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Bad News On Fracking: Ohio Court Says Local Bans Not Allowed

February 19, 2015 Bob Downing, www.ohio.com , , , ,
By a 4-3 vote, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that local drilling and zoning ordinances in Munroe Falls cannot be enforced because they conflict with the state law regulating oil and natural gas wells. The decision takes local control of drilling away from communities and supports the state as the continued main overseer of drilling. The court ruled that a Munroe Falls’ zoning ordinance and four local laws governing oil and gas drilling are not an appropriate exercise of the city’s home rule powers. Munroe Falls had obtained a court order stopping Beck Energy Corp. from drilling until the company had complied with local laws. Beck Energy, based in Ravenna Township, is “obviously very pleased and very happy with the decision,” company Vice President David Beck said.

Opposition To Expansion Of Nuclear Power Plant In Virginia

February 19, 2015 Friends of the Earth, www.foe.org , , ,
Friends of the Earth, with 13 other organizations, submitted a letter to Governor Terry McAuliffe, Members of the Virginia General Assembly, Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners and energy company Dominion Resources urging against building a third nuclear reactor at the North Anna Power Station in Louisa County, Virginia. This proposed reactor would sit on an active earthquake fault and lacks a reliable water supply for cooling three reactors. The letter also emphasized the project’s high cost, a lack of any safe waste disposal solution and other inherent safety concerns related to nuclear reactors. "The nuclear tragedy at Fukushima should have made it clear that the risks of nuclear reactors are too great. Yet Dominion Virginia Power and the state of Virginia continue to flirt with disaster."

Huge Fire In West Virginia After Oil Train Derails

February 17, 2015 The Guardian, www.theguardian.com , , ,
A train carrying more than 100 tankers of crude oil derailed in southern West Virginia on Monday, sending at least one tanker into the Kanawha River, igniting at least 14 and sparking a house fire, officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Nearby residents were told to evacuate as a state emergency response team and environmental officials headed to the scene about 30 miles south-east of Charleston. The state was under a winter storm warning and getting heavy snowfall at times, with as much as 5in in some places. It was not clear if the weather had anything to do with the derailment, which occurred about 1.20pm ET along a flat stretch of rail. A public safety spokesman, Lawrence Messina, said responders reported one tanker and possibly another went into the river.

Newsletter: The Contagion Of Courage

February 14, 2015 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
When our colleagues take brave actions, others are inspired. George Lakey describes how courage develops in movements. He lists some key ingredients to overcome fear: people working in community to empower each other, envisioning a successful action and spreading the contagion of courage. Lakey describes courage as each of us expanding beyond our comfort zones and adds that our training for actions should include opportunities to step outside our comfort zone. He suggests we need to view the rapid heartbeat and adrenalin during an action not as fear, but as excitement. Envisioning the whole story - where the story starts, the action being taken and its successful impact - emboldens us and calms our fears of uncertainty. We learn courage in community because courage is contagious.

CEO: Politics Are Bigger Problem For Fracking Than Prices

February 13, 2015 Robert Grattan, www.fuelfix.com , , ,
While cheap prices might be slowing production of natural gas, it’s political fights that are really hurting the midstream sector, said Williams Co. chairman and chief executive officer Alan Armstrong. The decline in prices hasn’t changed the need for pipelines, as the continued position of natural gas as a cheep feedstock for electricity generators and other producers has offset any slowdown in drilling, Armstrong said in an interview with FuelFix. Instead, he said, it’s political hassles and complex regulation that make moving natural gas from the wellhead to the market more uncertain and expensive.

Dispatches From The Seneca Lake Uprising

February 13, 2015 Sandra Steingraber, www.ecowatch.com , , ,
There are no guidebooks for how to carry out a sustained civil disobedience campaign during winter—let alone one that involves human blockades that intercept trucks attempting to enter a compressor station site on a steeply sloping lakeshore with 18 inches of snowpack. Ice fishing with a chance of handcuffs. It’s as good a metaphor as any. With that in mind, I bought a pair of waterproof boots that looked like something that you might bench-press at a gym and were guaranteed to 40 below. After two hours of standing on ice at 10 above, my feet were—surprise!—distressingly cold.

“Stop In The Name Of Love” As PNC Locks Down Regional HQs

February 12, 2015 EQAT, www.eqat.org , , , ,
On Monday, February 9, Earth Quaker Action Team demonstrated their love of the mountains and the earth with a Valentine’s Day themed protest at PNC Regional Headquarters, 1600 Market St, Philadelphia. The group called on PNC Bank to stop financing companies engaged in mountaintop removal coal mining, a horrific practice that poisons Appalachian communities and contributes to climate change. The protest, which prompted the bank to lock down for several hours, was in conjunction with the 10th annual I Love Mountains Day(1). The forty-two people present ranged in age from 8 to 86. Some had traveled from Miami, Pittsburgh, and New York for a weekend training, intending to prepare for further action back home.

