Some Evenings are Unforgettable, or: Property is not Land--and Land is what Matters.

On the way to Chihuahua, Mexico, 10.15. Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

There are some evenings--some days too--that are simply unforgettable. Saturday, October 3rd, 2015 was one of these. 

First, Friday, October 2nd: I recognized my fine friend and ally, David--even tough we'd never met in person--when he pulled up in front of the El Paso, Texas Airport in a well-utilized truck with Mexican plates. The flight had been arranged fairly hastily, and I was already counting the hours before my class the following Monday afternoon at 5PM.

But all of this--the flight, the class, the country--soon gave way to that delightful and all too rare gift called conversation, the kind we have with old friends, even the ones whose faces are new to us. Wending our way through the gorgeous spareness of Chihuahua, Mexico's  highland desert is bounded by the endless Sierra Madre, and is one of the most biologically diverse desert eco-regions on the planet (http://www.worldwildlife.org/ecoregions/na1303). 

It's also among the most endangered by a host of industries flying the flags of NAFTA's free trade beneficiaries--and most recently by Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos) whose intention is to begin fracking despite what are now well-established hazards to the ecologies, the habitats, the communities and the peoples whose voices they routinely ignore. 

With an estimated 600 Trillion cubic feet of "recoverable" shale gas, the only wonder is why we haven't seen more gas rigs already (https://ejatlas.org/conflict/resistance-to-fracking-in-chihuahua-mexico).

But this is because Pemex and its corporate colleagues are going to have a real fight on their hands.

In Veracruz they already do.

Crossing the border into Mexico, David and I were on our way to the city Chihuahua, Chihuahua for the Foro Binacional: En defensa del desierto y el agua. No al fracking, where I was scheduled to speak to an audience of activists, insurgents, organizers, indigenous people all gathered to discuss, strategize, share ideas, and work out conflicts in the interest--I soon came to understand--no so much of protecting property, but of defending land.

Property--that is a thing owned whose value can be commodified as the price paid to transform it into the primary instrument of capital; it is the space of exchange and labor, a site for the creation of wealth and the disposal of waste. 

Land--that is the soil which makes possible the place, the life, the ancestral sensibilities, the culture of long-rooted human and nonhuman communities whose own ebb and flow reflect the living ecologies to which they pay tribute.

Photo, Chihuahua, Wendy Lynne Lee, 10.15.

Property is not land, and land is not property. 

Yet it's "property" that continues to dominate the discourse of too many American anti-fracking activists who, even when they advocate for environmental protections for state parks seem to think more in the horse-trading terms of one mile set-backs, negotiated subsurface agreements, and the salvage of wood lots surrounded by well pads, than in terms of the organic, the historical, the aesthetic, or the experienced.  

We seem to think only in terms of surfaces, parcels, and right of ways-- when there is far more to be said about ways of life whose peoples know the earth by its very texture and smell.

I don't know--would not pretend to know--what might have been on the mind of one young indigenous woman who smiled at me from across what seemed centuries of culture and tradition at the Foro Nacional. Unmistakable, however, was her pondering sober gaze from behind a scarf whose bright colors bespoke a world as old as it was rich and living, a world of land.

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee

Still, I knew her to have travelled a long ways with her husband and baby because she understood intimately--no doubt in her very blood--the threat Pemex and its multinational analogues pose to her rootedness of place in the world of her family, her plants, her animals, her life. 

By the time I had finished what offering I had to make to Foro Nacional, by the time I had struggled through countless conversations outside an auditorium alive with strategy, planning, and new ideas, I had come to realize that Socrates really was right when he asks us in The Apology for what we're willing to give up our lives.

None give up their lives for mere property.

We give up our lives for land.

So, when an evening riotous with dancing and loud music and revelry and good beer and laughter and hugging and hope--all in language I cannot speak, but understood just as well in that beautiful Mexican night--finally drew to a close...when the morning came and my friend David made sure I was safely on a gray bus through a gray city on a gray road...I knew that I had learned something.

And that I would keep it.

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What follows is a presentation I am very honored to be able to give October 3rd, In Chihuahua, Mexico, at the Foro binacional: 

“En defensa del desierto y el agua. No al fracking." 

