Rich Richardson and Marguerite Chandler With Love Thy Neighbor banner.
Among the thousands who marched on Sunday July 24the were these two familiar faces from the Newtown Friends Meeting.
Read more news of the march here http://www.cleanenergymarch.org/
See videos recorded and streamed live at Unicorn Riot.
Action speaks louder than words. Join the march …
One undercurrent in the fracking fight is the erosion of democracy. Large corporations exert political pressure and overpower local government and private individuals. Consider as an example the press to build 30,000 miles of gas pipeline in Pennsylvania when existing production and transport are sufficient for domestic needs. The State of Pennsylvania, the US Government, and the courts use sovereign powers to override local zoning and take land for these energy projects. Many see this as counter to the fundamental rights our democracy confers on all citizens and challenge the laws and regulations that support it.
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is one advocacy group that addresses this threat to Democracy. Another is this webinar offered by The Next System Project:
Democratic Energy
YES Magazine Article:
“Grant Township had seen what happens when people nationwide take to the streets to protest bullying corporations: Arrests. Lots of them.
So Grant Township planned ahead. Two weeks ago, it passed a law that protects its residents from arrest if they protest Pennsylvania General Energy Company’s (PGE) creation of an injection well.
Residents believe this law is the first in the United States to legalize nonviolent civil disobedience against toxic wastewater injection wells. “We’re doing it to safeguard the residents and protect as many people as possible,” Township Supervisor Stacy Long said.”
(Read full article [click])
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/faced-with-a-fracking-giant-this-small-town-just-legalized-civil-disobedience-20160513
“In a public lecture delivered last week and published online Tuesday [5/10/16], award-winning Canadian author 
and social justice activist Naomi Klein argues the dire situation of climate change, coupled with failing political and economic systems, is creating a world where nobody will be left unaffected.
‘It is not about things getting hotter and wetter but things getting meaner and uglier, unless we change the corrosive values that are pitting people against each other,’ Klein said last Wednesday as she gave the 2016 Edward W. Said London Lecture at the Royal Festival Hall in London.”
Just the facts – Check this out.
Dr. Anthony Ingraffea and his colleagues at Physicians Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy have been working for years to create an archive of the science that reports on fracking. It’s no surprise that the preponderance of evidence shows unacceptable harm to people and the environment. This is not hype or rhetoric. It stands in sharp contrast to the slick whitewash of the energy industry PR copy.
PSE Healthy Energy has studied this literature and provides you with an overview that’s understandable in layperson’s terms. Browse the site – it’s eye-opening and rigorously accurate.
Excellent Op Ed in Friday’s (4/15/16) NY Times …
“The pipeline would cross nearly 300 creeks and streams and necessitate cutting 700,000 trees. The D.E.C. has recommended drilling six feet under all crossings, but the company plans to “trench” through most of them. Along with the massive tree-cutting on stream banks and hillsides, this would exacerbate flooding in a region already experiencing much stronger storms and floods. It would also harm dozens of trout streams and spawning areas, which the D.E.C. is charged with protecting. If the state does not exercise its authority to deny this certificate by April 26, the company will be allowed to proceed by default.
“Building this pipeline would undermine our commitment to fight climate change. Proponents of fracked gas argue that it can be a “bridge” fuel while we make the transition to renewable energy. They focus on the fact that when gas — which is largely methane — is burned, it releases half the CO2 of coal. But whether you see this glass as half empty or half full, it is being poured into an atmosphere that is already full — of CO2, having crossed the threshold of 400 parts per million last year. Also, methane, which can leak from gas infrastructure, traps heat 84 times as much as CO2 does over a 20-year period. A recent study led by Harvard researchers showed that in the Boston area methane is leaking from gas delivery systems at rates two to three times higher than industry estimates.
The Washington Post is cautiously taking a closer look at the problem of methane leaking from US shale gas operations and the network of pipelines that carry the gas to market. You have to read the article carefully, because the new and troubling evidence is couched in language that would lead a reader to think it was some sort of elusive puzzle. New fly-over studies with specialized sensors have recently confirmed what we have known since Dr. Ingraffea so effectively documented it — the wells leak. Specifically, the study found 4% of them leaking now. Dr. Ingraffea’s work predicts that more and more will leak with time.
Read the source story here:
The fossil fuel industry would have readers believe that it’s really cows belching, but the evidence has been clear for a long time that shale gas fracking sites are a significant source of atmospheric methane. The agricultural and natural sources are also important, but that does not let the extraction industry off the hook.
Get the big picture here:
https://nofrackingbucks.net/2015/09/latest-evidence-on-leaky-wells-methane-energy-policy/
Lead to Washington Post story.
The Washington Post is now reporting what I feared was coming when I testified at the Pipeline task force and the DRBC. The Bust is evident for all to see – or it should be. But the momentum is hard to resist and unwarranted optimism is fueled by people who earn their money by drilling holes and laying pipe. The get paid by those who gamble that once they own the well and the pipe money will just flow out of the ground and pay them back.
Will Governor Wolf and those who are expediting pipeline construction and who speak in rosy terms of Philadelphia becoming an energy hub see that the harm they are doing in the name of progress will become both a financial and environmental disaster?
It’s not just that there is already too much gas production, it’s clearer every day that the jig is up on denying climate change. The flood of alarming scientific confirmation is swelling. Will world demand ever grow to absorb the excess capacity? For the sake of our grandchildren we hope not.
“Global warming is, in the end, not about the noisy political battles here on the planet’s surface. It actually happens in constant, silent interactions in the atmosphere, where the molecular structure of certain gases traps heat that would otherwise radiate back out to space. If you get the chemistry wrong, it doesn’t matter how many landmark climate agreements you sign or how many speeches you give. And it appears the United States may have gotten the chemistry wrong. Really wrong.” [emphasis added]
Bill McKibben opens his compelling overview of the US response to the threat of global warming with these grave words in his article that appeared in The Nation. This is not news to our regular readers but McKibben does a masterful job of making the case. As founder of 350.org, a Schumann Distinguished Scholar, and winner of the Ghandi Peace Award, McKibben has long been a credible source. He translates his panoramic knowledge of environmental science into terms the rest of us can grasp.
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