: Apparently, this was all a brilliant hoax put on by environmental group Greenpeace. I ain’t even mad. With credulous disregard of how most people feel about oil companies, the marketing geniuses at Shell decided to outsource their new Arctic Ready campaign to the Internet masses, and the trolls gladly accepted the challenge. Shell’s contest…
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Boomtown USA
Don’t expect to hear folk songs about it, but with an unemployment rate of about 3%, there is a renaissance of sorts taking place on the prairie.
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No More Doom-and-Gloom
We must take immediate action to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The burning of dirty coal and oil is causing global temperatures to rise, which will lead to catastrophic climate change. Weather patterns will change. Famines will become more common. Polar ice will melt and sea levels will rise. Coastal areas will become uninhabitable.…
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A Necessary Evil?
It would seem that after months of peaceful protests followed by brute attacks on civilians by the Syrian military, international pressure would be mounting against the Assad regime. But as the casualties grow, international pressure rarely yields more than a strong urge for Al-Assad to pursue reform. Most of the international community wants him gone,…
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Oil Fears
The mainstream media seems to love the “oil” buzzword; the economic consequences of oil price fluctuations directly affect consumers and in short, sell newspapers. Far from being unjustified, the attention paid to oil prices is deserved and comes from the fact that past oil shocks have driven economies into the ground. Recently, the uprising in…
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When One Nation Becomes Two
On January 9th, citizens living in southern Sudan will vote on a referendum to secede from the northern part of the country. A clock in the town of Juba, the political center of southern Sudan, counts down to this referendum, symbolical of the locals’ excitement to part from the hegemonic north. Nearby, the Darfur genocide…
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Keep The Lines (of Pollution, Extortion, and Exploitation) Open
In the last print issue of the Washington University Political Review, my esteemed colleague Lennox Mark wrote an article advocating for the continuation of offshore oil drilling in the United States despite the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. His piece is compelling, making several great points. He discusses the importance of maintaining jobs in the…