Citizens are not Subjects, Reform is not Revolution: A Letter to My Friends in the Pennsylvania Anti-Fracking Movement

Gas Line Trail, Cammal, PA near Pine Creek, 5.14
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

Dear friends,

My message is a simple one: there are reasons why the anti-fracking movement in Pennsylvania has thus far failed to staunch the liquidation of the state, and if we do not begin the difficult task of asking what these are, there will be little left to salvage. 

Our collective self-respect will be among the casualties.

Yet we seem to be far more devoted to maintaining our social ties that our moral objectives. This, I think, is because we don't have a single clear objective. 

When our leaders cannot bring themselves to whisper the word "ban" for fear of offending or alienating their elected representatives--when they let the rest of us act as the Hoplites while they pontificate about harms at their next media event in front of a mic--that is no movement. 

That's something more like a corporation who, like any such organization has as its first objective the reproduction of itself--a reproduction that requires either that the harms continue or that something out of which we can create equal celebrity replace them.

Be that as it may, the Pennsylvania anti-fracking movement has had some spectacular moments--most of them a direct challenge to the system that disenfranchises our citizenship virtually autonomically.

The trouble is that ultimately these moments 

must come to something more than 

the placeholder that the word "movement" fills. 

Because the Gas Behemoth against which we were compelled to move was so daunting, we could not afford to remain a few moments of movement.

We needed to become an insurgency--but we seem not to have the stomach for it--returning over and over again to the same worn strategies, appealing to the same system of law that undermines us.

The truth is that a movement so fragile 

that it cannot even look in the face of 

its critic's arguments--

much less digest those arguments 

and respond to their reasoning-- 

is not a movement at all. 

I have argued that a movement whose capitulation to the thin blood of "halts" and "better regulation" and "moratorium"--notions that appear to infuse its very bone marrow--is not only doomed to anemia and slow death--but to the pre-emption of its very purpose as a movement. 

Why would any industry ever accede to a ban when they know its leaders will settle for the withering diorama that's left of the state forest? When they know that we can be intimidated by as little as a request for a survey of our lands?

The gas industry has billions of dollars at stake--and all the immense power that goes with it. Yet we think standing on the steps of the capitol building in the middle of a workday will move them to reconsider.

The governor tosses off a crumb from the frack cake he will have and eat too, and we drop to our knees in thanks--all the while he signs more permits to poison us with his free hand.

When did our disposition become so servile and cloying?

We thought the enemy was the gas industry, but truly it is our own unwillingness to see that until we are willing to put our bodies by the thousands in front of the drill rigs and trucks, nothing is going to change.

Instead, we lie to ourselves and to our fellows--insisting to them that the next petition will matter, the next 10 am Tuesday protest, the next plea to the Gas Wolf Governor.

And then the harm continues. 

Truth is, we simply do not care enough.

Or we are too afraid to challenge the system 

that allows our employers to fire us 

for participating in our own lives as citizens.

Even worse, the essentially fascist state and its industry partners are more than accommodating of our current strategies because these strategies exhaust us, keep us where law enforcement can conveniently surveil us, and are reliably ineffectual. 

The movement in its current incarnation is a gift to law enforcement--especially since they get to pretend we are some sort of threat, and we get to pretend we're making headway.

But this is all a game. Same moves. Different day. 

All the while the systematic destruction of our air and water continues as the "energy sector" becomes more and more in control of every aspect of our lives.

The thing is--I wish I were wrong.

But this is what I have come to see. 

And I feel certain that no one will want to mount a counter-argument--not because there might not be one--but because we have little stomach for truth, preferring to lie to ourselves instead about how much we're accomplishing. 

The facts tell a very different story.

So long as we continue to invest our faith in a system of law rigged in its very origins and objectives against us--so long as we continue to appeal for remedy to that system even though the predictable outcomes remain the same--we will continue to see the same tragic results. 

And the fault is not the gas industry who simply acts like the consumption machine that it is.

The fault is ours.

We are so myopic and parochial in our vision 

that we cannot see that it's not fracking 

that's the crisis--

it's the system of laws that privilege the wealthy 

and the corporatized that creates us 

not as citizens but as subjects--

not as rights-bearing members 

of communities, 

but as labor, as consumer-- 

as disposable.

