Barry Yeoman's "The Shale Rebellion": Giving Voice to the Grassroots (http://storyscapes.prospect.org/shale-rebellion/)

Like all good writing, Barry Yeoman's "The Shale Rebellion" raises at least as many questions as it answers with respect to the emergence of a grassroots movement in the heart of rural Pennsylvania to ban fracking.

http://storyscapes.prospect.org/shale-rebellion/

At the heart of this movement for Northeast Central Pennsylvania stands Shale Justice--a growing coalition composed of other grassroots anti-fracking groups, large and small, whose mission it is to create the conditions for better organizing, better communication--conditions that ultimately contribute to the one thing capable of monkey wrenching the monied machinery of the natural gas industry: critical mass.

http://shalejustice.org/

Our aims, in other words, are to arm the people with the single most effective tool for combatting dispersed industrialized extraction: education.

Our even larger aims are to expand that mission to national and global scale. After all, wherever there exists shale--and that's nearly everywhere on the globe--there exists the possibility that an industry whose track record of pollution, criminal dumping, deceit, green-washing, and the evasion of responsibility will be soon to follow.

The "storyscape" of Yeoman's piece certainly contributes to that mission, and it offers much food for thought:

Why is it that many of the the primary organizers at the grassroots level are working women--while the "Big Greens" (what I now refer to as the Big Fake Greens) remain affluent white men?

Why, if 58% of Pennsylvanians support a moratorium on fracking, do our elected representatives remain deaf to their constituents?

What counts as a "special place," as the excellent activist and writer John Trallo puts it, if it's not the earth under our feet?

Why, when the overwhelming evidence points to a future neither desirable nor even sustainable in the face of climate change, aren't more Pennsylvanians demanding to be heard?

Yeoman's right when he writes that "the Shale Rebellion remains—for now—a decentralized movement." As it should.

But as we are witness to the prospect of 100,000 wells just in Pennsylvania--imagine the global implications-- I have to hope that Yeoman turns out to be wrong when he goes on to suggest that this movement has "no uniform goal."

And, of course, there's so much more to be said. As key organizer and activist from the invited occupation of Riverdale points out, the tree sits undertaken by "forest defenders" in, for example, Loyalsock State Forest--planned site of 26 well pads for the notorious Anadarko (Kerr McGee)--are vital to the beating heart of this movement.

Just as the eminent Nelson Mandela saw that there could be no "regulated" apartheid, no compromise on injustice, no "middle ground" on institutionalized bigotry, so too there can be no "regulated" destruction of the necessary conditions of life--water and air.

There can be no compromise on the injustice suffered by folks like Deb Eck.

There is no middle ground when the stakes are a habitable planet and a future for our children.

"What do I tell my kids?" asks Bob Deering.

Tell them what Mandela taught us all:

We can either stand up against injustice, or we can lay down and hope our children never ask us why.

What could be clearer?

Wendy Lynne Lee
Shale Justice

For a set of photographs specifically selected for Yeoman's storyscape, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/sets/72157638640400905/

For photographs of the invited occupation of Riverdale, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/collections/72157632998265687/

For photographs of the CYNOG Compressor at Janet Hock Road, Davidson Township, Sullivan County, PA, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/collections/72157632989081288/

For Photographs of the EXCO pad at Lairdsville, Rt. 118, Pennsylvania, please see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/collections/72157634625434504/

Response to Professor Anthony Ingraffea’s “Gangplank to a Warm Future.”

In his excellent 7.28.13, New York Times Op-Ed, Gangplank to a Warm Future – NYTimes.com, Cornell Profesoor Anthony Ingraffea argued that

MANY concerned about climate change, including President Obama, have embraced hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. In his recent climate speech, the president went so far as to lump gas with renewables as “clean energy.”

As a longtime oil and gas engineer who helped develop shale fracking techniques for the Energy Department, I can assure you that this gas is not “clean.” Because of leaks of methane, the main component of natural gas, the gas extracted from shale deposits is not a “bridge” to a renewable energy future — it’s a gangplank to more warming and away from clean energy investments.

Methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though it doesn’t last nearly as long in the atmosphere. Still, over a 20-year period, one pound of it traps as much heat as at least 72 pounds of carbon dioxide. Its potency declines, but even after a century, it is at least 25 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. When burned, natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, but methane leakage eviscerates this advantage because of its heat-trapping power.

And methane is leaking, though there is significant uncertainty over the rate. But recent measurements by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at gas and oil fields in California, Colorado and Utah found leakage rates of 2.3 percent to 17 percent of annual production, in the range my colleagues at Cornell and I predicted some years ago. This is the gas that is released into the atmosphere unburned as part of the hydraulic fracturing process, and also from pipelines, compressors and processing units. Those findings raise questions about what is happening elsewhere. The Environmental Protection Agency has issued new rules to reduce these emissions, but the rules don’t take effect until 2015, and apply only to new wells.

A 2011 study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research concluded that unless leaks can be kept below 2 percent, gas lacks any climate advantage over coal. And a study released this May by Climate Central, a group of scientists and journalists studying climate change, concluded that the 50 percent climate advantage of natural gas over coal is unlikely to be achieved over the next three to four decades. Unfortunately, we don’t have that long to address climate change — the next two decades are crucial.

To its credit, the president’s plan recognizes that “curbing emissions of methane is critical.” However, the release of unburned gas in the production process is not the only problem. Gas and oil wells that lose their structural integrity also leak methane and other contaminants outside their casings and into the atmosphere and water wells. Multipleindustry studies show that about 5 percent of all oil and gas wells leak immediately because of integrity issues, with increasing rates of leakage over time. With hundreds of thousands of new wells expected, this problem is neither negligible nor preventable with current technology.

Why do so many wells leak this way? Pressures under the earth, temperature changes, ground movement from the drilling of nearby wells and shrinkage crack and damage the thin layer of brittle cement that is supposed to seal the wells. And getting the cement perfect as the drilling goes horizontally into shale is extremely challenging. Once the cement is damaged, repairing it thousands of feet underground is expensive and often unsuccessful. The gas and oil industries have been trying to solve this problem for decades.

The scientific community has been waiting for better data from the E.P.A. to assess the extent of the water contamination problem. That is why it is so discouraging that, in the face of industry complaints, the E.P.A. reportedly has closed or backed away from several investigations into the problem. Perhaps a full E.P.A. study of hydraulic fracturing and drinking water, due in 2014, will be more forthcoming. In addition, drafts of an Energy Department study suggest that there are huge problems finding enough water for fracturing future wells. The president should not include this technology in his energy policy until these studies are complete.

We have renewable wind, water, solar and energy-efficiency technology options now. We can scale these quickly and affordably, creating economic growth, jobs and a truly clean energy future to address climate change. Political will is the missing ingredient. Meaningful carbon reduction is impossible so long as the fossil fuel industry is allowed so much influence over our energy policies and regulatory agencies. Policy makers need to listen to the voices of independent scientists while there is still time.

Anthony R. Ingraffea is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University and the president of Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy, a nonprofit group.

The striking thing about Professor Ingraffea’s remarks is that, despite the fact that the science clearly shows the causal connection between methane emissions and climate change, there yet remain nay-sayers not only in the industry but among environmental organizations large and small and in the Obama administration.

It might be easy to describe this as an extreme form of denial, but as I argued recently in “Of Aristotle and Anadarko: Why Better Laws Will Never Be Enough” (Of Aristotle and Anadarko: Why “Better Laws” Will Never be Enough), it’s more:

To deny an obvious evil in the name of “moderation,” “compromise,” “maturity,” or even “compassion” is to at least concede to it.

To continue to deny, deflect, down-play, diminish that evil in the face of yet more and consistent evidence is to engage in collusion.

To collude knowingly with that evil all the while claiming the mantle of reason is a form of dishonesty worthy of contempt–and stalwart resistance.

It’s not surprising, of course, that Big Energy would ignore, deflect, and deny global warming. After all, their entire profit-driven gig depends on extracting every last bit of fossil energy from the shale–and apparently at virtually any cost–even into the bottom of the Arctic Ocean’s permafrost (Scientists Envision Fracking in Arctic and on Ocean Floor – WSJ.com).