Attorney Travels West Virginia To Teach About Pipelines

February 12, 2015 Michael Barrick, www.appalachianchronicle.com , , ,
Keeping up with Elise Keaton as she crisscrosses West Virginia – and beyond – is not an easy task. But then, Keaton has a big job – to stay ahead of energy companies rushing to receive approval for the development of several natural gas pipelines. In fact, the pace and tactics of the companies seeking to build the pipelines are such that even the most informed of citizens is finding it difficult to keep abreast of developments. So Keaton, the Outreach and Education Coordinator for the Greenbrier River Watershed Association (GRWA), keeps moving from her office here.

Groups Call To Scrap Entire Vermont Gas Pipeline Project

February 11, 2015 Rising Tide Vermont, www.risingtidevermont.org , , ,
Today a coalition of organizations including Just Power, Rising Tide Vermont, 350Vermont and Toxics Action Center renewed calls to cancel all phases of the Vermont fracked gas pipeline, in the wake of an announcement that Vermont Gas will no longer proceed with Phase II. The coalition is calling on the Vermont Public Service Board to revoke the Certificate of Public Good for Phase I in light of the near doubling of Phase I costs, the stark climate impacts of fracked gas, and impacts on landowners in the path of the pipeline. Yesterday, the PSB was given permission by the Vermont Supreme Court to undertake a review of the Phase I permit with no time or scope constraints.

Industry Presses Feds To Keep Atlantic Drilling On The Table

February 11, 2015 Jennifer A. Dlouhy, www.fuelfix.com , , ,
Oil industry leaders on Monday beseeched the Obama administration to sell drilling rights in East Coast waters before 2022, even as environmentalists asked that the territory be closed to the activity. The widely ranging views came as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management kicked off coast-to-coast hearings on its draft plan to sell offshore oil and gas leases from 2017 to 2022. The proposal, unveiled last month, paves the way for 14 sales of offshore drilling leases: 10 in the Gulf of Mexico, three off the coast of Alaska and one for territory along mid- and south-Atlantic states.

Environmental Movement Held Back KXL For Good Reason

February 10, 2015 Mark Weisbrot, www.cepr.net , , , ,
Ditching the Keystone XL pipeline should be a no-brainer. The 1,179-mile pipeline extension would carry some of the world’s dirtiest oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas. And it shouldn’t be necessary to repeat this, but since we have a Congress controlled by a party that denies the reality of climate change, it is: 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human activity has warmed the Earth. The evidence of climate disruption is all around us, from warming ocean surface and land temperatures, melting Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, and increasing heat waves and other changes in extreme weather events.

Fuel For Change: The Biodiesel Alternative

February 9, 2015 Alex Ellefson, www.indypendent.org , ,
When the biodiesel fuel truck parks in front of the 12-story, 120,000-square-foot office building on West 20th Street, it draws attention from superintendents in the surrounding buildings. For a little more than a year, the building has been heated with pure biodiesel, a clean-burning, non-hazardous, organic fuel that can be made from plant-based products such as soy, corn, canola and even recycled cooking oil, an abundant resource in New York City. Lappin began exploring biodiesel as an alternative to conventional heating oil after the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is headquartered in the upper floors of the building, asked the property’s management company to make the switch.

First Country In The World Divests From Fossil Fuels

February 9, 2015 Cole Mellino, www.ecowatch.com , , , ,
Back in 2012, Bill McKibben with fellow activists including Naomi Klein, Winona LaDuke, Josh Fox and Reverend Lennox Yearwood began a nationwide tour to promotefossil fuel divestment—that is, selling off your shares in fossil fuel companies–in an effort to combat climate change. With action in Congress impossible, McKibben saw college campuses—known for being laboratories of democracy—as ground zero in the campaign for divestment. With his ‘Do the Math’ campaign in sold-out concert halls across America, McKibben and others were able to launch Fossil Free, an international network of divestment campaigns. It’s a project of the larger organization 350.org. Flash forward three years and the movement has made impressive strides.

Lancaster County Pipeline Protesters Plead Guilty To Trespassing

February 9, 2015 Marie Cusick, www.stateimpact.npr.org , , , ,
Eight protesters who were arrested for opposing an interstate natural gas pipeline in Lancaster County pleaded guilty to trespassing Thursday and each paid a $100 fine. The demonstrators were arrested January 5th after they linked arms and refused to leave a site where Oklahoma-based Williams was doing testing for its proposedAtlantic Sunrise pipeline. The protesters included members of the Northern Arawak Native American tribe who claim Williams was improperly drilling test bores on sacred grounds in Conestoga Township. The group, which calls itself the Conestoga 8, rejected a deal to have all charges dropped against them if they promised to stay off the property, which is owned by PPL.

Women Stand Their Ground Against Big Coal

February 9, 2015 Samantha Hargreaves and Hibist Kassa, www.sacsis.org.za , , ,
Mama Life is right. Coal kills people and devastates local environments. Coal divides communities when corporations form local alliances that are detrimental to the majority. Coal exploits labour, both paid mining jobs and unpaid women’s work reproducing labour and community. Coal is notoriously fickle in price, with nearly a 40% price drop since 2011. And Coal contributes most significantly to climate change, and the destruction of our planet. More than 50 grassroots women activists gathered from around the region in late-January 2015 to stand their ground against Big Coal. Their six-day exchange and strategy meeting involved dozens of organisations in South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.
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