The conference description is as follows:

"Chihuahua vs fracking, la Alianza Mexicana contra el Fracking y la Fundación Heinrich Böll convocan al foro donde especialistas, organizaciones y comunidades afectadas por la fractura hidráulica o fracking y por gasoductos informarán con datos científicos y experiencias sobre las consecuencias que esta práctica conlleva."

The paper itself, part personal reflection from the Pennsylvania shalefields, part factual survey of immediate destruction and likely future impacts, and part analysis of continuing fossil fuel extraction in light of climate change, stems from my current book project: "Eco-Nihilism: The Philosophical Geopolitics of the Climate Change Apocalypse," available, I hope in later 2016, Lexington Press.

From Activism to Insurgency:

Civil Disobedience is an Act of Self-Defense

Wendy Lynne Lee

Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania

Presentation and Photographs: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wendylynnelee/albums/72157659193602785

https://www.academia.edu/16323726/From_Activism_to_Insurgency_Civil_Disobedience_is_an_Act_of_Self-Defense

I remember a time when I’d take my daughter, Carley, on meandering Sunday morning drives through the thousands shades of green that color the hills and valleys, the farms and forests of rural Pennsylvania. I’d grown up in the Southwest United States amidst riotous transformations from desert pinks to shimmering grasslands to the indigo of the Rockies at night, but I’d also grown to love the explosions of rust-red, Marigold-yellow, and pumpkin, the incredible show that Autumn in the Northeast U.S. puts on every year. Even though the Granite of the Colorado Rockies had to make way for ancient Appalachian Basin shale beds, geology has long signified something permanent, historical, and all-but-immutable for me; it had been a source of both wonder and consolation—at least until the drill rigs, sand cans, waste water tankers, armies of roust-abouts, engineers, and project managers showed up in their shiny white trucks with their Texas and Oklahoma plates.

It’s hard to exaggerate the extent to which Pennsylvanians were caught off guard by the invasion of gas companies like Cabot, Chesapeake, XTO, Range Resources, or “Wildcatters” with catchy names like Inflection or Penneco. It felt like a military offensive; only instead of tanks and armored personnel carriers, we watched tractor-trailers carrying gigantic drill bits, immense engines and turbines, huge silica-conveyors, and literally thousands of white trucks with diamond plate boxes full of chemicals and explosives rambling down two lane country roads, ripping them up from stem to stern along the way to acres and acres of flattened mountain top—“pads” converted from forest and wildlife habitat into parking lots for the monstrous machinery of gas production.

The Marcellus drilling boom began in earnest in 2005—but was no doubt on the drawing boards of the big oil and gas companies years earlier spurred on by weak environmental regulations, a long history of resource liquidation, pollution, corporate abrogation of responsibility, and a culture of resignation to political turpitude and regulatory neglect.  The Marcellus is the fourth largest shale play in the U.S. as of 2012 (http://www.usasymposium.com/bakken/docs/Clover Global Solutions,LP - The Seven Major US Shale Plays.pdf), and is likely to move up that list once the hundreds of miles of new or upgraded transmission and gathering pipeline are completed along with compressor facilities and export depots. As reported by the Pipeline and Gas Journal as far back as 2011:

More than half of the interstate natural-gas pipeline projects proposed to federal energy regulators since early 2010 involve Pennsylvania — at a cost estimated at more than $2 billion, the Associated Press reported on Aug. 15. That means hundreds of new miles of transmission and gathering lines as part of the network that extends through Pennsylvania and neighboring states, as well as dozens of new or upgraded compression stations. (http://www.pipelineandgasjournal.com/pennsylvania-new-hub-pipeline-work)

It’s an easy thing to tell you what you already know—horizontal, slickwater hydraulic fracturing—fracking—is bad. According to Global Witness, environmental activists in Latin America and Southeast Asia in have taken the lead in bringing the public’s attention to the serious environmental, wildlife habitat destruction, and human health issues associated with what restoration ecologist Kevin Heatley has called “dispersed industrialization,” namely, an industrializing process unconfined to a particular location of manufacture, but instead dispersed throughout wide regions of extraction, processing, and transport. With at least forty documented cases of environmental activists murdered in Mexico from 2002-2012, and more than 908 worldwide, we all know how that the stakes are high. You know it; the oil and gas industry knows it; the politicians and policy-makers know it. Indeed, the only stakes higher than the prospect of billions of petrodollars filling the pockets of some of the world’s most mercenary and ruthless corporations are the existential conditions of the planet itself.

