Green Options

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Big Oil, Big Money, Big Slap in the Face.

Unfortunately, I fear that slap won’t register properly with enough people in the status quo, those who cling to oil and more oil as if it’s the only way forward.

During a commercial break from MSNBC’s coverage of the final night of the Democratic National Convention held in Denver, the American Petroleum Institute, the trade organization for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry, ran a spot touting domestic oil and gas reserves that Democrats are keeping us Americans from reaching.

Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee each day, which contributes to the coffee bean’s status as the second most globally traded product after petroleum. Now, a recent report from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid has found that regular coffee intake can actually prevent heart disease in women. Coffee is a much needed cash crop in many countries with few other exports such as Ethiopia, Guatemala and Papua New Guinea, but the industry has also been plagued by reports of worker abuse and corporate rip offs. Rainforest and other endangered species habitat is often cleared for coffee plantation, making it an environmentally dicey purchase, as well.

So how do we get our morning cup without a side of guilt? How to decipher real world impact from a multitude of coffee labels after the jump.

A new report from the U.S. Geological Survey shows billions of barrels of retrievable oil beneath the Bakken Shale Formation which covers a large area from the Canadian border, down into North Dakota and Montana. A Reuters UK report states:

The Bakken Shale, comprised of thin layers of rock about two miles down, holds about 3.65 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, the USGS said. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska could hold more than 10 billion barrels of oil.

Although ANWR is currently federally protected land, there are already companies retrieving the oil from the Bakken Shale. The current survey from the USGS, completed at the request of Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., is viewed as good news according to a statement in the Fox News story. This is due to the 25% increase in this estimate of retrievable oil over previous estimates in years past. Senator Dorgan believes this will bring “significant new investment” into the area.