More drilling permits, more pollution, more deforestation, more property value loss, more explosions, more damaged streams, more cancer, more asthma, more birth defects, more neurological disease, more harm.

That is the legacy of subjects 

whose value is measured 

in the terms of production and commodities--

not intrinsic worth and not as life.

We are not merely sacrifice zones--we are  impediments that must be moved out of the way--and we routinely oblige.  

We evince this blind faith in a system that makes us subjects--but not citizens--every time we appeal to FERC, every time we seek remedy through the courts, every time we respect a "free speech" zone--every time we move just because we are told to move.

We are convinced of the very myth that law enforcement would have us believe--that if we do not obey the law, we are guilty of a violence.

We know unequivocally that we are governed 

by the threat of force and through intimidation--

but we cannot bring ourselves to 

challenge the system 

that denudes our communities 

and makes a mockery 

of our aspirations to democracy.

We also know that solidarity is forged out of experience--something for which the mere repetition of petitions and signs and press releases and newsletters and photo-ops cannot provide sufficient fire in the belly.

As long as we believe that the system will ultimately work, we will never be able to muster the collective courage to take a decisive stand against what is a fascist relationship between the government, law enforcement, the gas industry, and the burgeoning private security firms that make up organizations like the Marcellus Shale Operator's Crime Committee and its proliferating analogues.

And so long as our leaders seem more interested in celebrity-frack-alebrity--than in actually organizing an insurgency against a system that autonomically disenfranchises us all well beyond the drill bit and the pipelines, we will see at best the cosmetic change offered on occasion as a moratorium re-instatement, a pipeline relocation, a fine.

But only subjects are satiated by these stale crumbs, 

and a cosmetic fix is nothing more 

than a cover story.

Citizens demand more--not cake, mind you, but the far more filling bread of rights exercised and objectives won.

We cannot afford to lose--it is our existential conditions that are at stake. 

It is the existential conditions of our neighbors that are at stake.

Wendy

Mr. Luv Lizard liked Blueberries, but not Bananas

Despite the soft edges of his name, Mr. Luv Lizard was always a wild animal. 

Mr. Luv Lizard, Age 6, 2006
Photo wendy Lynne Lee

A Green Iguana, he came to live with me nearly 15 years ago, and was one of the most labor intensive, sometimes cranky-pants, animated, clever, and just plain physically strong of all my rescue critters. 



I loved him with the same commitment I love all my animals--but a wild animal is never ever anything like a pet. 

Indeed, a "pet" is a piece of property. 

I don't have pets; I have animals who, while they depend on me for their daily care, offer in return an entire world of irreplaceable good, of laughter, of consolation.

They are "my" rescues--but the truth is that they are my refuge.

Mr. Luv Lizard was no different. 

He ought to have lived his life in a tropical rain forest canopy--just as whales ought never to be made into entertainment, just as chimpanzees ought never to be made into surrogate children, just as my rescue parrots--Rosie and Taco--ought to be able to fly free of this room.

Rosie-the-Indian
Ringneck Parrot
Photo
Wendy Lynne Lee

Mr. Luv Lizard came in a little plastic box, three or four inches long. His appearance was attended by intensive research about how to properly care for an exothermic animal whose kin rarely survive beyond year one in captivity.

As National Geographic tells the story, 

Green, or common, iguanas are among the largest lizards in the Americas, averaging around 6.5 feet (2 meters) long and weighing about 11 pounds (5 kilograms).

They are also among the most popular reptile pets in the United States, despite being quite difficult to care for properly. In fact, most captive iguanas die within the first year, and many are either turned loose by their owners or given to reptile rescue groups.

Mr. Luv Lizard, Age 13, 2013
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

Mr. Luv Lizard didn't die. Instead, he went through five habitats, growing virtually exponentially for his first 11 years.

Getting the heat lamps, the rainy-foresty faux foliage, the food, the space, the sleeping platforms, the climbing branches right...

Truth is, you can't. 

But what love says is that you try. 

And try hard.

