Posts Tagged ‘white house’

How BP Swept Dispersants Under the Rug

Posted on: June 16th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 3 Comments

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The PR battle continues between Obama and BP (image by boxhai). With the climax occurring today between BP top brass and Obama at the White House, another major danger continues to spread in the Gulf, BP’s widespread use of Corexit toxic dispersants. More than 1,000,000 gallons has been deployed by BP in an effort to break up surface and underwater oil.

Corexit is deadly. It is toxic and it has even been banned from use in BP’s home country, the United Kingdom. Both state and local officials have asked BP to stop using it (versions Corexit EC9500A and Corexit EC9527A), and for a small period environmentalists complained.

BP evaded responding, issuing brief statements and ducking the issue. Since then the drama about compensation and culpability has drowned out the pressure on BP’s Corexit usage. BP is content to let is stay under the rug, and the company continues refusing to listen to its U.S. regulators.

Whether the reasons are simply same old incompetent irresponsibility or a cover up by BP doesn’t matter. The toxic impact on the marine environment cannot be underestimated. The Gulf is getting destroyed by two types of toxins, the crude oil from Deep Horizon and BP’s Corexit dispersants.

Until pressure is brought to bear on BP, we can count on the company letting the toxic chemical versions of Corexit stay under the rug. Don’t let the government BP media war distract you from the true dangers the oil spill presents: Reckless destruction of our marine environment and livelihood.

Special thanks to Leigh Durst and Jimmy Gardner for suggesting this topic.

P.S. Citizen Effect’s Dan Morrison and My Yu will join me on a mission to the Gulf on June 27 – July 1 to help affected fishermen. Details are here.

Geoff Livingston is a regular contributor to the Live Earth blog.

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WhiteHouse.gov Breaks New Ground with Social, But…

Posted on: October 28th, 2009 by Geoff Livingston 12 Comments
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The highlight of last week’s YNPNdc briefing on the Obama Administration’s nonprofit policy was Macon Phillips, Director of the White House Office of New Media (pictured above). Phillips detailed how the White House was using social to engage stakeholders online.

As you can see, the White House site is very social, playing with every tool possible. While there are forays into conversation (one such foray had Phillips asking Obama during a chat if he planned to legalize marijuana), the overall effort seems more shiny object-oriented, and less conversational.

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BlogPotomac Keynotes Beth Kanter and Shel Israel joined me for the briefing. Shel noted that while there was a Scoblesque joy for tools, the site lacked full on dialogue. In review, consider that while you can share White House blog posts and comment on your various social networks, you can’t actual enter a comment on the White House blog. True to form, the White House Twitter feed pretty much publishes links, and doesn’t engage in dialogue.

There are bright spots in the social media effort. The Flickr page is outstanding with hundreds of comments, and a less polished look at the Obamas in their day to day activity. You feel like the President is real, finally. Facebook and YouTube have more dialogue, too (while Vimeo is open for chat, but has less traffic).

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What’s really missing? Frank on-site conversation and dialogue — good and bad — about the very real issues Obama is facing. Instead, what we get is glorified message delivery on whitehouse.gov, with said conversations occurring on beachheads elsewhere.

For an initial White House foray into social media, this is a great start. The barriers to Gov 2.0 are significant and substantial in nature. But… We all know this isn’t full on social media. It’s more of an experiment and test bed to see how American citizens interact with its government at arms length. Progress, my friends, not perfection. I give it an eight out of 10.

Overall, I felt the larger Obama Administration nonprofit team had lots of bubbly comments for the YNPNdc attendees about how great their efforts were. Then we received patronizing platitudes of hope, pats on the head for tough questions, and very little substance. While it’s early in the Obama presidency, I’d like to see a lot more substance from Buffy Wicks, Trooper Sanders and Sonal Shah. Otherwise we will waste our national nonprofit policy and dollars on disparate and uncoordinated activities with little impact.

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