It’s not even surprising (at least anymore) that government at every level has become corrupted by the lure of the money and the associated power of an industry whose legacy of environmental damage, community destruction, and grotesque economic exploitation of the world’s most vulnerable people seems to know no bounds (“Most Wanted” | Global Exchange). From the politics of a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that functions as nothing but a revolving door for industry aspirants (http://public-accountability.org/wp-content/uploads/Fracking-and-the-Revolving-Door-in-Pennsylvania.pdf), to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that’s clearly willing to exchange human health for industry access (Should frackers investigate themselves?), we have very little reason to believe that our elected representatives are watching our backs–or our water, or air, or soil. This was made starkly clear at Penn College, July 26th, 2013 at the “Bipartisan Natural Gas Caucus’” “field hearing” during which elected representatives took advantage of the opportunity to question natural gas representatives and business-persons from associated industries.

Except that the questions were clearly intended only to highlight the “jobs” argument for continuing natural gas development. There was no provision for public comment–in plain violation of the PA-State Sunshine Act (http://www.lgc.state.pa.us/deskbook06/Issues_Citizens_Rights_02_Pa_Sunshine_Act.pdf), and there transpired not a word of critical inquiry in the day-long proceeding. Indeed, this was not a hearing at all. It was an orchestrated theatrical performance to propagandize for fracking and all of its associated industries under the guise of “good government,” and “public accountability.” I don’t know that I have ever witnessed a more cynical abuse of the public trust. But little surprises me these days–including the use of tax-payers dollars to make commercials for Big Global Gas.

Professor Ingraffea’s criticism of the Obama administration is right on the money. We have alternatives. With thoughtful planning, some creativity, and significant conservation, we can scale them to fulfill our energy needs. What we lack is political will. And no wonder given the privatizing and whole-sale corporatizing of government. As I argued in “Obama’s Big Fake Climate Change Speech and the Big Fake greens Who Loved It” (Obama’s Big Fake Climate Change Speech and the Big Fake Environmental Organizations Who Loved It), President Obama seems to have bought hook, line, and sinker the wholly specious “jobs argument.” Indeed, other than the fact that Obama is African American, he would have fit right in at the fake hearing at Penn College. And that is not a trivial point: white, male, affluent, Western. What we see reflected in the rhetoric of the Obama administration, in state government like Tom Corbett’s, and throughout state and federal congress is the worldview of what I have Called the “Good Old Boy Extraction Club,” a not-so-new patriarchy that rewards the same players at the expense of social justice and environmental integrity (YouTube: The Good Ole’ Boy Extraction Club: The Pseudo-Patriotic and Pervasively Patriarchal Culture of Hydraulic Fracturing (Why Breast Cancer is the Canary in the Fracking Coal Mine). My point, however, is not that Professor Ingraffea ought to have gone in this direction, but that regardless this history, regardless our absurdly distorted concession to “property rights” when they’re the industry’s, even regardless how easy or difficult it might be to make the transition to clean fuel sources, the writing is on the wall: methane emissions contribute substantially to climate change. That’s it. The end. We cannot even sort of afford this.

So, it’s not just striking that any environmental organization applauds President Obama’s industry-concilliatory tone on climate change, but that there’s anyone left who does not see that demanding anything other than a ban on all forms of extreme extraction–fracking, mountain top removal, and tar sands extraction, and all of their associated hydro-carbon emitting industries, is behaving in a fashion that is willfully daft. In light of the facts as Ingraffea lays them out, the very idea of “responsible drilling” is not merely oxymoronic, it must be interpreted as “pro-drilling.” As I spelled out in “Of Aristotle and Anadarko,” any organization that claims that so long as studies are done, “better laws” are crafted, “best practices” are observed and permits are granted only after review, drilling may then proceed is pro-drilling. And not just pro-drilling-under-the-right-circumstances. It is Pro. Drilling.

Why?