Mr. Luv Lizard liked blueberries, but not bananas. He liked Romaine lettuce--but not as much the collards he needed to be healthy (I treated him with Romaine mix for one day after three days of his healthy food). He loved his jar of lizard fruity treat, and his carrots, and cauliflower--but  brocoli? He just tossed that out of his habitat.

I know that "habitat" is a polite word for cage. 

Mr. Luv Lizard's last and biggest habitat was a bunk bed frame double wrapped in soft chicken fencing. It was butt-ugly, and essentially sewn onto the frame. It had undergone various repairs over the years as he got bigger in order to make it as much like that rain forest as possible.

But what Mr. Luv Lizard loved the most were birds.

They were his rain forest.

BIrd, 2006
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

This is "Bird." She was with me for years and years. Mr. Luv Lizard sat on top of her cage (she only went there at night to sleep), and would nap there for all of a warm Summer's afternoon. All he seemed to want was to be with Bird.

She was less sanguine about that arrangement.

Bird would squawk and berate him for dumping her seed dish with his swinging tail. He'd bob his head up and down, readjust, gander at the dumped seed bowl, and drift back to sleep.

When Bird died, Mr. Luv Lizard was quiet for long while--then Rosie and Taco and Quantum came to live in the study, and Mr. Luv Lizard started to grow again.

Quantum the Cockatiel
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

This is Quantum. She's a cockatiel who lives in a big fluffy wad of Kleenex behind my computer. Her cage is my study, and one of her perches was Mr. Luv Lizard's habitat where she'd teeter along its whole length, peering down with her mono-ocular gaze fixed on an animal just too interesting to ignore--but comfortingly far enough away. 

My study is not a room.

It's a world.

But, just like for Mr. Luv Lizard, it will be a long while before I can "grow again."

The first time Mr. Luv Lizard got sick was Christmas of 2010. Kidneys--they may be the most persuasive argument that there is no such thing as god we could hope to find. 

Getting a 4 foot exothermic animal who doesn't feel well to a herpetologist veterinarian 2 hours away is no easy task. It involves a 50 gallon aquarium, hot water bottles, frequent stops to fill the hot water bottles, over-heating the inside of the car in advance because it's Winter, and a lot of help. 

Could not be more grateful for the help.

The herpetologist gave him six months--and I learned how to get water soaked up with Tums into a critter who didn't like me very much right then. 

The whole scene must have looked ridiculous. Me, sitting cross-legged inside a wrapped bunk bed frame, cradling a sick iguana to prevent him from dehydrating, and to get essential calcium to those damnable kidneys.

It was another two weeks before he pooped.

But that was the most glorious poop I had ever seen. 

It was poop that meant his kidneys could function, that meant he might live beyond eleven. 

Mr. Luv Lizard, Age 13, 2013
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

I can't even tell you how happy this made me. Mr. Luv Lizard lived, and grew, and started bobbing his head up and down again to the "Sounds of the Rainforest" and "Ocean Waves" and "Mountain Streams" I'm always playing on my little study stereo.

He began to purr and lean onto my hand when I scratched him under his gills--just like he always had.

I watched his pooping regularity hawkishly.

So, the moment it seemed off--Thanksgiving 2014--I up-ed his calcium, moved the vaporizer closer to the habitat, bought an additional heat lamp, and added more UV. 

But truly the details of the rest of this story don't matter.

What matters is this: because there is no way to euthanize an animal like this without causing them pain, because causing them pain is unthinkable, my study became the smallest biggest place in the universe.

No amount of slurry (liquified nutrition) or pedialite, no relocation of his heat lamps, no recreation of his ancestral tropics could save him from his kidneys, from the injustice of great old age. 

Mr. Luv Lizard, early December, 2014
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

But on his last night, he still opened his eyes and knew me. 

I stroked his gills, and sang Over the Rainbow to him. 
I told him I loved him over and over. 

He purred.


I adjusted his emaciated body to make sure he was comfortable. 

I moved his heat lamps again to make sure he was warm. 

I rubbed some blueberries on his lips to moisten them. 

A nearly unmoving animal--could still lick his lips and taste sweetness. 

I put on his favorite music--Mountain Streams.

