When "Sierra Club" means "Silence the Critic"

Yesterday (1.14.15) was an interesting day.

It began with an email mailer announcing the joint Clean Water Action/Pennsylvanians Against Fracking rally at Governor Elect Tom Wolf's January 20th inauguration. This included an image of their frack-celebrity invitee, Josh Fox and their demand that fracking be "halted" in Pennsylvania.

I posted the following response on my Faceboook page:

So this morning I get donation soliciting email from Clean Water Action and--same post--Pennsylvanians Against Fracking. In it, they promote their "action" for Tom (the Gas) Wolf's inauguration--but they just can't bring themselves to use ANY language that actually takes the only position worth taking: BAN fracking. 

Instead, they resort to weasel words: HALT fracking.I guess they don't get the difference in meaning between the two words--and they hope YOU don't either. 

BAN: stop permanently, in all forms, without exception. 

HALT: stop FOR NOW.

While CWA and PAF may be finally getting it that the moratorium is DEAD, they continue to try to resurrect what amounts to the same thing in the language of "halt." 

Don't be fooled. 

This is the same "have your cake" (pretend to actually care about the air and water) and eat it too (promote the agenda of your PARTY).

And, of course, it's a lot  more than that. It's about creating the illusion of a resistance with no real stomach for it; it's about prioritizing your organization's access to government agencies  far ahead of actually putting an end to the harm.

Don't get me wrong--I don't doubt for a minute that lots of well-meaning good folks will participate in this rally thinking they'll generate the proverbial groundswell of resistance that will turn the tide on the industrial/government/private security firm complex that gets the gas our of the ground and to the export depots. 

But I am more and more convinced that these media events actually do people--and especially people who live in the shale fields--more harm than good.

As I argued with respect to the rise of agencies like the Marcellus Shale Operator's Crime Committee (MSOCC):

The Marcellus Shale Operators Crime Committee is just one among many in a growing network of government, quasi-governmental (such as FERC--the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), and private (or privatized) concerns who act on behalf of maintaining carbon despotism. Any exercise of free speech that threatens to disrupt or expose this status quo as anything other than good old American free enterprise is a potential "terrorist" according to the lazy logic of MSOCC. 

 
 The irony is that we are welcome--even encouraged to be "activists" "exercising" our first amendment rights by holding up protest signs on capitol steps, or signing petitions, or writing letters. Indeed, that kind of activism works to the advantage of the corporatized state because it 

exhausts all of our energy in actions that have no effect on the drilling and transport "activities" of the gas companies.  

keeps us away from the public roads commandeered by the likes of EXCO.
keeps us in plain site of the state police and the private security firms who feed them information. 

 
gives the state police and their counterparts in the private security firms an opportunity to intimidate us--just by being at our ineffectual "activist" events. 

Provides the state police a way to distinguish the "activists" from the "radicals," and thereby use the harassment of the "radicals" to control the "activists."

And--most importantly--allows the corporatized state to use "the movement" as advertising for free speech thereby assuring everyone else that things are awesome in America.   

But should we actually demand that gas industry "activities" be banned, the fury of a state already set to bulldoze us will crank into motion while the Officer Hutsons of the world smugly evince an "I told you so." It's irrelevant whether we do or don't commit any crimes--much less violent ones. 

It's thus richly ironic that organizations like Pennsylvanians Against Fracking and Clean Water Action (not to mention Food and Water Watch) do even more of MSOCC's dirty work for them by engaging in exactly the sort of self-censorship that MSOCC would happily impose.

All apparently that's required to get the PAF folks to run away squealing like toddlers from a bumble bee hive is the mere mention of the dreaded word "BAN" and MSOCC's work is done. 

Whisper the word "radical" and you may have to get out the smelling salts.  

That's because PAF, et. al. value the appearance of respectability well beyond ending the nightmare that is fracking--and MSOCC surely knows this. 

That MSOCC has to orchestrate their own set of appearances in order to justify their existence--calling the "activists"  "radicals," surveilling us, subjecting to denials of FOIA requests--is all just part of the game.

But the objective of the game is to get the gas out of the ground with as few obstacles as possible--and as long as we keep playing this game--all the rules of which are rigged to make sure we lose--we lose. 

We all lose.

It's no accident that even if you "like" the PAF Facebook page you can't post on it. That's how they control their carefully crafted "respectable" message and insure that they neither have to face their critics nor be identified with the radicals they're more than happy to disown in order maintain their "we're standing up for you" greenie appearance.

