Peter Nightingale – RI Future

September 20, 2016September 20, 2016

Scratch the Energy Facility Siting Board process and find naked capitalism

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This Wednesday, September 21 at 6pm, the Energy Facility Siting Board will conduct its next public hearing about Invenergy’s proposed fossil-fuel-fired power plant in Burrillville. The hearing will be held in the Toll Gate High School Auditorium, 575 Centerville Road, Warwick.

The last couple of weeks produced a flurry of advisory opinions on Invenergy’s power plant proposal. The list is here in the Public Utility Commission docket. I should have read all of these documents, but I have not and may never. Why should we keep critiquing the emperor’s clothes knowing full well that he has none?

Expansion of the fossil fuel infrastructure: jobs, jobs, jobs!
“Sure it’s retro, but you have to go where the business is.”

I did start reading the advisory opinion of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. I keep getting distracted, as I am reminded of sections of Mary Wood’s Nature’s Trust. Take this:

Bureaucratic acronyms and techno-jargon give a ready-made veil to ongoing political manipulation, operating to ward off oversight from judges, journalists, environmental groups, and citizens. Every environmental agency uses dozens or even hundreds of acronyms that blather an alphabetic mix meaningless to the public. Clean Air Act regulations, for example, display the acronyms BACT, BART, MACT, RACT, SIP, NSPS, NSR, CEMS, HAPS, LAER, NESHAPS, PPM, NAAQS, PSD, TAMS, VOC, and dozens of others. Regulations under the Resource Conservation Recovery Act use UST, TSDF, TCLP, SQG, MCL, LQG, HSWA, CAMU, CAS, CESQG, and many more. Encasing agency decisions in an impenetrable vocabulary, this mumbo jumbo goes far in shielding bureaucrats from outside scrutiny.

In the opinion I struggle with I read about API, AST, COA, MDNR, MTBE, NSA, OPC, PUD, PW-3A, RIRPP, RIWAP, ROW, SAS, SDM, SGCN, ULSD, … There is no excuse for this kind of writing: word processors for decades have given users the ability to expand their abbreviations.

Collectively, we have spent countless hours exposing the science missing in these opinions. Unfortunately, very little of what is relevant is consistent with the statutes that govern the process. As Mary Wood puts it:

Despite its original goals, environmental law now institutionalizes a marriage of power and wealth behind the veil of bureaucratic formality.

Indeed, the evidence gushes off the page in the documents of our hallowed process. The problem is not that the professionals of the various departments do not understand the science. The problem is that they are—undoubtedly much to their chagrin—subordinate to politically appointed masters. They are subject to statutes that reflect decades of industry insider subversion of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

Government as a whole is failing. The short version of the story is that the White House serves at the pleasure of the fossil fuel industry. The same applies to our state leadership, the majority of Congress, and our state legislature.

Two government branches down, one to go. Mary Wood explains what happened to the third, the judiciary. It has largely excused abandoned its fiduciary duty to preserve Nature’s Trust for present and future generations. Mary Wood lists the following problems:

Closing the gates: the standing doctrine—To win a law suit you must have standing: you have to show that you have a personal stake in the outcome of the suit you bring. Apparently, in the world of our revered American law schools, we’re all from outer space and have no stake in the health of this planet.
The judicial deference syndrome—Supposedly, regulatory agencies have technical expertise and objective scientific facts on their side. Thus, the courts shy away from “micro-managing” these bureaucracies. Of course, the courts disregard that many decisions that are presented as scientific are products of political pressure and a process captured by industry.
Narrow (often procedural) grounds—Ecological matters are rarely the issue in court. What counts is whether the process followed its often ambiguous and arbitrary rules and regulations. The courts end up dealing with form rather than substance.
The ineffectual remedy—When a court case is occasionally won, the winner must, once again, spend limitless resources to implement the often inadequate remedies.
The remote public—by the time the chainsaws, bulldozers, and dynamite arrive, people are still trying to master the acronyms, but the process has already ended. It’s too late.

The Rhode Island process puts our politically appointed Director of the Department of Environmental Management in an impossible position, inaccessible behind a firewall on the Energy Facility Siting Board. Corrupted statutes silence the experts in the various departments, but the statutes have done their dirty work and the upshot is clear and all we have is:

A process inconsistent with the “duty of the general assembly to provide for the conservation of the air, land, water.”
A process designed to clothe the villainy of naked capitalism.