I told him I was sorry beyond words that I could neither save him nor end his life without pain.

And to be very clear--caring for this animal is nothing for which I deserve applause; it is that to which Mr. Luv Lizard had a right.

I love all of my animals. Every one is different; every one a unique individual.

Every one of them feels as though they've been with me forever.

I don't eat critters, or wear them. I regard their right to exist as equal to my own. I regard their suffering as momentous and as crushing as my own. I regard their capacity for joy as fine a thing as any human person's.

I will never have another iguana--and for that fact I will miss Mr. Luv Lizard all the more. 

Mother and baby, Oregon Zoo elephant cages
Photo Wendy Lynne Lee

Nonetheless, it is wrong to imprison wild animals. It matters little whether we're talking about lions or tigers or bears--or lizards or wild birds or elephants. 

A zoo is a prison, and however pretty we think we make it, a pretty prison is still a cage.

The best among us would prefer to never have seen a wild animal--knowing he or she lived out their lives in the ecologies to which their kind had adapted and flourished--than witness their diminished status behind bars or electric fences or trenches.

Mr. Luv Lizard was a noble, fierce wild animal.

And for fifteen years, he lived three feet from me while I graded exams, corrected my students' grammar, thought about ideas, wrote a blog, drafted philosophy papers, cropped photographs, sipped coffee, shooed Quantum off my keyboard, adjusted the stereo volume, got up to let out my dogs, change Lizard's water, his poo-paper, his food bowl.

And in that three feet stood a silent communion.

Good night my scaley-kitty prince.

I love you. I love you immensely. 

Wendy

A Fireside Chat Between Governors: Andrew Cuomo Instructs Pennsylvania's New Tom About the Value of Human Rights

Winter Vista, Adirondacks, New York State
Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

*UPDATE* State Impact Interview: http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/12/18/wolf-new-yorks-fracking-ban-is-unfortunate/

What's most striking about Pennsylvania Governor Elect Wolf's claim in a State Impact interview is that Governor Cuomo's decision to ban HVHF in New York State is "unfortunate" is Wolf's admission that he "wants to have his cake and eat it too," effectively acknowledging that Pennsylvania will not be able to protect the health of its citizens and promote the objectives of the carbon extraction industry. After all, when we use that language--have your cake and eat it too--what we generally mean is that you can't. 

What Wolf makes clear is that "having his cake" is "protecting" the Delaware River Basin--the stronghold of his Democrat voting base--while continuing the sacrifice of the Susquehanna River Basin--"eating it too." The difference between these two? Socio-Economic status--or to put it more plainly: the Susquehanna River Basin is home to poorer folks--and that makes them more dispensable. 

No doubt, the governor would deny this elitism--but he can't.

The very same reasoning applies to the state parks and forests: preserve (what's left) of the "special places" of those who have the money and the leisure to enjoy them; make them into dioramas that a few folks can stroll through to convince themselves that we did something. Then, allow pipeline companies like Williams to convert a profit venture for LNG export like the Atlantic Sunrise into a "public utility" for the purposes of seizure via eminent domain for the rest of us--destroying our property values and despoiling our land and water.

As for the creation of a health registry: our response should be nothing but disdainful incredulity. What is the purpose of providing a registry of more instances of contaminated wells and streams, blow-outs, asthma, cancer other than to insure that future historians shake their head is disgust at our greed? What good will it do us to know that we've been poisoned when all we can do is decry it--but not put an end to the assault?

How many of the sick, dying, dead does Wolf need to see before he decides that the New York ban isn't "unfortunate"?

Do we really have any reason to trust Wolf--given the $273,000 he took in gas-soaked campaign donations--including money from IREX whose mission it is to gut the Clean Air Act--to make Department of Health (DOH) complaints concerning frack infrastructure "transparent"?

Nope:

(1) The item on the top of Wolf's wish list is an extraction tax that will institutionalize the industry sewing it right into the tax base--making the gas thugs impossible--ironically--to extract, and making regulation even less likely since less oversight means more revenue.

(2) Wolf says in the State Impact interview that he's directing his transition team to review the New York Health Report. That, we have to say, would be laughable did it not portend ongoing tragedy. The Wolf transition team is an all-star cast right out of the gas industry (http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-big-gas-wolf-his-new-pack-of.html).

