A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The White House said immediately it would appeal the decision.

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.

Steven Newman, Transocean Ltd. president and CEO, is seen during a break at the World National Oil Companies Congress in London on Tuesday. (Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press)

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

But Feldman said in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium, and accused it of appearing to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

Isn't this absurd?

What a week for President Obama - the Oil rebellion and confronting his insubordinate commander in Afghanistan.

It is easy to give up hope right now. But for all my Doom Saying - I am very optimistic.

This video will show you why. It is the basis of a book I am writing where I do my best to show that we as a species may be living through the stages of development that a person will.

It is our relationship with Food primarily that drives each stage - with help from our prevailing use of energy and our communication system.

My call is that we are ending our Narcissistic Teen Age and entering the New Parent Age where we Partner with Nature to create the best future of our children.

I was lucky and spoke second - what was amazing was that nearly every talk that followed - none had spoken to each other before - made the point of using Nature as our guide.

Plan B isn’t more tar sands production from Canada or Venezuela, or more deep-water production from Brazil or Africa. Whatever comes from those sources will barely cover depletion, and what’s left over will be gobbled up by the exploding oil appetites of the BRIC economies.

Plan B can only be less oil consumption. Whether Americans realize it or not, they are already on that path. The disaster in the Gulf is just putting that reality into sharper focus. Last year there were four million fewer vehicles on the road in the United States than there were the year before. In the next decade, there will be 40 to 50 million fewer cars than today. In the process, an economy that once consumed over 20 million barrels of oil per day will find a way to run on 15 million barrels or even less.

Peak supply defines peak demand. That, in a nutshell, is Plan B.

So what is our own plan to reduce our consumption?

A massive first step on PEI is home heating - 90% plus of our winter heating is oil. About $200 million a year. A strategy to insulate and to shift to biofuels - mainly wood here on PEI could save most of that - offer up a lot of jobs too. $200 million is a third of PEI income tax and nearly 50% of the Federal subsidy. It is 50% of the health care bill. It's a lot of money per annum that leaves the Island and will only get more as oil becomes tighter. $2,300 is the average oil bill for the average home on PEI. Imagine if we could halve that and lock it in?

Food - nearly all our food comes from away. A shift to a local food system based on the principles of permaculture would reduce our risk that the trucks may stop - food security - offer lots of employment - offer better food and in the medium term reduce costs.

The workplace - the tools are now here to enable us to work either at home or in our community. Islanders are the #1 commuters in Canada. The government can trial a more distributed approach. It's not about moving departments to Souris but allowing people who live in Souris to work either from home or from a place in Souris no matter what department they live in. Truly ONE Island. Running a car today costs about $9,000 a year fully loaded. Average wages $23,000. The cash costs are immense. What about the Parenting Issues? Add 2 hours a day on commuting - add the constraints of being far away from your kids and we have what we have - a crisis in attachment and parenting. This goes away too.

This can be exciting. We can all work to become more resilient and have more cash and more time and deeper roots.

Can we please think about going here before it is too late and all we can do is react?

This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet.

The only solution is to do proactively, and sooner, what we will end up doing anyway as a result of resource depletion and economic, environmental, and military ruin: end our dependence on the stuff. Everybody knows we must do this. Even a recent American president (an oil man, it should be noted) admitted that “America is addicted to oil.” Will we let this addiction destroy us, or will we overcome it? Good intentions are not enough. Now is the moment for the President, other elected officials at all levels of government, and ordinary citizens to make this our central priority as a nation. We have hard choices to make, and an enormous amount of work to do.

Amen

This is surely an important future for large buildings? On PEI we spend about $200 million a year on oil heat. If the government really get going and heat all their large buildings this way, they will create the demand to build a solid support industry.

Lots of real jobs that regular folks can do. Money that stays in circulation in the province.

The P.E.I. government is looking to trade in some heating oil bills to jumpstart a biomass heating industry on the Island.

Community Hospital in O'Leary will be one of the sites for the pilot project. (CBC)

Energy Minister Richard Brown is putting out a request for proposals on Friday for long-term contracts to heat six government buildings with biomass instead of oil. Biomass heating uses renewable resources such as wood chips or straw. Brown believes it can be a moneymaker for some Island businesses.