Because every one of these organizations knows that “better laws” and “best practices” is code for industry-drafted legislation like Act 13 (Act 13 | DEP > Oil and Gas), SB 258/HB1414 (http://legiscan.com/PA/text/SB259/id/868925/Pennsylvania-2013-SB259-Amended.pdf), SB 367 (The Industrialization of PASSHE: Where the Public Good, its Students, and its Faculty are Auctioned Off to the Extraction Profiteers (Or: Extortion by Extraction), and SB 1047 (http://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=PDF&sessYr=2013&sessInd=0&billBody=S&billTyp=B&billNbr=1047&pn=1327)–just to name a tiny few. We all know, in other words, that there is no way to frack better. More profitably, maybe. But the cost is precisely what Professor Ingraffea says is is: climate change–and a world of hurt that goes with it.

Because every one of these organizations knows that the effort to ameliorate the industry’s massive and growing damage is a bandaid on a gushing gut wound.

Because pretending to care about the future all the while pandering to the corporatist oligarchs of the present is hypocrisy.

Because “finding middle ground” with an enemy who understands you as naught but an inconvenience and an obstacle is not substantively different than the actions of the Vichy Government of France who tried to find “middle ground” with the NAZIs in a pathetic bid to save itself (The French Vichy Regime | Jewish Virtual Library). We all know how that turned out–a dark and embarrassing blight on French history. When Professor Ingraffea claims that “[t]he president should not include this technology [fracking] in his energy policy until these studies are complete,” he says it with the confidence that once complete, the studies will point clearly in the direction of a ban. In the mean time, he strongly defends the moratorium protecting New Yorkers from at least some of the environmental, health, and community devastation that’s converted Pennsylvania from a gorgeous destination for eco-tourists into Terry Engelder’s “sacrifice zone.” Hence, we must conclude that Professor Ingraffea is confident that such studies will only lend further credence to the argument for a ban.

And that’s it.

There is no negotiating over the surface rights for Anadarko in Loyalsock State Forest. There is no way to clean up the polluted wells in Dimock. There is no restoration of the Arboreal Forests lost to Alberta. There is no safe uranium mining in the Grand Canyon. There is no economic justice for Native Americans in the Dakotas. There is no making right the travesty of Riverdale. There is no return of the Northern Flying Squirrel once it’s driven out of Pennsylvania’s last contiguous forests now fragmented by truck roads and frack equipment parking lots. There is no fixing lost property values for farmers whose land and water is permanently destroyed. There is no fixing asthma. There is no fixing a breast cancer mastectomy.

Here’s my first crazy claim: human rights trump property rights.

Here’s my second crazy claim: the rights of living things to the conditions necessary to preserve life

and flourish in healthy ecological systems trump property rights too.

There is no protecting the rights of human beings and other living organisms without the reasonable limitiation of the property rights. “Reasonable,” however, in the case of extreme industrialized extraction means “ban it now.” It means that the “property rights” of faux-persons called “corporations” must take a far back seat to the rights of people, and their children, and the water, air and soil upon which it all depends.

Ban industrialized extraction now.

Anything else is subterfuge.

http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2013/07/30/response-to-professor-anthony-ingraffeas-gangplank-to-a-warm-future/

Obama’s Big Fake Climate Change Speech and the Big Fake Environmental Organizations Who Loved It

Delivered at Georgetown University to a crowd of students whose own futures hang in the balance, President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated speech on climate change certainly sounded like a clarion call to real and measurable action.
Except that is wasn’t.

For despite the fact that he does seem get the message about coal and greenhouse gas emissions, he has bought wholesale into the absurd, debunked industry manufactured hornswaggle transition argument for “clean burning natural gas”:

“The bottom line is natural gas is creating jobs,” Obama said. “It’s lowering many families’ heat and power bills. And it’s the transition fuel that can power our economy with less carbon pollution even as our businesses work to develop and then deploy more of the technology required for the even cleaner energy economy of the future.” (Obama Targets Coal in Energy Speech, Praises Gas | PoliticsPA)

And, of course the Extreme Industrialized Extraction industry and their profiteering cohorts were more than happy to capitalize on the president’s endorsement. From Katherine Klaber of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry propaganda group masquerading as as an agency devoted to the public welfare:

““We are pleased that President Obama once again underscored the clear environmental and economic benefits tied to the safe development of clean-burning natural gas,” she said. (Obama Targets Coal in Energy Speech, Praises Gas | PoliticsPA)
While the President’s broader energy and climate strategy will be further framed in the weeks and months to come, we remain focused as an industry on protecting and enhancing our environment through the responsible development of job-creating American natural gas,” said Marcellus Shale Coalition President Kathryn Klaber in a statement. (Obama Touts Role of Natural Gas in Addressing Climate Change | StateImpact Pennsylvania)

From the utilities giant American Electric Power:

Nick Akins, CEO of American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest utilities, said in an interview Tuesday that as long as utilities like his are given enough time to transition to a cleaner fleet of power plants, Obama’s plan can be carried out “without a major impact to customers or the economy. (What Obama’s climate change proposal means for consumers and energy companies | StarTribune.com

And–sending a little thrill up the backs of CEOs at Exxon, Shell, Anadarko, EXCO, Range Resources, Consol, WPX–and fossil fuel gas charlatans everywhere:

Obama repeatedly leveled praise on natural gas, casting it as a “cleaner-burning” alternative to coal that could help the U.S. transition to greener energy sources, despite some environmentalists’ skepticism. “Sometimes there are disputes about natural gas,” Obama acknowledged, “but let me say this: We should strengthen our position as the top natural gas producer because, in the medium term, at least, it not only can provide safe cheap power, but it can also help reduce our carbon emissions.” (Fuel Fix » Obama’s climate plan spares oil and gas from big changes)

Indeed, the big mystery of Obama’s Climate Change Initiative speech was not that it bought lock, stock, and OPEC barrel into the mythology of “clean, cheap, and American,” but that even as he acknowledged (though just barely) that hydraulic fracturing may not be quite “all that,” mainstream environmental organizations like the Sierra Club praised the speech anyways.
Obama:

“We’ll keep working with the industry to make drilling safer and cleaner, to make sure that we’re not seeing methane emissions and to put people to work modernizing our natural gas infrastructure so that we can power more homes and businesses with cleaner energy,” Obama said. Obama is directing executive agencies to develop a comprehensive strategy for tackling methane emissions. A 21-page document outlining the president’s climate plan noted that “efforts to build and upgrade gas pipelines could “reduce emissions and enhance economic productivity.” That could include work to build more natural gas pipelines near surging oil production in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana, where the dearth of such infrastructure has encouraged drillers to burn off the fossil fuel when it accompanies extracted crude. (Fuel Fix » Obama’s climate plan spares oil and gas from big changes)

But as was readily available for the president’s attention way back in February 2012, methane emissions are

(a) a substantially greater greenhouse gas than CO2: “Methane is 25 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over 100 year — but it is 100 times more efficient than CO2 trapping heat over two decades” (Bombshell Study: High Methane Emissions Measured Over Gas Field “May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas” | ThinkProgress).

(b) emitted in substantially greater quantities than the natural gas industry is prepared to admit, and

(c) subject to massive and systematic cover-up by the industry.

As Joe Romm of Climate Progress reports:

The industry has tended kept most of the data secret while downplaying the leakage issue. Yet I know of no independent analysis that finds a rate below 2%, including one by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, the DOE’s premier fossil fuel lab. (Bombshell Study: High Methane Emissions Measured Over Gas Field “May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas” | ThinkProgress)

Moreover, however, maligned by the attack drone-bots at Energy in Death (Depth), the journal Nature reports that Cornell professor Robert Howarth’s claims concerning methane emissions have been confirmed in at least one scientific study:

When US government scientists began sampling the air from a tower north of Denver, Colorado, they expected urban smog — but not strong whiffs of what looked like natural gas. They eventually linked the mysterious pollution to a nearby natural-gas field, and their investigation has now produced the first hard evidence that the cleanest-burning fossil fuel might not be much better than coal when it comes to climate change.