The only thing more "unfortunate" than Governor Elect Wolf's willful acts of blindness are the activists who still try to convince the rest of us that he can be persuaded to change his mind. 

Activist: folks who wring their fists, hold up signs, create petitions demanding change--and then go home and tell each other they did the best they could having accomplished little more than the consumptive waste of precious time and energy.

Insurgent: what we need much more of.

Wolf depends on our remaining activists.
***********************************************************
Here's the original:

12.17.14: Today New York Governor Cuomo announces that there will be no HVHF--High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing--in New York State.

As the New York Times reports:

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration announced on Wednesday that it would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State because of concerns over health risks, ending years of uncertainty over the controversial method of natural gas extraction.

State officials concluded that fracking, as the method is known, could contaminate the air and water and pose inestimable dangers to public health. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/nyregion/cuomo-to-ban-fracking-in-new-york-state-citing-health-risks.html?_r=1).

The hero of the day was acting state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker:

In a presentation at the cabinet meeting, the acting state health commissioner, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, said the examination had found “significant public health risks” associated with fracking.

Holding up scientific studies to animate his arguments, Dr. Zucker listed concerns about water contamination and air pollution, and said there was insufficient scientific evidence to affirm the long-term safety of fracking.

Dr. Zucker said his review boiled down to a simple question: Would he want to live in a community that allowed fracking?

He said the answer was no. 

Zucker said. “The potential risks are too great. In fact, they are not even fully known.”

And that was that. As Cuomo put it himself, "it wasn't really his decision." No fracking in New York--possibly ever.

There's much to celebrate here, but first a couple of caveats:

First, this does not mean that the fight over Crestwood's bid to use Lake Seneca for LPG storage--at the immense risk to health, road safety and ecological integrity--is over at Watkin's Glen. Indeed, the struggle to preserve this magnificent chunk of the Finger Lakes may even intensify as Crestwood doubles down to make sure it's own dirty gambit is not threatened by the governor's decision. At 100 arrests for civil disobedience and counting, we have much to learn from these brave folks--teachers, doctors, professors,

Protest at Crestwood facility gates
10.24.14. Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

wine-makers, retired folks, working people, students.

Second, Cuomo's decision does not mean that New York doesn't remain home to all manner of other frack-related infrastructure--including their own pipeline fights, sand production, etc. Indeed, that's what Crestwood is no doubt banking on--ban or no ban. So--we want to be clear about what exactly we're celebrating--but, we do and must celebrate every win.

Just as a reminder of that second point, here's a photograph from a protest at Horseheads--a frack sand transport depot:

Protest Horseheads, NY, late Summer 2012
Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Imagine, if you will, a conversation--a Winter's eve fireside chat--between Governor Cuomo and Governor elect Wolf over the New York fracking ban. Imagine especially in light of the following:

1. No health or safety study of any kind preceded the Pennsylvania fracking boom. There were no gatekeepers, no one watching out for the health and welfare of the state's citizens, no one to defend the state parks, game lands, mobile home communities, your private property. No one with any sort of power from either party raised a single objection to the invasion of the gas companies. Before we knew what sort of anvil had fallen on our heads, they were already drilling out our brains.

2. With the election of Governor Corbett was game-on. In the name of the "free market," energy independence," and "national security, it became essentially unpatriotic to object to "drill, baby, drill." A nascent and fairly disheveled anti-fracking movement was beginning to take shape--but we could not get clear on a message, and we just didn't seem to get the fundamental difference between regulation--that gives the green light to the gas industries--and demanding a ban--telling the gassers to go take a hike. Still don't. Even as the anecdotal but horrifying evidence begins to pile up--243 established reports of contaminated wells, the list of the harmed, an uptick in traffic accidents near well pads, rashes, asthma, etc. etc., the Pennsylvania movement just can't seem to get up its collective Chutzpah to decry the corporatist state's complete abandonment of its duties to clean air and water. What role a culture of post-traumatic resignation due to the wholesale destruction by the coal industry and before that the loggers, I don't know. But what I do know is that we were raped by this industry before we knew what was happening, and we just did not get up and really fight. And, while I respect very much my allies and friends who caution me about about the use of the word "rape," I am going to keep it because it signals the profound and irrecoverable wrong done to us by this industry. Just as the rapist deprives his victim of the integrity of her body (something I know firsthand), so too the gas industry deprives living things the integrity of that body upon whom we all depend--that of the earth, its soil, water and air.