What I want to make sure I impress on you, however, is that although the risks you’ve taken to expose this criminal enterprise are tremendous, they’re of equally tremendous value. Fact is, I wish I could get my own fellow Americans to take this crisis as seriously as you do, as did 448 murdered Brazilians, 109 Hondurans, and 67 Phillippines, among others.  The stakes really are that high. Defined narrowly, hydraulic fracturing

is the process of drilling down into the earth before a high-pressure water mixture is directed at the rock to release the gas inside. Water, sand and chemicals are injected into the rock at high pressure which allows the gas to flow out to the head of the well. The process is carried out vertically or, more commonly, by drilling horizontally to the rock layer. The process can create new pathways to release gas or can be used to extend existing channels. (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-14432401).

 But that’s only a tiny sliver of the story. Fact is, once you account for the full scale of environmental, health and community cost you realize that “fracking” is just shorthand for a process of industrialization that—since 2005 and 500,000 active natural gas wells in the U.S. alone—is responsible for

·      The damage or destruction of at least 360,000 acres of land. 

·      The permanent contamination of at least 250 billion gallons of water. (enough water to supply 20,591,781 people for a year)

·      The injection of at least 2 billion gallons of chemicals, many of them carcinogens, deep into the ground. 

·      The emission of 450 tons of air pollution. 

·      The emission of at least 280 million gallons of wastewater, a substantial portion of it radioactive.  

·      4000 documented cases of contaminated ground water, and 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide or methane emissions from completed wells.

The amounts vary widely, but anywhere from 2 to 16 million gallons of water per frack are necessary to the drilling process according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). In Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale play, the typical number of gallons is 4.5 million/ (http://www.usgs.gov/faq/categories/10132/3824), requiring 400 tanker trucks, often idling, emitting diesel fumes (http://www.dangersoffracking.com/). According to one university study,

[t]he large fleets of diesel trucks…required to support the fracking process significantly increase ground level ozone and particulate matter as well as the risk of traffic accidents. Ground level ozone is a potent pulmonary irritant responsible for reduced pulmonary function and the exacerbation of asthma and emphysema.  Elevations in particulate matter are responsible for an increased incidence of asthma, cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cancer. (http://emba.villanova.edu/content/dam/villanova/sustainability/McD-LFrackingEnvironmentHealth.pdf).

Eack frack on average requires 40,000 gallons of chemicals to “stimulate” the well. These include benzene, lead, uranium, mercury, hydrochloric acid, formaldehyde, ethylene glycol, among a host of other carcinogens, toxins, and neurotoxins.

Methane—a potent greenhouse gas—leaches from the fissures produced by chemically induced explosions intended to release the gas. As of 2013 there were over 1000 documented cases of drinking well water contamination in the U.S. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this is a dangerous business, especially when you consider that a well can be fracked up to 18 times, and that less than half the “produced” waste-water is recovered (http://www.dangersoffracking.com/). No one really knows where exactly the rest of it goes, and the industry not only ignores this issue, but once the wells are sealed and the site “restored,” the company packs up and leaves. It’s important to note that “restored” means little more than planting a cosmetic layer of grass, and that “pack up and leave” is typically followed by significant economic hardship for communities whose ancillary businesses—hotels, restaurants, and taverns—have become dependent on the dollars spent by gas-workers imported from Texas, Oklahoma, or Louisianna—and I haven’t even addressed the increase, ranging from chemical to mechanical—of exposure to hazards affecting gas industry workers. We could also talk for a good while about the uptick in crimes associated with alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual assault, and sexually transmitted disease in communities that host gas-related “man camps” (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/inside-frackings-man-camps-where-sex-drugs-and-gonorrhea-run-rampant), the many regions across the U.S. who’ve experienced a surge of drilling and/or waste-water injection well related earthquakes, and the community division that results from pressures on hospital emergency services resulting from all three of these (http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/Social_Costs_of_Fracking.pdf). Earthquakes eported in Texas and Oklahoma, along with similar reports from regions with scant history of seismic activity like Ohio, Colorado, and California have not to date produced documented fatalities, but what experts suggest is that smaller quakes are likely to be followed by larger ones. The point, of course, is that any and all of these issues characterize “fracking” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/14/fracking-earthquake_n_5585892.html).