"It's to help start an industry on P.E.I.," said Brown.

"We have to take some risk, we have to do some investments, but in the long run I believe we're going to get a good bio-economy here with the agriculture community, the forestry community, with the woodlot owners, with the saw mills. It's just a win-win situation."

Community Hospital in O'Leary will be one site. The government garage in Summerside may be another. A few schools in Kings County are also possibilities. Companies will be offered five- to 10-year contracts.

This is really good news - this is how we started with wind - build the demand.

Here is how an experiment already on PEI is going -  Here is Dick Arsenault taking us around the test of a new Pellet/Chip furnace at the Ecole Evangeline in Western PEI.

You will see that such a furnace

• Can be easily installed
• Can be fed easily
• Has NO emissions
• Is easy to clean
• Can save a school about $100,000 a year

It took nine years and an effort worthy of Hercules to get permits for a wind turbine farm off the Massachusetts coast.  Critics continue to resist the very visible turbines for reasons ranging from the Endangdered Species Act to a desire to preserve pristine ocean views.

I am watching a similar battle occur here in upstate New York as planned wind farms move forward.  Spoiled views are also a form of waste; they too are part of the second law of thermodynamics.

“Resistance to an energy technology is inversely proportional to how close it is to becoming a reality,” goes an old saying. 

There is, in other words, no free lunch. 

From gulf oil to Cape Cod wind farms, from new nuclear power plants to giant electric panel grids, we are going to have to face a dizzying array of choices very soon if we want to keep the lights on to the extent they have been blazing for the last 100 years. 

It’s time for all of us to look in the mirror.

How prepared are we, individually, to face up to the waste, gunk, goo, noise and spoiled views that must come with keeping those lights blazing?

Time to act folks

Prince Edward Island homeowners will no longer need an energy audit to qualify for grants and loans offered by the Office of Energy Efficiency. Last week, the federal government cut the funding for the ecoEnergy Retrofit program that offered energy audits to homeowners looking to reduce their energy consumption. The average audit costs is $500. “It’s disappointing the federal government doesn’t see the value in continuing this program,” said Energy Minister Richard Brown. “The provincial and federal programs worked well together and were a strong incentive for people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.” Homeowners were required to have an energy audit of their homes as the first step in qualifying for the energy efficiency loans and grants.  The province is dropping that requirement now that the federal government has cancelled the program. “We’ve learned from previous audits what measures homeowners can take to make their homes more energy efficient, from increasing insulation to low-cost measures like weather stripping and furnace maintenance,” said Brown. “We will continue to promote energy conservation with incentives to homeowners.” More than 4,000 energy audits were conducted. The average homeowners received $2,500 in incentives and were able to reduce their yearly energy bills by $1,200. Close to 800 loans totalling $5 million dollars and 865 grants amounting to $650,000 have been processed. Brown said all provincial incentive programs will continue with no changes. Just the Facts: — Energy Efficiency Grant Program provides a direct subsidy of 15 per cent (max $1,500) to homeowners to implement energy efficiency measures; — Windows and Doors Grant Program: Clients who install windows and/or doors will receive a grant of $40 per eligible window or door installed; — Loan Program: Provides financing (up to $10,000) to complete energy upgrades. Low-income clients are eligible for loan forgiveness for a portion of the loan (50 per cent for less than $15,000 income, 25 per cent for those over $15,000 but less than $35,000)

This is a great program - the best thing we can all do to save energy is to insulate our homes better. You can save up to 40% of your heating bill that way. That might mean $500+ a year tax free.

The barrier has always been the audit that took a lot of time - this is a very smart move - well done guys

More from Megan Quinn Bachman - Farming is top of the list - of course here on PEI - Farming as we do it now is the pits - but Megan does not mean growing spuds for McDonalds or pork for Sobeys. She means growing food for you and me.

Nor when she talks about Teaching does she mean being a "Teacher" in the school system - she means being a TEACHER.

So what are your kids getting ready for? What about you?