Led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Colorado, Boulder, the study estimates that natural-gas producers in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system. This is more than double the official inventory, but roughly in line with estimates made in 2011 that have been challenged by industry. And because methane is some 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude could effectively offset the environmental edge that natural gas is said to enjoy over other fossil fuels. (Bombshell Study: High Methane Emissions Measured Over Gas Field “May Offset Climate Benefits of Natural Gas” | ThinkProgress)

No wonder the Sierra Club’s Michael Brune–the director of a Big Fake Environmental Org.–

(a) still smarting from revelations that it comfortably accepted 26 million from Chespeake from 2007-2010 (After Disclosure of Sierra Club’s Gifts From Gas Driller, a Roiling Debate – NYTimes.com), and

(b) whose been trying to revive its reputation as an environmental organization ever since–especially with respect to fracking (Beyond Natural Gas)

felt compelled to remain virtually silent about anything industrialized extraction in the president’s speech. What can he say? Well, there’s this–and it’s a flat contradiction:

This afternoon, I had a short meeting with President Obama that left me more convinced than ever that he’s serious about tackling the climate crisis. Sure enough, later under a sweltering sun at Georgetown University, I watched him calmly and forcefully restate the case for taking action on the climate crisis in one of the most important speeches of his presidency. He also outlined a Climate Action Plan that will help curb carbon pollution, develop clean energy sources, promote energy efficiency, and assert American global leadership on climate issues.

But then there’s this:

Second, he [president Obama] declared that he will not approve the Keystone XL pipeline if it harms the climate, because to do so would not be in the national interest….The science on Keystone’s potentially catastrophic effect on climate could not be more clear. The rejection of this carbon pollution pipeline will be a major climate disaster averted. (Coming Clean: The Blog of Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune)

In light of Brune’s conspicuous silence on fracking and tar sands extraction, we can only conclude that the Sierra Club is completely ready to endorse the Keystone Pipeline the moment President Obama–whose is himself a “full faith and credit” participant in the BIg Gas mythology of jobs, clean energy, cheap and American”–says go.

And make no mistake about it, the president will say “go.”

In fact, the Georgetown speech is nothing more or less than the political infrastructure for giving the green light to the full-scale fossil fuel industrialization of every inch of earth on the shale fields. how else can the United States once again come to dominate global energy production?

Still, the Sierra Club is in no way alone in Michael Brune’s obviously greater interest in being invited to the White House than in joining with the real activists fighting for the fundamental human right to clean water and air out here in the shale fields. How many of the Big Fake Environmental Organizations are going to sign on to President Obama’s “Climate Change Initiative”?

Plenty–here’s just a few:

The Environmental Defense Fund (The President takes the lead on climate change | Environmental Defense Fund)

The League of Conservation Voters (President Obama’s climate plan – League of Conservation Voters)

The World Resources Institute (First Take: Looking at President Obama’s Climate Action Plan | WRI Insights)

The Natural Resources Defense Council (Obama’s Climate Action Plan Will Protect Our Health and Our Communities | Frances Beinecke’s Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC)

The fact that the Big Fake Environmental Orgs. function as public relations cheerleaders for industrialized extraction would be comic were it not so perverse. On the one hand, we have folks like Michael Brune falling all over themselves to applaud the president, while on the other we have the same folks–Michael Brune–actually participating (if not for very long) in nonviolent acts of civil disobedience to “to provoke the president to use his full executive authority in confronting the climate crisis” (The Fossil Fuel Resistance: Meet the New Green Heroes: Michael Brune: The Insider | Rolling Stone).

The problem is that MIchael Brune–and his buddies among the Big Fake Environmental Orgs doesn’t mean it. If he did, he’d have called out the president explicitly and forcefully on fracking, mountain top removal, and tar sands extraction. He’d have flatly condemned the Keystone Pipeline. he’d have publicly and loudly joined forces by name with the multiplying anti-extereme extraction organizations in the United States and elsewhere–and he’d have called n the president to do so.

He didn’t, and he won’t. Why? Because the Sierra Club is not an environmental organization; it is one more old boy’s club whose primary interest is the preservation of its existence, its salary scale, its benefit’s packages. The Sierra Club, in other words, is just another corporation. But unlike, say, Anadarko who has the dignity to not pretend that its anything other than in it for the money, the Sierra Club pretends to be in it for us.

What Michael Brune knows is that President Obama is shaking a paper fist at one fossil fuel while offering a wink and a nod to the other–and of course, since these are all the same players, his friends in Big Energy and the Big Fake Environmental Orgs will all go out to dinner and a beer comfortable in the knowledge that their off-shore bank accounts are secure, their profits mounting, and their president firmly in their pockets.

