Category: government

Earth Day

I just posted this quote for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday:
“Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”
– Albert Schweitzer

Because it is Earth Day, I want to expand a bit on Dr. Schweitzer’s quote. Yes, we must embrace all living creatures and all of humanity, especially the most vulnerable, but we must also embrace the plants and earth itself. It is essential that the nations of the world come together in Paris in December to adopt limits on greenhouse gas emissions to avert catastrophic climate change. We can’t undo the damage we have already done and additional climate impacts will develop in the coming years, but we can still keep the earth livable if we act boldly and quickly to phase out fossil fuels and ramp up renewable energy. We have the technology needed to do this, with advancements occurring every year which will make the transition easier. There is no other option. It’s our only world.

No good deed goes unpunished

My recent entry in the “No good deed goes unpunished” category is my decision to heed the call to post comments to this article – in the Wall Street Journal, no less.  Before you go clicking on the link, I’ll warn you that it may not open if you are not a subscriber. Actually, I’m not a subscriber either, but often you can read articles if you click through a link posted through social media. That is how I can get through the paywall to comment. At any rate, the article is about how a few towns in the Southern Tier of upstate NY, including mine, are looking into seceding from New York to join Pennsylvania so that they can get permits to use high volume hydrofracking to extract shale methane from beneath their land.

Which is a totally bogus concept on sooooooo many levels.

I took time to formulate a comment, specifically as a resident of this area, not thinking about the prospect that I would get replies sent to my email. While I originally regularly responded to replies to my comments on fracking, I gave it up months ago to protect myself from some nasty personal attacks. They still got posted, of course, but I didn’t see them. I didn’t go back to articles on which I had commented and assiduously refused to click on the Facebook notifications generated by Gannett papers and other sites that use FB as a commenting platform, supposedly to increase civility. I also seldom read others’ comments when I was posting.

Getting replies to my WSJ comment by email reminded me of several things.
1.)  Many people who comment are snarky.  One respondent took great glee in explaining that there is this thing called the Internet with a search engine called Google and therefore he could tell I was lying because the Marcellus shale underlies so much of NY  that it was obvious there was all this methane just waiting to be extracted. Which leads to…
2.)  Many people who comment don’t know what they are talking about. So, when I explain that the shale needs to be a certain thickness, depth, and thermal maturity to contain significant amounts of recoverable methane, they go on as though none of that matters.
3.)  Some people refuse to believe a fact if it doesn’t go along with their political viewpoint.
4.)  Some people don’t think there should be any taxes, but they seem to want all the things that tax money provides for their community, state, and the country.
5.)  Responding to replies is a major time sink.  I spent hours and hours on this one article commentary, which reminded me of how many hours I used to spend on this. While there is still a fair amount of commentary that I participate in on fracking and climate change, I am grateful not to be spending so much time on it as I did before the impending NYS HVHF ban was announced.

And, for the record, no New York town is going to be leaving the state.

Margaret Anna Fridays – on human trafficking

Although I am late for the official media campaign, I wanted to share this movingl blog post from Sister Susan. I hope that the End Modern Slavery Initiative Act of 2015 will be passed in Congress and signed into law.
– JC

Margaret Anna Fridays – on human trafficking.

Lessons from Selma, Ferguson, and Seneca Lake

When the events depicted in the film Selma occurred, I was a four-year-old girl in rural New England.  I do remember seeing Dr. King on the news when I was a bit older and definitely remember his assassination in 1968 in the midst of the Memphis strike by black public works employees who were facing discrimination.  It was incomprehensible – then and now – that a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader of such an important social movement could have been only 39 when he died. Because he was such a force and martyred so young, his legacy became a legend, masking his complexity as a human being. While the public life of some of those around King, such as Ambassador Andrew Young and Rep. John Lewis, was decades long and vital to keeping the civil rights movement going forward while remembered its momentous, if painful, past, King’s life has been shown on film only as a secondary character until the release of Selma a few weeks ago.  The film shows how complicated things were for Dr. King during the 1965 voting rights struggle that led to the march from Selma to Montgomery.