3. New York instituted a moratorium before the first frackers could set foot on the soil of the Empire State citing the unknown potentially hazardous effects on human health. This set the wheels in motion for (a) a populist movement that still burns bright on the renewable fuel called hope--a fact whose import cannot be overestimated--and (b) the massive and comprehensive survey of the studies Dr. Zucker cites in his report to Governor Cuomo, a report that is every bit as relevant to Pennsylvania, and Colorado, and Ohio, and Michigan, and Wyoming, and Texas as it is to New York.

4. Despite a number of angst-ridden iterations of "Will the New York moratorium hold?" it did.

5. Hell-bent on electing some other "Tom," Pennsylvanians elected Tom Wolf, a Democrat whose affection for the gas not only rivals outgoing governor Tom Corbett's, but will potentially out-do it since, if Wolf gets his way with an extraction tax, the industry will become entrenched in the state's tax base. Education will become dependent on it 'til the boom goes bust, and then the industry will do what it was always going to do: leave. Leave a wasteland that will make the border between New York and Pennsylvania seem like that between a corpse and a living human being; and in many ways, that will be literally true. Wolf's environmental transition team reads like the board of directors of any Big Gas company, as I documented here: http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-big-gas-wolf-his-new-pack-of.html. While New Yorkers still stand a chance of getting to sip fabulous Chardonnays and watch the sunset on their gorgeous Finger Lakes, Pennsylvanians will be lamenting their contaminated  wells, their loss of property value, and the fact that they didn't stand up and take a principled stand--even if that meant re-enacting a scene from Selma Alabama in the 1960s. 

6. Lastly, the New York ban could actually portend an uptick in the urgency of gettin' the gas outta the ground in Pennsylvania. As it sinks into the industry that some folks--at least New Yorkers--may be catching onto the fact that this drilling infrastructure in incompatible with life, they'll want to get their frack on at an even more accelerated pace. Indeed, Wolf wasted no time responding to Cuomo's decision. As reported by PoliticsPA: 

“Governor-elect Wolf opposes a ban, and he will work hard to make sure the process is safe,” responded Jeffrey Sheridan, Press Secretary for Wolf’s transition team.

“Pennsylvania’s natural resources should help the commonwealth become an energy leader, including renewable energy and energy efficiency, as well as a magnet for investment and job creation,” he continued. “Governor-elect Wolf’s priority is to ensure that Pennsylvania is an energy leader with all Pennsylvanians sharing in the prosperity. http://www.politicspa.com/pa-gov-wolf-reiterates-support-for-fracking-after-ny-ban/62505/

As I've argued elsewhere, this "have your cake and eat it too" strategy spells ecological doom for Pennsylvania since--as is now strengthened considerably by Zucker's findings--there is no safe HVHF. Add to that the pressure to regulate less in order to generate even more revue towards Wolf's second term election, that means Pennsylvanians may well be in for, even less oversight--even less time for PA-Citizens to get their act together for a collective and definitive--arrest me if you must--NO MORE.

So--what would this fireside chat look like?

Cuomo: My gosh--what a day I had! Settling that fracking business once and for all. Thank goodness Zucker is so on his game. Didn't really leave me any choice, and that's fine by me.

Wolf: Well, Andrew, that's all very nice for you, but I have to fix the mess my predecessor made cutting funding to education. After all, that's what we Dems do.

Cuomo: I hear you brother, but you know, some of those science studies really are pretty condemning. Don't you PA folks have some article attached to your Constitution about the right to clean air and water?

