Sometimes important news eludes us because it all sounds so technical. Take the fight over BP’s plans to allegedly pollute Lake Michigan. The news that we missed from an independent analysis is that the company’s plan for a $3.6 billion upgrade of its northwest Indiana refinery will not muck up the lake, as the plan’s critics assert and as the public has been led to believe.
Read More...“Which would be harder for you to survive without for three days, oil or clean water?” —Cameron Davis, President of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
Davis has managed in one sentence to capture the essence of the debate over whether BP should be allowed to slightly increase discharges of ammonia and suspended particulate matter into Lake Michigan as part of a $3.8 billion expansion of its northwestern Indiana refinery.
For Davis, and so many others, the issue is one of absolutes: Do you want clean water or oil?
In real life, that’s not the choice we face. Choices are not so absolute, but the opponents who have bashed BP, the state of Indiana and the U.S. EPA for approving the expansion plans would have it so. Either or. Black or white. Good or evil.
With a single question, which he posed in his response to the Chicago Daily ... Read More...