September 18, 2016

URI has failed to erase Andrew Winters’ name

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This marks the fifth year since Andrew Winters was disappeared from URI. Yiddish scores much higher on the scale of colorful curses than American English and, growing up, I occasionally heard the curse “yemach shemoy—may his name be erased!” That is exactly what happened to Andrew Winters at URI: his name and memory have been obliterated. Meanwhile, state leadership have circled their wagons and restorative justice remains sorely absent.

Almost five years ago, when the Providence Journal was still a local newspaper, Bob Kerr wrote one of his famous columns, one headlined “Mysterious end to career of helping:”

Andrew Winters did good and important work at the University of Rhode Island that few others could do. He helped students come in from some very cold places. He worked to change attitudes that often took the form of hard and hateful things yelled from car windows or scrawled on doors.

Two of URI’s former students have not forgotten and shared their dismay in this month’s issue of Options, Rhode Island’s free LGBTQ Community Magazine.

One letter to the editor is from a former URI psychology student, Gary Burkholder, who received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the URI Alumni Association in 2014—see page 12 of Options.

After writing about his experience with Andrew’s work at URI, which “greatly contributed to the evolution of the LGBT climate on the University of Rhode Island Campus,” Gary ends with:

Some day the full story will be told and he [Andrew] will be an unquestionable and integral part of it.

The letter to the editor on the facing page 13 is by Aja VanDyke, another former URI student. She starts by mentioning:

September 2016 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the inception of the URI GLBT Center; Rhode Island’s first campus center for LGBTQ people. The Center was established to provide education, advocacy and support, and it did so for students, faculty, and other Rhode Islanders.

The community center no longer exists on the URI campus in Adams Hall. Andrew Winters, the man who created it, was bullied out of his career …

Aja ends with:

Many of us see the retaliation that has been done to Andrew and Don [his husband] because of their LGBT advocacy, including the continuing official coverup, as a hate crime.

You can read the full letters in Options.

Of course, there is nothing mysterious about the coverup, nor about the fact that URI President Dooley welcomed an investigation in public, while he squashed it behind the scenes. Whether it is workplace bullying, 38 Studios, or the “unexpected” failure of the Keable/Fogarty Burrillville power plant bill, that’s how we do the People’s business in Rhode Island.

Let me end on a positive note and wish Jen Stevens the best of luck as she departs Options as Editor in Chief. Thank you, Jen, for your dedication and hard work!

August 9, 2016

Noise, air pollution from proposed power plant would ruin Burrillville

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OER fudges reality and ignores impact of escaping methane—see disclaimer in lower-left corner.

On Tuesday August 9, the Rhode Island Department of health (RIDOH) will hold a hearing on Invenergy’s proposed gigawatt fossil fuel power plant in Burrillville, aka the Clear River Energy Center (CREC). The meeting will start at 5:30 pm at Burrillville HighSchool, 425 East Avenue, Harrisville, Rhode Island 02830.

As part of the process, RIDOH issued an advisory opinion. Even a cursory reading of the document reveals issues so serious that they should prevent the construction of CREC. Yet another Rhode Island administrative body that lacks enthusiasm for the project!

RIDOH identifies serious negative health impacts of noise:

According to the WHO [World Health Organization], sleep disturbance, one of the most common complaints raised by noise-exposed populations, can have a major impact on health and quality of life. People can recognize and react to sounds, even when asleep. Those reactions, including wakening and changes in sleep stage, are associated with daytime after-effects, such as sleepiness, reduced cognitive and motor performance, and impairment of cardiovascular function.

The RIDOH opinion also quotes written testimony of Julia O’Rourke, who lives on Wallum Lake Road in Burrillville:

Specifically, in the past year, I have experienced excessive noise and vibrations coming from the Algonquin Compressor Station site which this project will be located next to. The noise and vibrations emanating from this site are extremely disruptive and negatively impacting our health and we are unable to sleep or enjoy the peace and quiet of our home. I am concerned that the noise levels and vibration are only going to increase during the construction and operational phase of this project.

Clearly, the neighborhood around the CREC site and Spectra Energy’s compressor station will become unlivable. RIDOH suggests, if the plant were to be built, that Spectra Energy and Invenergy install sound proofing and buy “properties subject to noise levels that cause serious annoyance and/or sleep disruption.”

