See it November 19, 7pm at the Bouck Auditorium, SUNY Cobleskill. The Student Environmental Action Coalition presents: A Snowmobile for George. “A rambunctious road trip reveals the toll that environmental deregulation has had on the lives of ordinary people.”
Tags: film
Unnatural Gas: The Inflated Promise of a Not-So-Clean Fuel
Meanwhile, in competing with Big Coal for the affections of Congress, the newly formed America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) launched an $80 million advertising and lobbying campaign earlier this year to promote its “clean, abundant, American, reliable, and versatile” product. As climate bills work their way through Congress, ANGA’s efforts appear to be paying off.
Risking our water so we can burn more natural gas will not be the planet’s miracle climate cure. For the United States to achieve necessary reductions in greenhouse emissions – estimated at more than 80 percent – will require not more energy production, even if somewhat cleaner, but deep cuts in energy consumption.
Coal must be phased out as quickly as possible, but more gas won’t accomplish that. While electric utilities’ gas consumption doubled from 1996 to 2007, coal use continued its steady climb.
What if, with shale drilling, we could achieve another doubling of gas-fired electricity generation, but this time eliminate an equivalent amount of coal-fired generation? Even that steep escalation of gas drilling would cut the utility industry’s carbon emissions by only 12 percent and the nation’s total carbon emissions by just 5 percent, based on Energy Department figures.
Financier T. Boone Pickens recommends running our vehicles on natural gas. But substituting natural gas for gasoline in all vehicles would reduce the nation’s total carbon emissions by less than 9 percent. Converting all gasoline-powered vehicles would consume more natural gas than electric utilities, homes and businesses combined. Consequences for the nation’s water would be disastrous.
Natural gas is being hailed by some, including Pickens, as a high-energy “bridge” to a renewable future, and by others as sufficiently climate-friendly to be a “destination” fuel. But as gas’ environmental drawbacks become more evident, it’s looking more like a bridge to nowhere.
Read the entire piece at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/04-5
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On Saturday, October 17, 2009, the Executive Committee of the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club met in Syracuse and passed a resolution calling on the NYS legislature to enact a ban on unconventional gas drilling in NYS.
To sign an online petition calling for a ban on natural gas drilling across NYS, go to:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/NY-Statewide-Ban-On-Natural-Gas-Drilling
As of October 28, 2009, the following groups have issued statements in support a state-wide ban, and/or in support the following Sierra Club resolution:
Atlantic Chapter of Sierra Club
Action Otsego
Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy (CCSE)
CDOG (Chenango Delaware Otsego Gas Drilling Opposition Group)
Citizens Action Alliance
Concerned Citizens of Otego
Damascus Citizens for Sustainability
Environmental Working Group of Central New York
Friends of Brook Park
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederation)
Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation (NOON)
New York Climate Action Group (NYCAG)
NYH2O
More Gardens!
Shaleshock Citizens Action Alliance
Sustainable Otsego
SWiM (Safe Water Movement)The Atlantic Chapter of Sierra Club resolution
“WHEREAS extensive environmental and health damages would be caused by horizontal drilling and high pressure hydrofracturing gas extraction techniques due to the contamination of water, soil and air by the toxic chemicals used in drilling and fracturing, and the naturally occurring toxic chemicals brought to the surface from deep in the ground,
“WHEREAS these environmental and human and animal health damages will have damaging economic consequences on residential property values, and on the state’s tourism, agriculture, forestry, winery, real estate development and educational businesses,
“WHEREAS the infrastructure costs of building and repairing roads, water treatment facilities, and other public services would far exceed any economic benefit to local communities, and
“WHEREAS it is yet to be proven that the green house effects of the production and use of natural gas produced by horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing are any less than those of the production and use of coal when the life cycle emissions of natural gas production and the higher impact of methane as a green house gas are taken into account.
“Be It Resolved that the Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club calls on the New York State Legislature to enact a ban on permitting gas wells that use horizontal drilling and hydro-fracturing to release gas from tight sand and shale formations such as the Marcellus.”
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Tags: petition, Sierra Club, statewide ban
Drilling Contamination Spreads as Polluter’s Bankruptcy Looms
Joint Release: Powder River Basin Resource Council * EARTHWORKS
Clark, WY, 10/01 — Clark Resource Council has learned that Windsor Energy Group, LLC recently put its assets up for bid. At a public meeting in September Windsor representatives explained that benzene is also above regulatory levels east of Line Creek where Windsor had guaranteed it would not go. Assuming no buyer is found, the logical next step is bankruptcy: leaving the community’s groundwater, and cleanup of the pollution, in doubt.