Wolf: Yes, yes--but, Andrew, the Frackity Mc'Frack horse is already out of the barn! We're at 8200 wells and counting our way to 400,000. Plus, the only "movement" against the industry we really have in PA doesn't actually do much of anything but stand on the steps of the Capitol occasionally--blocking access to the lunch cart down the street. They "demand," we yawn. We tell them to head on home. A few occasionally give us the opportunity to show off our state police, and heck, we contract out to surveil the rest. These folks are pesky--but harmless. Gosh Darnit if they didn't all vote for me anyways! And they'll do it again. Oh, ummm, that's article 27 you're talking about, I think. I'll have to check with my transition team--but I've got that covered. 

Cuomo: How so, Tom?

Wolf: Well, I'm not really sure--but I've got this crack environmental transition team straight from the gas industry, and they're going to tell me everything I need to know. Some of them--like Denice Brinley--have real government experience that they took with them right to the industry, so I'm sure they'll be helpful. 

Cuomo: Wow! Man, if I had let that study of the health effects from HVHF be done by anyone with any gas-related connections, they'd have run me right out of Dodge! 

Wolf: Yeah, well here in the Texas of the East, folks are very patriotic. Our country's energy independence and national security come first! And that means way before other "rights" like property rights, freedom of expression rights, Article 27 rights--hey, we can't let rights get in the way of our funding for education!

Cuomo: But... Tom, isn't that a little self-defeating? I mean, after all, doesn't Pennsylvania want citizens who are educated--so as to exercise their rights in smart sorts of ways?

Wolf:  Nah.

Cuomo: Well, ummm, ok. You know, we have the same battles going on over a lot of this stuff--like pipeline infrastructure--in New York that you have in PA--but we get it that the pipelines aren't really about energy independence and national security. That gas is headed right for LNG export facilities--you know that, right? Do Pennsylvanians get that?

Wolf: Oh, sure they do! We all know that. There are some very determined citizens here in PA working tirelessly to get township supervisors to vote for ordinances that would keep out, well, the whole nasty business.

Cuomo: So....you do see it as a "nasty business"?

Wolf: Well, sure it is--but what was I supposed to do? I inherited the industry from that other Tom. If I get my way, it's a cash cow!

Cuomo: Maybe, Tom--but are your Republicans really gonna let you have an extraction tax?

 Wolf: I doubt it--but hey we're politicians, right? It's not about what we're really gonna do; it's just about what we say we're gonna do--like make fracking safe. Plus....I think the science must just be wrong. That Zucker fella--he must be paid by some lefty health think tank.

Cuomo: Uh, well, no. Zucker's a medical doctor with a sterling reputation, and that report, well, here, you can read its 184 pages for yourself. http://media.syracuse.com/news/other/2014/12/17/NYS%20%20DOH%20fracking%20health%20report.pdf

Wolf: Nah. 

Cuomo: Well, OK. Does it worry you that "cashing in" could mean that the very students you'd use the money to educate could be facing frack-related disease before they can cash out their diplomas to the state's advantage? has anyone ever suggested to you that you're, as it were, torching the furniture to heat the house?

Wolf: Oh, come now, Andrew, that's a bit on the side of hyperbole, isn't it? I'm only going to let some folk's furniture burn--not everyone's.

Cuomo: Ummm, well, who get's to be the lucky sacrifice zone?

Wolf: The folks who already are! Folks who aren't likely to put up all that much of a fuss, who--like your Southern Tier people--would be happy to get a few bucks in royalties.

Cuomo: But Tom, a good number of our Southern Tier folks are sitting in jail right now for protesting Crestwood's plan to build an LNG storage facility on Lake Seneca.

Wolf: Yeah--but you don't actually think that will make a difference, do you?

Cuomo: Ummmm, well, it was the people who demanded a moratorium until a health study could be performed.

Wolf: What? You listen to your people?

Cuomo: Well, ummmm, yeah, actually, I do. It's uncomfortable to be sure, but it seems to be part of the governor's job description. 

Wolf: Nah.

And on this chat might go. The point, however, I think is this:

New York's ban certainly has consequences for Pennsylvanians. But if we allow the governor elect to decide those consequences, we will see no change, no respite from the ongoing danger to our own health, properties, ecologies. Indeed, wasting time appealing to Wolf--who has made his position crystal clear in his transition team selections--is a waste. 