RIDOH’s opinion mentions that questions have also been raised as to whether National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) of the Environmental Protection Agency adequately protect public health. We, and probably others, indeed raised those questions—those and quite a few others—in this public comment. The federal standards fail to account for short-lived pollution spikes which are typical for the operation of compressor stations and power plants. Nitrous oxides are are highly problematic in this respect. In addition, there are lots of other problems with “data” Invenergy’s submitted to the Energy Facility Siting Board.

Sure, we could go ahead with the construction of the power plant and turn Burrillville into a major air pollution dump. Is that justified simply to create a couple of jobs and export electricity to the Northeast? Can we justify that simply because “no states have promulgated a short-term NO₂ standard that is more stringent than the NAAQS and the process for adopting such standards is arduous?”

Interestingly, RIDOH is much more advanced in its understanding of the effect of the proposed power plant than the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources. RIDOH states:

The burning of fossil fuels and the extraction of fossil fuels by “fracking” both contribute to climate change by emitting various greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, most notably carbon dioxide and methane. Both have the effect of harming the health of Rhode Islanders now and in the future.

Of course, most of the methane problem occurs long before the fracked gas reaches Rhode Island. Information in a recent presentation of Rhode Island’s Office of Energy Resources shows that the office explicitly ignores such effects.

Not only does the office ignore basic science, it is also out of sync with federal guidelines on how the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on climate change should be taken into account. Those guidelines, issued last week, explicitly call for:

Taking into account reasonably foreseeable direct, indirect, and cumulative GHG emissions and climate effects;
Consideration of reasonable alternatives and the short- and long-term effects and benefits in the analysis of alternatives and mitigation

Unless we change course, Rhode Island will be doing neither. RIDOH writes:

We cannot measure the direct contribution of the proposed plant, or of any single facility, to public health by means of climate change.

Sure, but if we forge ahead without understanding what we do, we are in violation of the precautionary principle of the Rio Declaration, an international treaty signed and ratified by the U.S. This is the supreme law of the land:

Principle 15

In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.

How about we cannot “measure the direct contribution” of the plant to global warming? True enough, but we can easily estimate the impact of the national policy of which construction of the plant is part. Because natural gas is worse for the climate than oil and coal, the conclusion is simple: given the rate at which natural gas escapes unburned, and before the use of methane starts paying off, we’ll be dead, leaving an uninhabitable planet for future generations.

August 9, 2016

Not enough water for proposed power plant and future growth

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On August 9, the Harrisville Fire District in its monthly meeting will discuss how to respond to Invenergy’s request for the supply of water for its proposed power plant in Burrillville, the Clear River Energy Center (CREC). For time and place follow this link.

Future water shortages caused by CREC have been a topic of discussion and speculation for many months. That indeed there is a serious risk is clear from information contained in documents obtained from several Rhode Island departments in response to Fossil Free RI‘s request made under the Access to Public Records Act.

As a reminder, the following is worth quoting from a previous post based on documents supplied by the RI Department of Health:

According to a presentation at a meeting about CREC attended by several state agencies, 0.18 MGD (million of gallons of water per day) will be left for growth if the power plant is built. June Swallow of the Center for Drinking Water Quality at the Rhode Island Department of Health attended the meeting. Her longhand notes show that Harrisville and Pascoag each are expected to need 0.12 MGD for growth. This suggests a deficit of 0.24 MGD – 0.18 MGD = 0.06 MGD.

Also documents supplied by the RI Department of Environmental Management raise concern. There is, for example, the following email exchange between Alisa Richardson of RIDEM and Ken Burke formerly of the Rhode Island Water Resources Board:

Thanks Alisa,
I think we should talk about having the Town acknowledge that with low flow conditions and high energy demands, that the Town is effectively pledging most (if not all) of its available water to this development. This local decision is theirs to make. Will someone from the Town also be at this meeting?
Thank you,
Kenneth J. Burke, P.E.MBA
General Manager/Treasurer

This email (my emphasis) appears on page 50 of this document. There is more of interest, but the conclusion is the same; search the document for “Alisa” and “Ken.”

Also Stephanie Sloman, a retired environmental engineer who worked for a large electroplating plant in Massachusetts, weighed in. She submitted a thorough and detailed testimony to the Invenergy docket of the Energy Facility Siting Board.

Her conclusion is that, no matter how you look at it, there is not enough water for future growth in Burrillville and the other towns that draw from the same source.