Daniel Oyelowo portrays the complexity of Dr. King, trying to balance political, religious, tactical, family, personal, and interpersonal forces in situations where even the best possible course risked injury and death. Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King underscores the precariousness of their family’s life and the strength of will that it took for her to keep the family together in the face of betrayal, wiretapping, and threats against all the family members, including their four children. Although based on actual events, the film is not a documentary and the script does not include King’s own public speeches, because his sons would not give the filmmakers permission to use them. Despite that, the speeches in the film sound like those of Dr. King and Oyelowo delivers them with passion.

Throughout the film, I was reminded of how far we have come as a nation – and how many challenges or even regressions are still to be rectified. While I am grateful that voter registration forms no longer ask for an applicant’s race, we have recently seen some of the protections of the Voting Rights Act scaled back and the advent of new voter ID laws  and changes in polling hours and places that make it difficult for older voters, people of color, and those in low-income communities to vote as they are entitled to as US citizens.

In Selma, we see police arrest, beat, and use teargas against peaceful protestors. We sometimes see this happen now, too, in Ferguson, MO and other cities protesting against racial problems with policing. We saw police use similar tactics during the breakup of the Occupy movement. It’s sad that I have cause to worry more about my nephews who are of color being stopped or profiled by police than I do about my nephew who is white.  In the fifty years since the march from Selma to Montgomery, we should have progressed more than we have.

Near the beginning of the film, a number of protestors, including Dr. King, are jailed for trying to enter the courthouse through the front door. I immediately thought of the members of We Are Seneca Lake and their supporters, who have been barred from entering the court room and the town hall in Reading, forced to stand out in the frigid cold, not even able to wait in heated cars because the police have banned parking near the court. Non-violent civil disobedience to keep Crestwood from expanding fossil fuel storage in the salt caverns near the drinking water supply of 100,000 people has turned into over 180 arrests with hearings by a judge who refuses to recuse himself despite industry ties and who is violating the legal rights of the defendants.

There are many tactical/political conflicts in the film. What should be handled by federal, state, or local governments? When is the right time for a march or civil disobedience or legislation? When is the right time to bring in allies? What is the relationship between faith values and government? Who makes the final decision on strategy?  These factors and others have been playing out for me over the last several years in our fight against high volume hydrofracking in New York State.  While I am not in a leadership position, I have interacted with many different organizations and leaders with differing opinions on the right way to proceed. Should we work for a continued delay or a ban? Legislative action or executive/regulatory action? Work on local bans or just on the state level?  Argue on scientific grounds, environmental grounds, economic grounds, or moral grounds? I admit that my own approach was to throw everything I could at the problem, changing tack depending on the circumstance.

While we were thrilled but stunned by the Dec. 17 announcement of an impending state-wide ban , we still have a lot of work to do on infrastructure and waste disposal projects in the state, continuing work to keep the ban in place, accelerating our roll-out of renewable energy and efficiency projects, and helping our allies to stop unconventional fossil fuel production in their states, too.

As in Selma, any victory is only partial and leads to more work.  Keep on keeping on.

http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/

Not One Well!!!!!!!!

Hours ago, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that high volume hydraulic fracturing will be banned in New York State. I am thrilled with the news, if a bit dazed. After spending countless hours on this issue over the last several years, the whole fractivist community is relieved and celebrating!

I will get to slow down on commentary a bit, but I’m sure that I and other NY fractivists will continue to fight expanded fossil fuel infrastructure and waste disposal in NY, as well as continue to help other states to rein in the pollution and health impacts that fracking is causing.

But now, from my home in New York on the PA border, I can proudly state:  Not One Well!

Giving thanks for no fracking

Dear Governor Cuomo,

Happy Thanksgiving! This year, I am thankful that there has been no shale gas drilling using high-volume hydrofracking in New York State, especially in Vestal, my hometown.