What we need to remember is that this is all appearance--not substance.

Yet on the all appearance/no substance scale, PAF has been outdone by their organizational patriarchs at the Sierra Club.

And that's where my day took an unexpected--and pretty damn hilarious--turn.

Below is the entire thread of comments originally posted at the Sierra Club Hydrofracking Facebook page. They paint a picture of an organization utterly dictatorial in its mission to preserve its image as an environmental group--more and more desperate as this image becomes tarnished via the exposure of the fact that, just like the little greenies who model themselves after Father Sierra Club, they're leaders are far more interested (indeed, hell bent) to maintain their donor base (their existence) and their political access than they are in doing anything about, well, anything. 

What's significant about these comments is several-fold:

1. Even from the first critical comment, David Meiser--Sierra Club, Bucks County, Pennsylvania--takes himself to have the authority to alter, delete, censor--or in my case BAN--comments he deems unflattering to the Sierra Club. This suggests an organization so brittle with respect to its membership support that it cannot brook criticism--and therefore must deploy SC-Soldier/Snipers like Meiser to pick-off the critics. 

2. In response to a Sierra Club member's expressed displeasure at the SC decision not to support the PAF rally at Governor Wolf's inauguration because it might alienate the governor, Meiser drapes himself in the flag insisting that a democratic vote was taken about whether to support the rally--and members declined "by a large margin." 

3. This is a richly ironic decision since (a) SC is the model after which PAF clearly aspires, (b) PAF wasn't about to engage in any action that alienates the governor, and (c) PAF had already indicated clearly in its weak "halt" language that SC members had nothing to worry their conservative white nervous nelly donors. 

4.  The same Sierra Club member also expresses significant displeasure that SC leadership directs its membership to not wear any Sierra Club items if they're planning on being a part of the PAF rally. Meiser then tries to downplay this--but ineffectively--claiming that "all that was said was that individuals cannot speak for the PA chapter." I don't claim to know where the truth is here--but we can certainly say this much: (a) if this is what "listening to the membership" means in the Sierra Club, I'd reconsider paying those dues, and (b) if this is represented correctly, it only adds to the picture of an organization dictatorial in its relationship to its membership. And if that is the case, why should we take seriously Meiser's claim that there was a democratic vote not to support the PAF rally? Doesn't it make more sense to assume voting members fall in line with what they know is expected of this environmental patriarch?

5. While it's possible to get the gist of what's at stake in this contentious dialogue--you can't read all of it because although I had the foresight to save it, I was BANNED by Mr. Meiser from the Facebook page. 

Honestly, it's hard to imagine an environmental organization more helpful to the Marcellus Shale Operator's Crime Committee. With adversaries like the Sierra Club, it's no wonder that agents like Michael Hutson of the Pennsylvania State Police Joint FBI Ecoterrorism Task Force have to go somewhere else to find speech to criminalize. SC-leader Michael Brune's "The Sierra Club Opposes Fracking. Period" means about as much as "The Sierra Club Loves Oatmeal" given the (old boy's) club's refusal to actually stand by their words. 

Then again, here's a guy who thinks that chaining himself to the fence around the White House for a ten minute photo-op in his Khakis and sport coat count as an act of civil disobedience.

Lastly, Meiser insists that the Sierra Club is following in the steps of conservationist John Muir in refusing to participate in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience.

But this is false on two scores:

First, as I pointed out to Meiser (much I suspect to his embarrassment since it was right after this that he hit the BAN button), this is not Sierra Club policy. Here's Michael Brune himself, 1.22.13:

If you could do it nonstop, it would take you six days to walk from Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond to President Barack Obama's White House. For the Sierra Club, that journey has taken much longer. For 120 years, we have remained committed to using every "lawful means" to achieve our objectives. Now, for the first time in our history, we are prepared to go further.

Next month, the Sierra Club will officially participate in an act of peaceful civil resistance. We'll be following in the hallowed footsteps of Thoreau, who first articulated the principles of civil disobedience 44 years before John Muir founded the Sierra Club.
Some of you might wonder what took us so long. Others might wonder whether John Muir is sitting up in his grave. In fact, John Muir had both a deep appreciation for Thoreau and a powerful sense of right and wrong. And it's the issue of right versus wrong that has brought the Sierra Club to this unprecedented decision.