Clearly, the RI departments of Environmental Management and Health, and the Water Resources Board are aware of the looming water supply problem. As Stephanie Sloman explains, anyone capable of elementary arithmetic can check this. As she points out, Invenergy is apparently is not one of those.

Recently, Gina Raimondo mentioned that she would withdraw her support for the CREC project if there were any issues. Of course, trouble with the water supply is only one of a myriad of issues each single one of which should suffice for her to make good on that promise.

May 9, 2016

Water shortage: the million dollar question about Invenergy’s new power plant

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Invenergy’s Clear River Energy Center (CREC), the new fossil fuel power plant proposed in Burrillville, is likely to cause future water shortages, according to state documents obtained by Fossil Free Rhode Island. The power plant may cause such shortages unless the communities relying for their water supply on the Clear River basin forfeit future growth. If not, they risk running out of water during future hot and humid summer days when the demand for electricity is high and rivers run low.

According to a presentation at a meeting about CREC attended by several state agencies, 0.18 MGD (million of gallons of water per day) will be left for growth if the power plant is built. June Swallow of the Center for Drinking Water Quality at the Rhode Island Department of Health attended the meeting. Her longhand notes show that Harrisville and Pascoag each are expected to need 0.12 MGD for growth. This suggests a deficit of 0.24 MGD – 0.18 MGD = 0.06 MGD.

Invenergy is one of the largest corporations in the growing “clean energy” business. Of course, the Clean Power Plan, the US implementation of the Paris Agreement, not only fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It also does irreparable harm to fracked communities and the environment by polluting air and groundwater.

These may not be issues the people of Burrillville have direct control, but they should be aware of the water supply problems that may come with the megawatt power plant proposed by Invenergy.

Water usage has received some attention, but the question has not been addressed transparently, while public disclosure and discussion have been in short supply.

As Invenergy’s proposal states:

Water supplied to the Facility will be provided from the Pascoag Utility District (PUD) by re-activation and treatment of a currently inactive PUD groundwater well that became contaminated in 2001 by an off-site contamination source. As a result of this well-documented groundwater contamination event, PUD was forced to terminate is use of its primary well water supply and interconnect its water supply system with the Harrisville Fire District (HFD) to meet the requirements of its customers for potable water.

To find out what the Raimondo administration is planning, Fossil Free Rhode Island filed requests for documents under Rhode Island’s Access to Public Records Act. Such requests for information went to the Departments of Environmental Management (RIDEM) and Health, to the Water Resources Board (WRB), and to the Offices of the Governor and of Energy Resources.

As many have noticed, the Raimondo administration, following the lead of its federal Big Brother, is rather secretive. Indeed, the administration responded for the most part by withholding documents based on an overly broad interpretation of what information is exempt from disclosure.

Although, Fossil Free RI made some progress lifting the veil of secrecy, RIDEM and the WRB must have better and more detailed data than present in the documents obtained so far. Such information is available from their Streamflow Depletion Methodology.

Water resource management is complex and there is ample opportunity for debate. There is, for instance, the problem that water resource projections require somewhat arbitrary choices as to what is the relevant watershed. Rivers have tributaries, which in turn have tributaries, and so on, just as in this nursery rhyme:

Big fleas have little fleas,
Upon their backs to bite ’em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas,
and so, ad infinitum.

As one increases the size of the watershed, one decrease the shortage problem, but the number of impacted communities increases.

However this may be, and even without considering the lingering issue of the MTBE contamination of the Pascoag wells, the water supply raises important questions:

Are the Burrillville Town Council and its planner aware of the implications of the power plant for their future? How about the townspeople and nearby communities?
How does a potential water shortage feature in the tax negotiations of the Burrillville town council with Invenergy?
Can the Burrillville Town Council refuse permission to Invenergy to construct the required water supply pipeline?
Why is this issue not addressed in this letter from the Burrilville’s town solicitor to the town manager.
Does the Pascoag Utility District need approval of an amended and extended water management plan in accordance with the Water Resources Board’s Rules and Procedures for Water Supply System Management Planning?
If so, will there be an opportunity for public comment and if so when?

There is another serious concern about good government. Rhode Island state law provides the WRB with the authority to allocate water among all users, one of which is the environment. Fossil Free RI’s request for public documents has made it painfully clear that this pivotal agency has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. It is no secret that this is due to underfunding.