But even these facts represent only a fraction of the real and potential future hazards associated with fracking—especially in light of extremely poor reporting by an industry left largely to police itself, the illegal dumping of waste fluids and other hazardous materials well beyond the documented cases, the unknown hazards associated with the combined effects of chemical interactions in frack waste water left at the drill site, and the effects of the massive use of biocides in the drilling process for human and nonhuman species.  Benzene alone is associated with rashes, severe nose-bleeds, dizziness, difficulty breathing, gastrointestinal distress, vomiting, and headache, and fatigue (http://emba.villanova.edu/content/dam/villanova/sustainability/McD-LFrackingEnvironmentHealth.pdf). One scientist at Villanova University estimates that “[o]f the more than 350 [chemicals used in fracking] that were investigated further, 75% were found to potentially affect the respiratory and gastrointestinal systems, the liver, and various sensory organs. Moreover, more than half of these chemicals could affect the brain and nervous system” (http://emba.villanova.edu/content/dam/villanova/sustainability/McD-LFrackingEnvironmentHealth.pdf).

The only really relevant questions, then, about fracking are what can be done about it beyond hand wringing and bewailing the fates of our children, and I’d argue that this latter—the fates of our children—invests us with an incorrigible moral duty not merely to inform ourselves of the facts, but to work in concert with others—locally, regionally, and globally—to agitate for the only kind of enduring change that will matter: an end to the domination of the multinationals and their analogues in government whose systemic exploitation of our resources, our labor, and our communities leaves us with a hundred choices of catsup at Walmart and a wasteland where once there was a mountain, a desert, a river, a vista. The continuation of fossil fuel production will leave our ecologies desolate, our health deteriorated, and our hope potentially damaged beyond repair. We can’t let this happen. What this means is that we too must change from insensible consumers to informed citizens, from fearfully short-sighted to ferociously future-oriented. I know that many of you have already undergone that transformation.

Equipped with some experience as an activist for women’s civil rights, nonhuman animal rights, and environmental preservation, I came to the anti-fracking movement with high hopes that, organized, vocal, and persistent, a fledgling movement would be able to make our elected representatives see and hear what was happening on the farms, the roads, in the state parks and the towns of rural Pennsylvania. I organized protests, I participated in occupations, I took literally thousands of pictures of frack pads, well-heads, pipeline cuts, compressor construction, forest liquidation, truck traffic, polluted streams, chain link fence barriers—and angry activists all over the state. I made these widely available through social media. I gave speeches beseeching my representatives to act on behalf of the constituents that elected them. I delivered carefully researched commentary to the FERC—the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. I wrote letters, went to countless hearings, and signed petitions. I wrote an incendiary blog dissecting the industry as the reckless profiteering Behemoth it is. I gave interviews to Mother Jones, National Public Radio, Democracy Now, American Prospect, and Alex Chadwick’s BURN, among others. I’ve been investigated by the state police and the FBI Eco-Terrorism Task Force. My phone’s been tapped and my house vandalized, my dogs let out the gate of my modest quarter acre. This was not fun.

I learned some very valuable lessons—that’s indeed, the last thing I hope you’ll take away today. They’re pretty straightforward, and I now regard them as crucial not only to ending the domination of the oil and gas industry, but to making possible a future worth the immense sacrifice that will be required to realize it:

·      First, in all likelihood, the agencies charged with the power and responsibility to protect our water, air, and soil are either corrupt, incompetent, impotent or all three. Appealing to them in hopes that they’ll act on our behalf may assuage our conscience, but it will not put an end to the liquidation of our ecologies and communities. The naïve belief, moreover, that environmental and labor law is drafted to protect and promote our interests needs to be scrapped. Nothing could make these facts clearer than NAFTA and now TPP.

