Above: Proposed natural gas-fired power plant on the Salem waterfront.
RIGHT NOW: THREE SJSF ACTIVISTS ARE CURRENTLY BLOCKADING FOOTPRINT POWER’S NEW JERSEY HQ RISKING ARREST IN PROTEST OF THE PROPOSED FOOTPRINT GAS PLANT.
Students for a Just and Sustainable Future are acting to the discourage the financing of the Footprint’s planned Salem gas plant and take a stand against the building of natural gas infrastructure everywhere.
This morning, demonstrators from Massachusetts blockaded the entrance to the headquarters of Footprint Power to protest the company’s proposed natural gas power plant in Salem, Massachusetts. The Salem plant, originally scheduled to come on-line in June 2016, has been delayed in part by legal battles, local grassroots opposition, and an ambitious timeline. These delays have jeopardized the plant’s financing and ultimate construction.
The protesters, who bound themselves together with chains and superglue, represent Students for a Just and Stable Future, a New England regional group of youth and students that supports strong policies to address the climate crisis.
Allison Rigney, spokesperson for the demonstrators, said, “Natural gas is no better than coal as an energy source. Both fossil fuels cause irreparable harm to human health and natural gas production adds methane to the environment. Methane is a ‘mega’ greenhouse gas, up to 100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.”
The proposed Salem natural gas plant would operate on the site of a coal power plant that was retired this past June.
Natural gas sickens and endangers communities through extraction, transmission, and combustion. Fracking pollutes water with a chemical cocktail that the industry keeps secret, and ingesting fracking-contaminated water has been linked to cases of sensory, respiratory, and neurological damage. Additionally, the climate crisis will lead to super storms that destroy homes and claim lives, dangerous heat waves, and food shortages, while Footprint Power profits. To reduce the human impacts of the climate crisis we need infrastructure that reduces warming pollutants, but according to the latest science gas could be just as polluting as coal, if not more. Extraction and transportation of fracked gas results in significant leakage of methane which is much more potent of a warming pollutant than carbon dioxide, and in today’s energy market natural gas is fracked gas – purchasing any gas creates the demand for fracked gas. We have the ability to unleash the clean, safe energy economy today and become a global leader in producing the energy technology of tomorrow. Governments and private investors need to support safe, long-term solutions rather than a dangerous bridge to nowhere. Construction of the Salem Gas Plant would lock Massachusetts in to an energy source that has a limited supply and will increase in price in the coming years. Instead, as old infrastructure retires, we need to be replacing it with clean energy, efficiency, and conservation that will create good jobs and support communities.
Staff note: And at the same time in Washington, DC activists are locked down at the Natural Gas Alliance to protest the Cove Point LNG terminal proposed in Maryland.