Indeed, an email with a request for documents to the WRB’s chief of staff, Ken Burke, resulted in an automatic reply with the message that he no longer works for the agency. Also the position of the supervising engineer seems to be vacant. Obviously, the funding situation is so bad that the WRB even lacks staff to update its web page.

The people of northwest Rhode Island are entitled to a public process with full disclosure. They have to the right to be informed on how much water is available to their community and how developments such as CREC will impact their future. The WRB is a vital, yet clearly dysfunctional element of this process.

In response to Fossil Free RI’s request for infomation, the Division of Legal Services of the Department of Administration, which now seems to represent the WRB, sent a handful of irrelevant documents. In contrast, RIDEM responded with a past-deadline request for a twenty-days extension because of the “voluminous nature” of the material requested.

The inconsistency of these responses all by itself speaks volumes, but the most “entertaining” response came from the Office of the Governor:

Thank you for emailing Governor Raimondo!

Governor Raimondo is committed to open, accessible and accountable government.

The Governor’s Office made good on this commitment by sending Fossil Free RI a mountain of documents completely unrelated to the request.

March 11, 2016

Energize RI carbon pricing bill under-taxes fugitive methane emissions

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[The following is the testimony presented by Professor Peter Nightingale at the hearings for Energize RI’s carbon tax bill (H 7325) introduced by Representative Aaron Regunberg.]

I would like to thank the sponsors of the Energize RI Act for putting carbon tax on the table. This is important legislation, but I cannot support the bill in its current form.

My main objection is that the bill under-taxes natural gas by a factor of 5 to 10, precisely when a perfect fracked-gas storm is about to hit RI:

The Raimondo administration is pushing for a one GW fracked-gas fired power plant in Burrillville.
National Grid is asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a permit to build an LNG liquefaction facility at Fields Point.

The Office of Energy Resources will be in charge of large parts of the implementation of this bill. I know from conversations with people in that office that they do not understand that fracked gas is worse for the climate than coal and oil on the time scale that matters.

The Office of Energy Resources bases itself on federal numbers, but:

EPA has systematically underestimated the amount of natural gas that escapes unburned.
EPA fails to account properly for the fact that methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Undoubtedly, these numbers also pollute the REMI study which, as a consequence is likely to overstate the greenhouse gas reduction that this bill will produce. [See also:
A study of pricing carbon pollution: reality or fiction?]

Indeed, “Methane Leaks Erase Climate Benefit Of Fracked Gas, Countless Studies Find,” was the tittle of a recent publication. This was sparked by a recent Harvard study that found an increase in U.S. methane emissions from 2002–2014. The increase was more than 30% from 2002-2014.

By under-taxing fugitive methane by roughly a factor ten, this bill unintentionally favors natural gas infrastructure development relative to fossil fuels with a smaller greenhouse gas potential. That is precisely the disaster that the Raimondo administration is planning in Burrillville.

Rhode Island cannot solve the emission problem by itself, but we should have a carbon tax bill that can be copied by other states. The Energize Rhode Island Act fails this test.

Please see my lack of support for the Energize RI Act as constructive criticism, and thanks again for your much appreciated efforts.

March 8, 2016March 9, 2016

The carbon tax bill at the Rise of the House this Thursday

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Annual Vehicle Border Crossings, U.S. vs. Select Canadian Regions, Index 100 = 2007

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After its untimely death last year, carbon tax is back in the Rhode Island legislature. On March 7, the Energize RI sent out an email:

The Energize RI Act is about to take a big step forward: the hearing in front of the House Environment and Natural Resources Committee is planned for March 10th at the Rise of the House (details below). We need you to support the bill alongside over fifteen expert witnesses who will be demonstrating why carbon pricing is a win-win solution. Read on to learn more about the hearing, or shoot us an email, and we’ll help you draft your own testimony for the bill.

The goals of the bill are admirable:

(4) Reduce public health, public safety, economic, and natural resource impairment risks associated with climate change; and
(5) Meet the state emissions goals for 2035 as set by the “Resilient Rhode Island Act” in 2014.

Fortunately, the bill has various provisions that will address the problem that Camus summed up as: “It is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.” To put it differently: we should be taxing the upper income brackets at the 1950s level of more than 90%.

The carbon tax collected under the Energize RI Act will be used as follows:

25% will be used for climate resilience, energy efficiency and conservation, and renewable energy programs that benefit low-income residential and small business properties.
30% is to be used to provide direct dividends to employers.
40% shall be used to provide direct dividends to residents.
There will be 5% for administrative overhead.