·      Second, all the petitions, letters, blogs, speeches, comments, hearings, etc, in the world are for naught if we do not become a massive, global movement of insurgents united around a single uncompromising and unwavering message: all forms of unconventional oil and gas extraction must stop. They must stop now, and they must stop entirely. We must demand equally uncompromising action on climate change and the recognition that virtually all of the planet’s current misfortunes—including the migrations of refugees, poverty and starvation, the emergence of more virulent disease and disease vectors, terrorism, species extinction, international and internecine war, and the perilous loss of clean water—have as their foundation the deterioration of our environmental conditions. Environmental integrity is the only soil in which justice can grow to maturity; it is the only ground in which just institutions can become rooted and enduring.

·      Third, although we’re routinely fear-mongered into believing that acts of civil disobedience are inherently violent in virtue of their violation of the law, the fact of the matter is that this is a falsehood intended to intimidate and silence us. Indeed, we must become more willing than ever to absorb the pepper-spray, the baton blows, the verbal assaults and the bullets of governments who deploy law enforcement to insure the uninterrupted flow of petroleum and petro-dollars into the bank accounts of its corporate benefactors. Like those of the American Civil Rights Movement, our actions must be timely, well-planned, creative, loud, and enduring. But they must be more. They must be global in their scope, their inclusion of marginalized voices, and in their objectives. They must take the rights of communities seriously—but not at the forfeiture of organizing across borders—geographical or ideological. Our insurgency must, I think, take as its galvanizing point of departure the clear understanding that an industry willing to extract profits—quite literally—from the bone marrow of the planet at the direct expense of its capacity to support life is essentially nihilistic. Our concerted and relentless protest is thus an act of self-defense.

·      Lastly, unlike many in the Pennsylvania anti-fracking movement, we must not give up hope. This “giving up” come in at least three varieties:

o   The first is that of the “fracktivist” who satisfies her or himself that signing the next petition will be sufficient to make a difference. They know better, but insofar as denial is a form of resignation, such “activism” is more like walking away from the struggle than onto the battlefield.

o   The second is the well-meaning organizer who has bought into the false belief that acts of civil disobedience are beyond the pale of legitimate protest; they too know that without a massive presence holding up signs and giving speeches in front of government and/or corporate offices will not likely be effective. Even the 400,000 at New York City’s March for Climate Action has accomplished fairly little because its events—however large—were predictably scripted; its organizers suitably intimidated by the prospect of arrest.

o   Third—and perhaps most troubling—are those among the “professional organizers” who depend on the continuation of the crisis, whose careers are tethered to being heroes of a “movement,” and whose incomes derive not from the hope that a better future is possible, but from the anxiety and terror of a volatile present. The Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Audubon Society, and several others—these are not our allies, and they will gladly use us—characterizing us as terrorists and radicals—to make their own compromising corporate-friendly positions appear sensible and good. Our first responsibility, then, is to the kind of critical analysis that permits us to see through hype and propaganda to the only hope worth pursuing—that which offers to our children a future worth their own.

On this last note, however, I realize I’m speaking not so much to you, but to my fellows in the U.S., people for whom my heart breaks. For even though we may not face the prospect that we could be murdered for speaking out against this criminal activity, we face the culpability of being citizens of one of the most powerful nations on the planet, a nation whose flag is deployed as propaganda by Exxon-Mobil, Anadarko, Chesapeake, and Chevron—among so many others. What you face is violence; what we face is shame. Which is worse, I’m not sure I know.

Wendy Lynne Lee

John Hanger–Right off the Rack (Wendy Lynne Lee and Kevin Heatley)

The following captures a likely dialogue between myself, Wendy Lynne Lee, and Kevin Heatley, both of Shale Justice. The event is democratic gubernatorial candidate, John Hanger’s, visit to a Shale Justice sponsored meeting at Bloomsburg University on September 3rd organized by Shale Justice Executive Committee member, John Trallo. The piece may be very fruitfully read in correspondence with the amazingly mangled announcement of the event in Marcellus Drilling News (Shale Justice Coalition Plans to Gate-Crash John Hanger Appearance | Marcellus Drilling News), and the excellent analysis of both the MDN total botch and the Hanger event itself by Dory Hippauf (HANGER AND THE UGLY CHOICES | Shale Justice).