We have a primo opportunity to follow the lead of Watkin's Glen, and execute a strategy that in exemplifying courage will generate more courage. 

But, as I have said a thousand times, it's not going to change until we are prepared to put our bodies on the line. 

And that's more true now than ever. 

Why? Because the industry's already here--a point the significance of which cannot be overstated.

The drill pads, the pipelines, the compressor stations, etc are not just zits on the PA landscape; they're cancerous lesions scared into every hillside and field, every river and stream in one way or another. 

Getting the gas thugs out is more like having chemotherapy than a tidy surgical wart removal.

To extend the metaphor--it's as if New York read the Surgeon General's warning before they started smoking--and decided it wasn't worth the risk. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, went right our and bought a pack of unfiltered Camels as soon as they were on the market. And when folks started saying "Hey! That may be really bad for you!" Pennsylvanians launched into the usual litany of excuses:

"I can quit whenever I want!"

"The Surgeon general is lying!"

"Yeah, they're bad, but so's heroin!"

This, of course, no more describes all Pennsylvanians than it does all New Yorkers--as any cursory perusal of Energy in Depth's favorite child Vic Furman will attest.

Be all that as it may, the conversation between Cuomo and Wolf could have been very different:

  

Cuomo: Hey, Tom, we're banning fracking in New York effective today. The risk is just too great, and we're gonna pout our energies into renewables and conservation here in the Empire State.

Wolf: You know, Andrew, you're right. This fracking business is way too risky. I see that now. Time for me to change course for the sake of future Pennsylvanians.

Cuomo: The thing that really got me was when Dr. Zucker said he wouldn't want his kid playing next to a drilling operation. Yup--that did it.

Wolf: Damn straight--and too many PA kids have already suffered the consequences of my predecessors mistakes. Not on my watch. How about we do a joint press release that will rock the socks off those dang Republicans and their Democrat pals? 

Cuomo: What did you have in mind, Tom?

Wolf: Fracking stops in Pennsylvania right now. Not just permits in the offing--but all operations--they'll just have to pack up and head on home to Texas.

Cuomo: You know, you might get sued.

Wolf: Yup--I might. And I might not get re-elected. But it's high time we said that the Keystone State was no longer up for becoming a global extraction colony, don't you think?

Cuomo: Just one last question, then--who do we call first?

I don't, for what it's worth, think the difference between Cuomo and Wolf is anything as exotic as moral fortitude. After all, the real hero of Cuomo's story isn't Cuomo--it's Zucker. And since we know this fact--Wolf and Cuomo are both politicians whose party affiliations don't really matter all that much--isn't it time we simply do for ourselves what the New York health study has done for New Yorkers? 

Namely, take back our right to clean air and water?

Not ask nicely not to be forfeited to the gassers and the pipeliners.

Not make vacuous demands at our rallies not to be horse-traded for gas company profits.

Not send out one or two activists to be arrested as a show of our solidarity.

Not draft another petition.

Not write another letter pleading to be treated like human beings

Nope--none of that's gonna work.

Time to take the stand that we deserve what New Yorkers get just by living a bit North:

Human. Rights. 

I have many times compared what this movement could be to the Civil Rights movement of the American 1960s.  I have reflected a good deal on the well-intended criticism that, for example, there can never be another Selma, Alabama. And of course, there can't. 

But what there can and must be is the willingness to be inspired by Selma, Alabama--to see that what we're struggling for in the 21st century is precisely the future that was and remains at stake in the 1960s. I don't pretend for a moment to comprehend racial discrimination. But I do comprehend discrimination with respect to sex and sexual orientation. And I do know what is at stake here. In the face of climate change--it's everything.

So, I will hold onto this comparison.

This is about human rights on a global scale.

This is about the rights of species and their ecologies to exist and develop along their own evolutionary trajectories.

This is about the future--because "sustainable" just ain't enough.

I don't know what Andrew Cuomo understands or doesn't. I do know that in ignoring the New York health report Tom Wolf is nothing but a mercenary politician whose fortunes depend on a system corrupt to its core and whose corruption he has already abetted. 

We need to treat him as naught but a symptom of that. 

Wendy Lynne Lee