For civil disobedience to be justified, something must be so wrong that it compels the strongest defensible protest. Such a protest, if rendered thoughtfully and peacefully, is in fact a profound act of patriotism. For Thoreau, the wrongs were slavery and the invasion of Mexico. For Martin Luther King, Jr., it was the brutal, institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. For us, it is the possibility that the United States might surrender any hope of stabilizing our planet's climate.

   
Second, John Muir was not obviously opposed to civil disobedience, and although this claim requires more development, I think no one can come away having read Muir and not believe that while he was certainly no partisan of violence, he absolutely did believe his precious Sierras were worth defending with our bodies as well as our minds.

See:

http://vault.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/favorite_quotations.aspx). 


So there you have it--another "environmental" organization who, although they sport the color green, are really just another white guy's fiefdom trying to retain its relevance in a world it allows to burn just as blithely as does the gas industry and its government subordinates.

This harms people. 

Why on earth would you give your money to these guys?

Here's the Facebook dialogue--or what I could salvage of it before Meiser banned me--unedited and uncensored--so you can make your own judgment.

Interesting, isn't it, that Sierra Clubbers have no trouble BANNING when its speech they don't like--but they can't even whisper that word when it requires they have the courage to forego their lunch invites to the Gas Wolf's table.

  

‪Paul Robert Roden Does Wolf's acceptance of $273,000 in political campaign contributions from the gas industry have anything to do with his wanting to "have his cake and eat it too?" It is "unfortunate" that he doesn't see the light from the science that Governor Cuomo did in New York. So now Wolf will have to feel the heat of us.
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David Meiser Edited post so it isn't so dictatorial

           

            I am THINKING OF BANNING ‪Wendy Lynne Lee! she is not a member and offers no real assistance and I see no reason she should be allowed to keep posting her inflamatory remarks. Her vitriol is unproductive and does nothing to further the cause. ...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee And Mr. Meiser shows how devoted he is to free speech!
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Here's the facts: From Sierra Club member, ‪Melody Susan: "Yesterday, PA Chapter of Sierra Club Executive Committee (15 people) voted not to support this rally, hoping to curry favor with Gov. Wolf by doing so, This action was taken despite the fact tha...See More
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‪David Meiser Free speech is one thing but as you contribute NOTHING to the club and only use this for your vitriol I see no reason to use our time or effort on allowing you to post!
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee My response: "And--just like the SC--PAF, et al., use these weasel words to get donations and sign-ons--so they LOOK like they're out there doing the hard work of ending fracking--but petitions, sign-ons, a protest here and there--these things haven't even slowed the industry down--let alone stopped it. AND these strategies just give MSOCC/State Police ways to surveil us.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee That the SC thinks it can dictate to members what they can and cannot where at an event--WOW!!!!! Well--then again, aren't they a corporation just like the gas companies?
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee HAHAHAHAHA! That, my friend, is nothing but code for "Damn! I see you're telling the truth about Sierra Club hypocrisy, and we can't afford that!"
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‪David Meiser As I said I am awaiting others input for reasons NOT to do this, that is the democratic thing to do.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee HAHAHA, Mr. ‪David Meiser--you have already put your foot in quite the unattractive pile of censorship poo.
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‪David Meiser So far the only comments I see are yours 
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‪Melody Susan I favor Democracy and free speech. This all began when Jenny Lsk's posts about the rally were removed from 2 Sierra Club facebook sites (Allegheny's and Central PA's). What do you think of the PA Chapter action, David?
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‪David Meiser ‪Melody Susan I did not see those posts or have admin privileges to those sites. But that is not the point of this posting the request I made was to give input on why ‪Wendy Lynne Lee should be allowed to continue to be a member of the hydrofracking team fb page.
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‪Gary Thornbloom I agree with the language Wendi has added to the Brune post - it makes a pointed, but valid point. If Brune's message means anything, Sierra Club belongs on the street with the protest against fracking, period.
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‪David Meiser ‪Gary Thornbloom aren't you a PA chapter executive committee member? or the Chair of one of the PA groups?
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‪Gary Thornbloom I am an alternate delegate for the Moshannon Group, and I was the Moshannon Group Chair but not for the past year. I am co-chair for the Public Lands Committee of the PA Chapter.
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‪Melody Susan Wendy's actually been pretty toned down on this page, David. You should read her posts on PAF's. When anyone is censored, it causes others to be stifled, which is not good at a time when more people should be speaking out. Many of us think that Wend...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee ‪Wendy Lynne Lee has been a brutal public critic of the gas industry for YEARS--so there is no WHEN about it. All that's needed there is a quick Google search. it is NOT the case that I am currently under investigation by the Pennsylvania State Police/ ...See More
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee The PAF FB Page is a complete sham. Whether or not you "like " it, you can't post on it--and that is how they control their messaging--by systemic censorship all the while pretending to be democratic.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Just for your leisure reading: ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../the...