Heatley’s essay appears as primary text in bold, and mine appears in the quotation marks, italicized.

Another evening event in Shale Gas country. Instead of relaxing on the deck watching the dragonflies of late summer buzz across the pond, I am traveling to another community event.

Despite my better judgment, I feel compelled to behave like an engaged citizen. Another character flaw I struggle to overcome.

Another evening in Shale Gas country—instead of heading home from school to sneaker-up and go run hills, I am dashing about psychotically to secure treats, get a classroom door open, move desks, and make coffee for another community event for the movement to ban fracking. I don’t have time for “better judgment.” Right now I am just struggling to overcome fatigue and select fancy soda.

Tonight’s outing involves a Q&A session with former DEP director, professional lawyer, and gubernatorial hopeful, Mr. John Hanger. John (I always use first names as I enjoy the false sense of familiarity that political figures project, even when they have no idea who the hell you are) has graciously agreed, at the request of the subversive Shale Justice Coalition, to travel to Bloomsburg and discuss his candidacy. The public meeting is attended by approximately 20 people, including an undercover gas operative (Slim Jim grease in breast pocket – dead giveaway).

Tonight’s outing involves arranging a classroom, some fruit salad, carrot sticks, upscale chips, and glass bottled sparkling beverages to maximize the “civil” of civil exchange between a gubernatorial candidate and voters who will assuredly not vote for him—a candidate who might be commended for being willing to walk into the fire of polite but determined opposition—except for that his entire presentation was an exercise in the scorched earth rhetoric of “I don’t suck as much as the other guy even though I will let the gas companies screw you” bracketed by two distinctive appeals to emotional extortion. I, however, will call Mr. Hanger “Mr. Hanger” because the familiarity implied by first name address leaves me feeling a little skeezy, and because he played a bit of fake deferral to me as “Professor Lee.” Two can play that game.

John has dressed in legal casualwear – white shirt, dark slacks, polished black loafers and a full democratic-blue tie. I take note of that, not because I intend to judge him based on appearance, but because I know that the vast majority of voters will make their final choice of elected leader based upon a complete and thorough intellectual analysis of camera presence. Think Kennedy versus Nixon. As a slight man, in his late fifties with a nasal tone to his speech, I am hoping John has some kick-ass platform positions.

Didn’t notice much other than the Democratic-Party-Blue tie—interesting choice for a guy who, in response to my question about why he opposed the 115-81 Democratic Committee vote for a six year moratorium on fracking, answered by way of classic deflection—the “Red Herring” that none of us agree with everything our parties stand for, so there “nothin’ to see here folks” about his refusal to endorse a major party platform. Except, of course, that there is. Because the moratorium would fundamentally alter the way Pennsylvania deals with an industry that’s poisoning our water, destroying our air quality, converting our communities into fractious war zones, selling off our public lands and their endangered inhabitants, and turning a country side once called the land of a thousand shades of green into an industrialized dead-zone a single shade of gray (and not the sexy adderondackskind), his position matters very much indeed. And Mr. Hanger’s right off the rack industry-sharpened lines is the wrong one.

John starts with some background history; 29 years working on energy issues as a lawyer, community activist, and regulator. He tells of a transformative event – the death of three people in Philly who were too poor to afford safe heating and burned to death in a fire while using candles. This is disturbing to everyone in the room and I can see that one of the attendees is anxiously seeking the missing Slim Jims as comfort food. John has done a good job of demonstrating compassion during the lead-in segment. This is not to imply it is not genuine, merely that it is good public relations building.

Mr. Hanger moves very quickly to soften up his audience for his “Call me Mr. Regulator, yeah some people are gonna get hurt, but hey we all drive cars” industry pitch with just the right strategy of emotional manipulation—a family that burns to death moving him to take action to “stop that kind of thing.” Good for Mr. Hanger. Or not. However disturbing the story might be to the audience and to “Mr. Slim Jim,” it’s apparent street-cred. social justice gold for Mr. Hanger turns out to be just one of his tinny-tools for pitting some pretty vulnerable folks against others, namely folks who can’t afford to heat their houses (and end up using candles) against folks who, um, can’t afford to heat their houses (and end up driving tanker trucks for the gas). In effect his argument is “The only way to make sure folks can heat their houses is to make sure they’ve got access to cheap fuel, and if that means some other folks are gonna have to get really hurt, well, we’ve all got to suck that up.” Except of course we don’t all suck that up. And all the industry folks are sucking up is money ready to off-shore or spend-up elsewhere. After all, why would they spend their moola in an industrialized shit-hole?