President Obama’s speech should be read by all of us in the Anti-Extreme Extraction movement as a gauge of

1. Which of the Big Fake Environmental Organizations will sell us out first, evidence of just how corrupt is his administration,

2. How committed he is not to Americans but to a legacy of foreign policy built out of LNG tankers,

3. How fundamentally ignorant he is willing to remain about climate change. He claims that the science of climate change shows that there is an anthropogenic contribution to it, and that this is settled. Well and good. But he is simultaneously preparing to devote more dollars to deal with its effects–hotter temperatures and more catastrophic weather events–than to significantly mitigating it. We can only read that as concession to extraction-as-usual, and nothing more. New stricter carbon emission standards? Fine. But it concedes to carbon emissions when we should be aggressively pursuing the alternatives that already exist–and conservation.

What Michael Brune knows is that a call for divestment from coal is really a call for investment in unconventional natural gas extraction. This is one of those “Here’s something you can do!” pitches to college students–keeping them busy and feeling good about themselves all the while extraction industrialization continues unabated out in rural America. That President Obama is willing and ready to sacrifice rural communities and ways of life for his “progressive” voters in the cities is arguably the creation of the new underclass, an underclass not distinguished by color or sex–but by a geography named “shale.”

The president can claim until the cows come home that he’s not going to sign off keystone if it “increases greenhouse gas emissions,” but in light of the fact that he buys the patently absurd transition fuel argument, this must be read as code for “Hey Big Gas Friends, I need you to make some more ads that promote Keystone as safe. I need some cover here!”

And they will do just that: “Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck cited [industry funded] studies showing that the pipeline would not affect oil development in the Canadian tar sands, and therefore would have little environmental effect.”The standard the president set today should lead to speedy approval of the Keystone pipeline,” Buck said.”

We have been handed a pretty sparkly package of policy tasty treats–but offered no real food to satisfy our need for substantive policy change–and no real hope of mitigating climate change. The only hope we have is that the gas stays in the ground. All the regulation of coal and oil in the world will make little difference if we do not stop extracting fossil fuels in all their forms.

Moreover, Obama’s wink and nod to Big Energy is his tacit promise to look the other way when they refuse the sparkly tasty treat suite of regulations in exchange for violating the law as “the cost of doing business.” After all, didn’t we just learn from Wyoming that that cost isn’t very high? (Some residents oppose Wyo.-EPA frack study deal – Salon.com). Indeed, it’s not very high at all–and Big Bucks tasty treat are so much better–especially (as Big Energy enjoys a little S&M) when they come with a little spanky spank for being “Bad Boys.”

And the “bad boys” oblige–bitching and moaning that Obama has come down too heavy-handed on coal–but knowing all the while he probably doesn’t really mean it. Here’s John Pippy from the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance:

“It [Obama's stricter coal-fired power plant emission standards] will have a devastating impact on the energy sector and thus businesses and residents, with very little (impact) on the total carbon emissions, because we are not the number-one source of man-made carbon emissions,” said John Pippy, CEO of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance. Pippy said in an interview Tuesday afternoon that the carbon-emission standards being proposed by the federal government aren’t achievable by current technology and there no effort being made to create that technology.

In other words, “we think these new emission standards are stinky because even though we know that carbon emissions have a devastating effect on the environment and human health we’d still rather make mountains of money. But, hey! We’re not really worried ‘cuz we know that the technology required to get to the president’s fantasy land of lower emission ain’t in existence anyways.”

And that’s apparently good enough for the Big Fake Orgs too.

Obama’s speech offers little more than a selection of bandaids for a gushing hemorrhage–and worse. If we’re convinced that we can staunch the climate change bleeding with the extreme extraction bandaids, we’ll just waste more time while our lives on the planet bleed out. Without a fundamental transformation of the very way we see our lives, our consumption, and our ecologies, there will be no future that is desirable–much less capable of offering us beauty.

This plan isn’t even going to get us to sustainable.

But even if it did, sustainable? Fuck that. I want much more for my kids and yours.

I want the world.

http://www.ragingchickenpress.org/2013/06/27/obamas-big-fake-climate-change-speech-and-the-big-fake-greens-who-loved-it/