“Every thing Industry told us would not happen, has,” says Deb Thomas local resident and organizer for the Clark Resource Council. “Before the first operators of this project bankrupted, we were told that drilling was safe and no toxic chemicals were used. Since Windsor bought the development, we’ve had years of leaking waste pits, illegal dumping of drilling fluids, inadequate engineering, and finally, the blow out, which left us with contaminated drinking water aquifers. Windsor said the contamination plume wouldn’t move into private water wells or jump the Creek, and it did both. Now we fear that Windsor will join their predecessors by bankrupting and simply walk away from their mess.”
Windsor Energy Group’s Crosby 25-3 gas well blew out in the small community of Clark, Wyoming three years ago. Contamination plumes have continued to move since then, and how clean up will occur remains undecided. The blowout resulted in a 10 million cubic foot plume of groundwater contamination or more than 100 Olympic-size swimming pools worth.
The plume has contaminated drinking water aquifers, 2 private water wells and natural springs with benzene, diesel range organics, and an extensive list of toxic chemicals. The plume is also putting more than 20 downstream drinking water wells at risk. As much as 300,000 gallons of contaminated water has dumped daily into the Line Creek drainage, which then flows into the Clark Fork of the Yellowstone River.
Clark Resource Council, Powder River Basin Resource Council and Earthworks’ Oil and Gas Accountability Project emphasize that the experience in Clark shows that State agencies are not adequately equipped to address the impacts and risks associated with drilling projects.
“I want other communities who are facing development to understand that they’re at risk from the oil and gas industry’s cavalier regard for the environment and human health, ” says impacted resident, Dick Bilodeau. “When oil and gas companies screw up, the results are neither simple, nor cheap, to clean up. We need adequate federal oversight to protect areas under development, and complete disclosure so that impacted people can determine what health problems they’re facing now and will be in the future.”
In Wyoming the State’s Voluntary Remediation Program allows polluters like Windsor to remediate contamination and then be released from liability. With Windsor Energy Group’s bankruptcy looming, Bilodeau and other community members fear that the extent of the contamination will never be adequately assessed and clean up will never happen.
The news of contamination crossing under Line Creek and Windsor’s asset sale comes just after the EPA released it’s investigative finding on water contamination in Pavillion, Wy, which residents fear is associated with EnCana’s deep gas operations.
“These cases demonstrate the clear and present danger posed by drilling operations under current regulation,” says Bruce Baizel, staff attorney for EARTHWORKS’ Oil & Gas Accountability Project. “They clearly show the urgent need for incremental federal regulation, like the FRAC Act now before Congress, and they also show that the FRAC Act only begins to address the need for stronger oversight.”
Tags: bankruptcy, benzene, Clark, groundwater, water wells, Windsor Energy Group, WY
The Washington Post reports:
Oil Group’s ‘Citizen’ Rally Memo Stirs Debate
Firms Asked to Recruit Employees, Retirees
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 16, 2009A petroleum industry trade group is asking oil companies to recruit employees and retirees to attend rallies attacking climate-change legislation, an approach to grass-roots politics that resembles strategies used recently by some opponents of health-care reform.
In a memo this month, American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard detailed plans for “Energy Citizen” rallies to be held in 20 states during the final two weeks of Congress’s August recess. Gerard wrote that the intent was to put a “human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy,” including a climate-change bill passed by the House in June.
“Please indicate to your company leadership your strong support for employee participation in the rallies,” Gerard wrote in the memo, saying that contractors and suppliers should also be recruited.
Environmental groups on Saturday criticized the rallies, which they described as manufactured events intended to pass as organic assemblies of concerned citizens. Greenpeace activists said they saw parallels to the health-care debate, where opponents of reform — including some organizations that receive heavy funding from industry groups and individuals — have organized efforts to shout down lawmakers at “town hall” meetings.
“It’s the most powerful among us, masquerading as grass-roots outrage to stifle debate on global warming,” Michael Crocker, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said of the oil group’s plans. “These are manufactured concerns, and the people who get involved in this are paid to put on this theater.”
The memo, obtained by Greenpeace, was first reported on by the Financial Times Saturday.
Kert Davies, another official with Greenpeace, said the group opposes the climate bill, too, deeming it too lenient on polluters.
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The House bill calls for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions, measured against 2005 levels, by 2020. It would also require polluters to buy “allowances” for each ton of emissions and allow them to exceed their allotted share of pollution only by buying more allowances.
Democratic leaders in the Senate have said they will use the House bill as a model for their version of the legislation.
The oil industry seems divided on the issue. Shell Oil and BP America, both members of the American Petroleum Institute, are also members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which has supported a “cap and trade” approach. Spokesmen for both companies said yesterday they would not participate in the “Energy Citizen” rallies.
And former vice president Al Gore’s group, the Alliance for Climate Protection, is part of an effort to hold rallies attended by people who have — or would like to have — jobs in the renewable-energy sector. Their economic prospects might improve if a climate bill passes.