But John makes a tactical error early on – gauging his audience as potentially hostile to his lack of support for a moratorium on unconventional gas drilling, a moratorium supported by his own political party, he assumes a defensive posture. For the next 45 minutes he uses classic logical fallacies in an attempt to “explain” his resistance to a moratorium. First is the use of the false equivalency, a technique whereby different choices are presented as fundamentally “the same”. John emphasizes repeatedly during his presentation that all energy comes with negative impacts. Dead bats with windmills, dead rivers with coal, and dead aquifers with natural gas (my observation, not his). In essence, John implies that all our energy choices are going to screw someone somewhere and that the solution is to try and screw the least number of people and then compensate them if possible. WOW, now that is a positive motivational message for the masses, especially if you want to start a riot.

Mr. Hanger miscalculates the savvy of his audience early on. Besides deploying logical fallacy as an instrument to extort consent, he also promotes a campaign platform that is fashioned entirely out of negative claims that are either distorted in their presentation or just false on the facts:

Coal and oil are really bad. Natural gas extraction is less bad. So natural gas extraction is actually good.
The Corbett administration is really bad. I, John Hanger am less bad. So I, John Hanger, am actually good.
Climate change is really bad. Methane emissions and leaks—measured in a funky short-sighted way—makes it less bad that Co2. So methane emissions and leaks are actually good.
The trouble with this approach is that (a) our frack-savvy Shale Justice-n-Friends audience can see right through it—and did, and (b) as an election platform, it leaves rather a lot to be desired—like positive claims about what a candidate is going to do. Mr. Hanger’s platform, as far as I can see is this: “Vote for me! I’m the guy who will try to get some regulations that will poison you less! Dirty your air less! Destroy your communities less! Have you suffer cancer less! Yeah! Or less!” But of course “regulation” is nothing but code for “minimal control over the rate, speed, mind-blowing severity, and permanence of harm.” So that “less” is pretty cold comfort. Indeed, dying in a house fire because you were using candles to survive a Winter night is frickin awful. But burning down the whole damn house called earth so that a few folks can live in gigantic well-heated houses wherever they damn-well want off the shale—that’s just insane. Mr. Hanger may well have convinced himself that a platform that shills it up for the Good Old Boys of Anadarko is good for the poor folks he patronizes, but the rest of us know better.

Throughout the rest of his presentation John then works under another logical fallacy – the false dichotomy. This is the “either/or” proposition where a limited number of options are given in an attempt to narrow the choices and direct the decision of the target audience. John uses this technique both to justify his support for unconventional gas, “gas is bad but coal is worse” and for his own candidacy “the other candidates are worse than me”. What is particularly puzzling is John’s repeated contrasting of his positions with those of Tom Corbett. As Corbett’s approval rating is just slightly higher than Jerry Sandusky, it seems meaningless to create a comparison. John might as well have contrasted his candidacy with that of a corpse.

Indeed. Comparing oneself to Tom Corbett as a campaign strategy is kind of like insisting that because you didn’t personally, say, turn over Anne Frank to the NAZIs, you deserve to be the next German Chancellor. Nope.

While John knew his audience would not appreciate his lack of support for the party moratorium platform, he must not have realized the intellectual rigor with which they would respond to his rationalizations. When presented with contrasting evidence and his use of logical fallacies, he became defensive. While the meeting was congenial and respectful, John’s discomfort and inability to directly address key issues was apparent.

Mr. Hanger would have been better off had he brought some helpful interference-thugs. At least then, one of them could have texted to the Slim Jim industry mole that things were getting too hot and too smart for their candidate and faked some exit strategy. Instead, Hanger not only went on defense, but in so doing doubled down on the “I’m not the guy who’s gonna tell ya that people aren’t going to get hurt and that their aren’t going to be costs.” The trouble was that he never really countered with any of the benefits. In fact, even Mr. Hanger contests some of the wilder inflated job claims—so who is making out here? Why shouldn’t we all just see this as wholesale concession thinly veiled by a weak-ass promise to help us out when we get cancer, or lose our wells, or our kid gets asthma? And that is all, of course, a lie. John hanger can’t cure cancer, de-toxify a contaminated well, or fix a sick kid’s lungs.

