Alberta Tar Sands Before and After Tar Sands Extraction
This powerfully written invitation (after the break) was published by a group of environmentalists, indigenous leaders and scientific experts, calling for action to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. To answer the call and join the action, click here to sign up and send an e-mail to PSECGroup@gmail.com if you want to coordinate with those attending from Pittsburgh.
As the natural gas industry is pushing for fewer regulations, another nat gas worker died this week. Just after reading this, I stumbled across an interview from a few months ago with Kathryn Klaber, head of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry lobbying group, in which she made this comical claim about the risk of injury in the natural gas industry:
“I did look at labor and industry data a few months ago … When I looked at oil and gas, the number of injuries were actually lower than the equivalent than the category that was museums and zoos.”
I was so baffled by this statement that I decided to hunt down the data. True enough, in the Pennsylvania Injuries and Illnesses Report, “museums, historical sites, zoos & parks” listed 4 more workplace injuries than “oil and gas extraction.” But something about that rings false. Let’s put the data in context.
First, the “arts, entertainment, and recreation” industry employs 4 times as many people as the mining industry, the category that includes natural gas extraction. And the rate of injury or illness per 1,000 workers is almost 4 times higher for the mining industry. Second, “workplace injury” can mean anything from a bruise to an amputation. And there is no column for workplace death. How many deaths do you think museum employees suffer each year?
So what does this mean? There are a lot of half-truths being flung in the fracking debate, and they’re coming from both pro- and anti-drilling groups. This is just a reminder of why you should always look into a claim that doesn’t sound right (or sounds too good to be true).
Tim DeChristopher is a climate activist who was arrested for thwarting a BLM auction of 130,000 acres of pristine Utah lands to the oil and gas industry. That was three years ago, and DeChristopher was merely an economics student. Now he has become a folk hero for the environmental movement. He was recently sentenced to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine, much lighter than the original 10 years and $750,000 that the prosecution was pushing for.
As a native of West Virginia, he saw the horrors of the coal industry, especially mountain top removal, which fueled his activist spirit. He has spoken around the country, and some of PSEC saw him give an extraordinarily motivating speech at Powershift this spring (in the above image).
You can read much more about DeChristopher around the blogs, but I had to post some of his statement to the court here. It’s long, but well-written and powerful. See the full statement on Grist.
To accompany their Pipeline news blog, the PPG has also begun a weekly video series that covers the biggest Marcellus stories of the week. The latest one went over the basics of the new report by the Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission (read the full report here). It’s really helpful for someone who doesn’t want to read 137 pages, and touches on some of the controversy that immediately bubbled up over the report and the commission (a majority of the members are from the gas industry and made campaign contributions to Corbett). Click the photo above to watch the video.
Councilman Shields with Mel Packer at the November Rally. Photo by Mark Knobil.
If you live in Pittsburgh, we really need your voices in support of Councilman Shields’ Referendum to permanently ban corporate gas extraction (including fracking) in the city limits (see Shields’ press release after the break). While the Council voted unanimously to pass a moratorium, they need to know that the public supports this stronger measure.
A preliminary vote will happen next week, please be there & plan to use your 3 minutes of public comment to urge council to vote YES. We are trying to get a group of PSEC members to go down so you will not be alone! Comment alone or contact us via email if you are interested.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 – 10:00am
City County Building, 414 Grant Street, 5th floor Pittsburgh, PA 15219
If you can’t attend, please call & email your council member. Find their contact info here.
Thanks for your participation! Don’t forget to tell your friends and family to contact their representatives. You can email this post or post it to facebook by clicking the button below.
Check out last week’s This American Life podcast on fracking. I’ve been hoping for a while that they would do a show on it and they finally did! The parts about Dan Volz and Pitt are especially interesting.
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Update: Penn State responds to the episode: “We have 500 researchers working in the area of energy and the environment — 500. So, whatever conclusions you’d want to make about what one person is saying and therefore jump to conclusions about what the president of the university is thinking or doing is pretty off-base.”
EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, fighting pollution from "behind enemy lines." (The Associated Press)
Kudos to Lisa Jackson and her colleagues at the EPA for standing up to polluters and rolling out new coal plant regulations, the first of several that will be introduced in the next few months. Here’s how the New York Times describes the mandate:
By the time the new requirements take effect in 2014, power plants will need to have cut their sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent and their nitrogen oxides by 54 percent from 2005 levels.
Cutting down on pollution that leads to soot and smog — as well as acid rain and hazy outdoor air — is expected to prevent 13,000 to 34,000 people from dying prematurely each year. The benefits would be greatest in northeastern states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, which would see an estimated 3,100 and 2,900 early deaths avoided annually.
Mountain top removal in West Virginia. (The New York Times)
In an article by the Sierra Club’s Executive Director, Michael Brune, he points out that the NY Times article portrays Jackson as sitting “behind enemy lines with only science, the law and a small band of loyal lieutenants to support her,” when in fact a recent poll shows that 3/4 of Americans are in favor of tighter pollution controls.
Last week Jackson commented that, “The only thing worse than no E.P.A is an E.P.A. that exists and doesn’t do its job — it becomes just a placebo.”
A firsthand account of the impacts of drilling on recreational trails from the Philadelphia Inquirer via the PG’s Pipeline feed (a great resource for staying abreast of fracking news).
“The sign on the Mid State Trail in Lycoming County stopped me in my tracks Tuesday morning during a three-day backpacking trip in north central Pennsylvania.
The posting by the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources said: “Environmentally Sensitive Area. Hiking Only.”
Yet just a few hundred yards west of the trail, machines were bulldozing the mountaintop for a natural gas well in Pennsylvania’s latest natural-resources bonanza, the Marcellus Shale, which resides more than a mile underground.”
A little break from fracking talk for a TED talk by Bill Ford, Henry Ford’s great-grandson, on the future of cars and ways to move beyond them. Can you imagine going to college and being told that your family was responsible for America’s consumer culture and the resulting problems that are now spreading around the world including global warming?
We just released the information packet for tomorrow’s frackinade stand (it’s at the right under “resources,” or click on the preceding link). It contains a half-page fact sheet, brief info about the “chemicals” we will have there, and a sample chemical disclosure from FracFocus.org. This is the spreadsheet from the Bradford well blowout that happened in April and spilled 10,000 gallons of fluid into the nearby tributary of the Towanda River. As you can see, several of the chemicals used in that well (and spilled into the river) are featured in our stand: hydrochloric acid, sodium hydroxide, methanol, and ethylene glycol.
If you are interested in making your own frackinade stand, feel free to use this resource!