Alice McKeon, a spokeswoman for the group, said she did not think attendees were being recruited through their employers, in the way the oil group aims to do.
“They’re reaching out to the businesses directly and getting their people involved in it, as employees, and that’s not something that we’ve used as a tactic,” she said.
Complete story at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/15/AR2009081502698.html
Tags: API, astroturfing, cap and trade, grassroots, memo, rally
…You wonder if they wondered why.
Smells like… astroturf, don’t you think?
___________________Credit all photos Cecile A Lawrence (c)____________________
Tags: astroturfing, Bainbridge, coalition, Marcellus, our rights our land our future, rally
It’s a media miracle.
Like water into wine, like the loaves and fishes, somehow there were more people at the rally than arrived or left – even resorting to adding those 2 figures together. This handful of people who attended a coalition rally in Bainbridge on August 23 were, through the magic of reporting, turned into “two thousand.”
These pictures were taken at the height of the attendance, not early in the day.
On the evidence, it could easily be concluded that most of the people there were family members of organizers – or selling something. Look at all the company and bank reps standing around with no one to peddle their wares to.
It’s hard to conclude that in real terms, this thing was anything other than a bust. But when you can get the media to report that 2000 people showed up, and then you can take the newspaper article with the bloated figures to your politicians to pressure them to betray the majority population of their constituencies, suddenly, the sow’s ear becomes a silk purse.
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Kudos to the voice of caution – who evidently wasn’t standing alone on the fringe of the field, as reported by the media.
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___________________Credit all photos Cecile A Lawrence (c)____________________
Tags: astroturfing, Bainbridge, coalition, Marcellus, our rights our land our future, rally
In a July 27 post, Robert F Kennedy correctly lists some of the reasons we need to move away from burning coal for energy generation. Unfortunately, his conclusion that the solution is to replace coal with natural gas is as erroneous as his convictions about coal are correct.
At http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/king-coal_b_245117.html he concludes:
“Natural gas comes with its own set of environmental caveats. It is a carbon-based fuel and [its] extraction from shale, the most significant new source, if not managed carefully, can cause serious water, land use, and wildlife impacts, especially in the hands of irresponsible producers and lax regulators. But those impacts are dwarfed by the disastrous holocaust of coal and can be mitigated by careful regulation.
“The giant advantage of a quick conversion from coal to gas is the quickest route for jumpstarting our economy and saving our planet.”
In response, SplashdownPA writes:
“It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?
“All we need are responsible producers and vigilant regulators!“Congress can’t even agree that this is necessary! Money isn’t there for environmental protection agencies to hire the number of inspectors necessary to monitor this lawless industry. And YES! coal mining and burning is dangerously toxic, but when Kennedy talks about enough affordable natural gas to last us into the next century, he’s supporting perpetuation of a carbon-based energy industry that has demonstrated it is unwilling to divert a nickel of its profits to safeguard our absolutely VITAL resources: WATER, AIR and LAND. Their best practices are simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH. Especially not a century’s worth!!!
“Closing coal fired plants would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 20%.. BUT, what measure of CO2 and even more environmentally harmful methane is released into the atmosphere during extraction of natural gas, including toxic air polluting emissions from transporting the millions of gallons of water to and from well pads, treatment or burial of “produced water”, operating drilling rigs, compressors and other associated gas production equipment and activities, over and above emissions from well flares and finally, power plant emissions from energy generation from natural gas? How does all that stack up against that 20%?
“How too does Kennedy justify the permanent depletion and contamination of drinking water supplies across the country, occurring as a result of mining for gas? Surely he can’t think that indicating the need for responsibility and vigilance is going to suddenly manifest a new attitude on all fronts, by all players in this play?
“What guarantees do we have that a gluttonous industry won’t milk the quick fix dry, leaving us with an irrevocable permanent loss in exchange for temporary energy?
“There are important unanswered, and without drilling reform legislation in place, perhaps unanswerable questions. They loom like loopholes in his argument as we continue to learn how criminally untrustworthy corporate America is willing to be in pursuit of the almighty dollar. We’ve seen too how even regulations aren’t foolproof, and how when one entity acts outside the law it encourages others to follow suit.
“Meanwhile, the gas industry has already been irresponsible for deadly releases of toxins into the atmosphere, deadly releases of toxins into our waters, for killing and/or sickening livestock, wildlife and humans, for the seepage of toxic wastewater into our lands, contaminating land and water, the evaporation into the atmosphere of carcinogens from open sludgepits… in short, there isn’t anything healthy or friendly about the production of natural gas and turning a blind eye to the devastating problems of the lesser of two evils does not make the lesser evil any better.”
Read more at:
http://splashdownpa.blogspot.com/2009/07/king-coal-rf-kennedy-jr-weighs-in-on.html
Tags: air emissions, coal, energy generation, groundwater, Huffington Post, natural gas, RFK
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