Of particular concern was John’s use of the shared culpability argument – the idea that, since we all use energy to exist we are all responsible for the devastation incurred from nuclear power, coal extraction, and oil & gas drilling. What is conveniently ignored in that rationale is that we do not all consume at the same level. Some of us are more culpable than others. And the corporate transnationals and political elite that offer us no viable choices but death by axe or death by hanging, are the most culpable of all.

“Shared Culpability.” As if my occasionally less than stellar kitty-box cleaning was comparable to Michael Vick’s penchant for dog-fighting. As if my driving a Honda FIT was comparable to some gas executive’s purchase of a fleet of stretch HUMMERS. As if my somewhat lazy ‘tude about turning my compost was comparable to dumping frack waste. Seriously.

By the end of the evening I am willing to give John the benefit of the doubt.

Benefit of the doubt? Not so much. Though I highly esteem my colleague in anti-fracking action, Kevin Heatley, I’m afraid that Mr. Hanger precluded this option at both the beginning—and especially the end—of his performance for Shale Justice. Let me put this as forthrightly and compassionately as possible—no easy marriage: I wholly appreciate and empathize with Mr. Hanger’s loss of his son. I cannot even fathom the pain and anguish this must have caused, and the suffering he must surely still endure. I would be smashed to bits the size of grains of sand. But having said that, to raise this death—to effectively deploy it—as a strategy for making oneself electable, the best candidate in virtue of being the least noxious and the grieving father is deplorable. Mr. Hanger should be ashamed—and I hope he never uses this smarmy tactic ever ever again. For his own sake. I was embarrassed for him. I cannot support a candidate that willfully ignores the precautionary principle either, but even more I cannot support a candidate who willfully exploits the death of his child for political gain.

While I cannot support a candidate that willfully ignores the precautionary principle, a concept that demands we hold back on further natural gas extraction until the science is clear, I can acknowledge his support for renewable energy and social justice to be both honest and noble efforts. However, John then, in apparent desperation, struggling to salvage the room, brings up a personal tragedy that his family experienced last year. This was extremely inappropriate and bordered on manipulation. Politicians would be well advised to keep pictures of the kids, the wife, or wives, the hubby, and the lovable Pug, at home. My vote will not be based upon how much you love your family or how much they love you. It will be based upon the potential impact of your policies. We already have enough incompetent but good family men and women in office.

And I can only interpret Mr. Hanger’s applause for renewables as posturing and pandering until he becomes a lot more courageous about ending fossil fuel extraction and takes seriously the real harms that he only pretends to care about. Or—perhaps he does care. But it’s no better a surmise because then we must conclude he’s not that bright—and I do think Mr. hanger is bright. Bright enough to position himself between the gas industry and the citizens they are in knowing, calculative fashion harming with “regulation.” Such citizens may be “refugees,” but, well, beware the educated embattled engaged refugee. We have formed a movement.

So, I offer a big thank you to all the known enemies of the State at Shale Justice for getting John to come up to Bloomsburg and speak to the disenfranchised overburdened who live on the shale. And I would also like to thank John Hanger for being one of the only candidates willing to engage an audience of future refugees. But let the two major parties be advised – shale gas is a game changer, just not in the way the industry claims. The illusion of choice based upon the old two party paradigm is disappearing. Ignore the seismic groundswell of opposition and you will never collect your royalties.

Kevin’s right. Shale gas is a game changer. A party system that has always been a sham is exposed all the more so for its internal corruptions and corporatist self-aggrandizing objectives. But the real change in the game is not about parties or industries. It’s, as Kevin says, about the seismic groundswell of resistance that knows neither party nor state nor country borders. All it knows is shale. That is to say, it knows everything that is represented by the potential destruction of this last bastion of fossil fuel extraction—and because that is called climate change, it knows that game-over is about far more than royalties.