THE WRENCH: The Corporatization of American Democracy: Slickwater...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../when-sunrise...



THE WRENCH: When Sunrise for the Global Gas Markets is Sunset for...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../the-hilcorp...



THE WRENCH: The Hilcorp Frack-Gas Stampede to the Utica is Ready to...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/.../sustainable...



THE WRENCH: Sustainable Shale Development: The “Middle Ground”...
THEWRENCHPHILOSLEFT.BLOGSPOT.COM|BY WENDY LYNNE LEE













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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Every one of these essays spells out exactly why the only position to take is not "we oppose," not "moratorium," and not "halt." NONE of these has the resonance or the courage of the word BAN. And until we as a movement get clear about that fact, we will not be a MOVEMENT.
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‪David Meiser ‪Melody Susan this is what I have gathered, there was a vote as to support the event by the executive committee. That motion failed, by a large margin.

           

            These people who voted were elected by PA Sierra Club members to oversee the chapter. ...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee Thank you for laying this out, ‪David Meiser. However democratic the vote, it speaks volumes about the SC--that it values its political access over preventing the very real harms perpetrated by the gas companies on Pennsylvanians. People have a right to know this so that they next time they see that MIchael Brune Poster about how the SC opposes fracking they can decide to take their money somewhere else.
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‪Melody Susan In true Democratic style, a poll of members should have been taken before PA Chapter took a stand on the rally especially since this issue has ever-increasing public support. It appears to me that PA Chapter has no clear understanding of the purpose of...See More
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee ‪Melody Susan--this is EASY. The Sierra Club just isn't about environmental issues if taking a position on them endangers their political access. And the PA chapter has no excuse whatsoever for not understanding the reason for the rally--even if PAF is ...See More
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Wendy Lynne Lee And of course you should be appalled at the SC's heavy handed and arrogant claim to the authority to tell their members what they can wear. What you should not be is surprised.
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‪David Meiser It is my understanding that all was said was that individuals can not state they speak for the PA chapter.

           

            The rest was not truthful regarding displaying of anything on their person regarding club banners buttons or such.) ...See More
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‪Melody Susan letter purportedly from Wendy Taylor:

            All -- There is a lot of buzz about a ban-fracking rally planned for January 20 in Harrisburg, when Tom Wolf will be inaugurated as governor. The Chapter Executive Committee had a long discussion on whether to su...See More
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‪David Meiser Membership breakdown is the Philly region has the most members but has the least active participants, I don't know why people in and around Philly are not involved but I know personally that philly about philly.

           

            The next largest area is Pittsburg ar...See More



Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter
The Club promotes conservation by influencing public policy through grassroots activism, public education,...
PENNSYLVANIA.SIERRACLUB.ORG













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‪David Meiser That I did not see! and they (the PA Chapter) can not say to members They can't carry signs, wear buttons or clothes that use the Sierra Club logo!

           

            The only thing the chapter should say is that they are not speaking as the sierra club (that has to be cleared by the national board of directors!)
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Wendy Lynne Lee REALLY? The SC has a POLICY of NEVER participating in civil disobedience? WOW! They chose their political expediency as a matter of policy--so they can't REALLY oppose anything!
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‪David Meiser Wendy I believe that was from John Muir and the club has kept the tradition since the 1800s
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee Of course--the ironies just grow richer by the minute since PAF was NEVER going to participate in any act of civil disobedience. So SC didn't even understand THAT.
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‪Wendy Lynne Lee HAHAHA! "If you could do it nonstop, it would take you six days to walk from Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond to President Barack Obama's White House. For the Sierra Club, that journey has taken much longer. For 120 years, we have remained committed t...See More
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‪David Meiser I cannot state what was stated at the PA chapter meeting as I was not there. and so far I have not heard anything from others.

           

            I did communicate this to the club's Board of directors regarding the what was sent as well as the current club president David Scott regarding the over reach on the wording of the above letter.
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           Wendy Lynne Lee You know whose words those are? MICHAEL BRUNES!
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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/