I’m also thankful that this has been the year that many independent scientists have published peer-reviewed work elucidating the damage that shale gas and oil extraction, processing, transport, use, and waste disposal are doing to human, environmental, and planetary health.

The work of climate scientists makes the high stakes abundantly clear. Humans must stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible, especially unconventional fossil fuels which have a higher greenhouse gas emission burden than conventional fossil fuels.

Therefore, I call on you as governor to enact a permanent ban on unconventional fossil fuel extraction in New York State and to end the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and importation of waste products from shale drilling.

Instead, New York State must go all in for renewable energy and efficiency. Wind, especially off-shore wind, solar, electric grid upgrades, biomass, non-food-crop biofuels, heat pumps, geothermal, advanced battery storage, and other emerging energy technologies are what New York, the United States and the world need for our future, not an ever more desperate and expensive scramble for dangerous fossil fuels.

Sincerely,
Joanne Corey

SoCS: The Four Elements

On my newsfeed, I just saw a story about one of the First Nations equating the US House vote to approve Keystone XL as an act of war. So, I am thinking of the four elements in that context, which includes unconventional fossil fuel extraction side effects..

Water is at risk because of methane migration, the permanent removal of water from the water system, toxicity from the chemicals that are mixed into it and that enter it from underground, and pipeline leaks that damage groundwater and surface waters. Unconventional fossil fuels are very water-intensive at a time when many places are facing water shortages.

Air pollution is caused by both the extraction processes of bitumen aka tar sands oil and by the refining/processing and use of this fossil fuel. The carbon-intensity of the extraction process compounds the problems of the burning of the final product to have an outsized climate change impact.

Earth is disturbed to build the pipeline and that land needs to be kept clear of trees, buildings etc. in perpetuity. The larger earth disturbance is the tar sands area itself, which involves felling old growth forests and massive surface disruption.

Fire represents the burning of the fuel but also one of the greatest dangers of dealing with fossil fuels, the threat of explosion.

The First Nations have been leading the fight against tar sands extraction and transport, both in Canada and the US. Their spiritual connection to Mother Earth and the four elements are an example to all of us who are their allies.

This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. Join us:  http://lindaghill.com/2014/11/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-november-1514/

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Badge by Doobster @MindfulDigressions

Government Gridlock: Theme and Variations

Before the Nov. 4 US elections, there was a lot of speculation about whether or not the Republicans would take a majority of the Senate seats. I thought about weighing in, but didn’t because I realized it wouldn’t really matter. We would just be swapping one flavor of legislative gridlock for another.

A primer of the US system, for those who don’t live in the United States:  Legislation must be passed by the majority of both houses of Congress, The House of Representatives and the Senate. (If each houses passes a different version of a bill, a conference committee drafts a compromise version for approval.) The President can sign the legislation into law or veto it. In the case of a veto, the bill doesn’t become law unless a two-thirds majority of both houses of Congress vote to override the veto. The other important word to know is filibuster. In the Senate, 60 of 100 votes are needed to move a bill forward for a vote. This was originally designed as a way for minority views to be heard and was time-limited by the length of time that Senators could speak, but has morphed into a tool to block any legislation for which there are not 60 votes in favor, even if it has majority support of 51-59 votes.

Congress has been gridlocked for most of President Obama’s time in office. There was a brief period in the beginning of his presidency with a Democratic majority in the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. This was when the stimulus bill and the Affordable Care Act were passed.  The Republicans had vowed not to support anything the President wanted, but they could not stop legislation, so there was no gridlock then, even though the Republicans were refusing to co-operate in governing.

Within months, due to the death of Senator Kennedy and a special election that went to a Republican, the Democrats lost the ability to break a filibuster in the Senate and the first flavor of gridlock began. Instead of the rare use of the filibuster that had been the case for the 200+ year history of the Senate, the Republicans began filibustering almost every piece of legislation and many nominations for judgeships and executive branch appointees. The Democratic majority House was still passing bills, but the Democratic majority Senate could not get them to the floor because the 41 Republicans kept filibustering.

Next, the Republicans, thanks largely to gerrymandering of Congressional districts within states, took the majority in the House, which began phase two of gridlock, where the House passed dozens of bills that were never going to be taken up in the Senate, like voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act fifty times, while the Senate Republicans filibustered almost everything that was proposed. When there was a rare instance of bipartisanship, such as the Senate passage of comprehensive immigration reform, the Republicans in the House wouldn’t even bring it up for a vote. Meanwhile, the filibuster in the Senate blocked nominations for key posts, so we faced the ebola situation without a surgeon general to lead and co-ordinate the efforts and the debacle with Russia and Ukraine without a US ambassador to Russia.

So, with the electorate already frustrated with gridlock and disgusted that this Congress is about to break the shameful record set by the last Congress for least number of laws passed, we held elections last week. Turnout was 36.3% of eligible voters, the lowest in seventy-two years. In many Congressional districts, including mine, an incumbent was running unopposed. The Republicans will hold a majority in both houses of Congress.

One could hope that the Republicans would now decide to co-operate with the Democrats in governing, as many past Congresses have done when one party had majorities in Congress with a sitting president from the other party.

Unfortunately, such hope is not warranted.

We are just going to move on to the next flavor of gridlock, although this one will probably have a bit more spice to it. Some legislation that the Democrats find particularly objectionable will be filibustered in the Senate. Other legislation may pass by both houses on party-line votes, get vetoed by the president, and then die because there will not be a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

The mystery lies in what happens after that political theater is over. Will the Republicans, having satisfied their base with their initial votes, actually work to craft a bipartisan solution which could pass both houses and be signed by the president?

I wish I could say yes, but recent Republican party history and current rhetoric do not give cause for hope.

Long Island smackdown

From my soapbox this morning:

The authors of this article needed to do more research before writing it. There is a basic misunderstanding of the technology itself, for instance, shale gas extraction has yields much, much lower than conventional gas reservoir yields. There is a downplaying of the capability to move quickly to renewable energy; check out thesolutionsproject.org. There is a lack of understanding of shale gas economics. There is very little local job creation with shale gas development and it is a boom-bust proposition. Check out what happened to towns like Montrose, PA, that have been left worse off than they were before shale gas. There is a lack of understanding of geology. At current methane prices, there are no areas of either the Utica or the Marcellus shales in NYS that are able to be drilled profitably. NY’s section of the shale plays is too thin and shallow or is overmature.

It’s a good thing that NY did delay because it has only been in the last couple of years that a lot of the independent, peer-reviewed science has been published. It is documenting numerous impacts to air, water, climate, and public health. You can read studies here: http://psehealthyenergy.org/LIBRARY. This link:http://concernedhealthny.org/compendium/ offers summaries of major studies and reporting through June 30 of this year, with an update due early in 2015.

If long Islanders want to help NY become truly energy independent, they will support off-shore wind. Here in Broome County, we are making major commitments to solar technology research and development, as well as energy efficiency, energy storage, and other renewable energy types. We need to move further into 21st century energy, not try to drag us back into 19th/20th century, polluting fossil fuels.

A comment on this: http://www.theislandnow.com/…/article_f8d4c4da-6b55-11e4-b9… Actually, the comment was sent for moderation, so it may not make it onto the site, but at least I got it out of my system.

I voted for myself

 
I got back from my polling place, which had a steady stream of citizens coming in to vote. Yay, Democracy!
Well, sort of yay…
Because of the gerrymandering of Congressional districts, there was only one candidate on the ballot for Congress, an incumbent who is part of the problem of Washington gridlock and with whom I fundamentally disagree on a host of important issues.
Despite his being the only name on the ballot, I could not bring myself to vote for him. I also did not want to leave that column of the ballot blank, so I decided to vote for myself.
I shared this plan with my Facebook friends yesterday, so I may get a few other write-in votes, too.
Here’s hoping that in two years I will have more choices on the ballot.