Item #1 is an attempt to deal with the well-known criticism of a revenue neutral carbon tax:

If you want to maximize the economic benefit of those carbon tax revenues, it is widely known that public spending/investment is a better approach. Multipliers for public investment are much higher than for tax cuts.

One may wonder whether, as is the case in Connecticut, installing more natural gas will be counted as part of item #1: “Switching to natural gas couldn’t be easier,” Evensource advises its customers and then refers them to the Green Bank for financing. Would you put something like that past Governor Raimondo’s step-on-the-natural-gas Office of Energy Resources?

It’s wonderful to see that we are having this discussion and that our legislators continue to think seriously about how to deal with climate change. I certainly appreciate the efforts of the sponsors of the Energize RI Act, Representatives Regunberg, Handy, Carson, Tobon, and Bennett.

Undoubtedly, experts will testify about the success of British Columbia’s carbon neutral tax bill. Before we get too excited about an attempt to duplicate the BC success story in RI, it might help to look at the following graph, which is from a post with the ominous title “British Columbia’s Carbon Tax and ‘Leakage’ Into the U.S.”

As the post states:

The chart makes it clear that there was a giant surge in Canadian vehicles crossing from British Columbia into the United States (solid red line) starting shortly after introduction of the BC carbon tax (in mid-2008).

If this kind of leakage occurs in British Columbia, what do you expect for a small state like Rhode Island? The only feature of the bill that might avoid this problem is the tax itself: $15 per ton of CO₂e. That boils down to ¢13 per gallon of gas. No sane person would believe that such a minimal tax will even remotely phase out fossil fuels. The bill may start a trend that might be followed by neighboring states, which indeed is the only way to avoid the “leakage” problem.

But, if setting a trend is the idea, it better be the right trend and this is the major problem with this bill. It contains a tax for methane that escapes unburned even out of state. That the bill recognizes this problem is a majors step forward, but the details matter. Getting so-called fugitive methane completely wrong is precisely why the national Clean Power Plan is a disaster.

According to the latest estimates, 12% of natural gas escapes and this is what is responsible for the fact that natural gas is worse for climate change than coal and oil for the next 50-100 years. Read more about this in Methane Leaks Erase Climate Benefit Of Fracked Gas, Countless Studies Find.)

To tax fugitive methane, the Energize RI Act will rely on numbers provided by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The RI Office of Energy Resources, which will be responsible for the implementation of this part of the Energize RI Act, will rely on bad EIA numbers.

Even this February’s EPA publication (see page E13, line 13) still uses outdated numbers for the global warming potential of methane and amortizes its effect over next century. We only have about a decade, if even, to avoid a climate catastrophe. For more about time scales and the fugitive methane problem see Precaution the new aggression.

The EPA has a long history of underestimating fugitive methane. The upshot of these errors is that the Energize RI Act might set a trend of under-taxing fugitive methane by roughly a factor ten. Exxon Mobil —#ExxonKnew, our nation’s biggest fracker— undoubtedly loves this trend! None of this should come as a surprise: the head of EPA has been a political appointee since its inception in 1970. The good news is that I’ve been told that, if the Act is passed this year, its sponsors will try to amend it to fix the flaw in the present act.

Here are a couple of thoughts to end with. Ponder Wendell Berry observation:

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

Let’s put in the context of climate science. As Hansen and Sato reiterate in their latest publication, Regional climate change and national responsibilities:

Humanity must reduce its emissions by 5-7% per year as of today to stop the wild dash off the climate cliff.
We, the industrialized carbon-debtor nations, have already outspent our greenhouse gas budget.

Finally, to add to your sense of reality, watch Hansen’s latest video, but don’t share it with the kids!

March 7, 2016March 8, 2016

NORAD celebration private—for pooh-bahs only

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Governor Gina Raimondo’s office issued a press release with this title: “State, Congressional Leaders Hail 6th Consecutive Record Breaking Year for Auto Imports at Quonset’s Port of Davisville.” This was the reason for today’s celebration at North Atlantic Distribution, Inc. (NORAD) attended at Quonset by the governor and our congressional delegation.

As part of the “FANG needs YOU: To protest Governor Raimondo to confront Governor Raimondo” campaign, I went to the NORAD event to confront our governor about her support for fossil fuels.

When the governor passed, I asked her about the cost of the proposed gigawatt, fossil-fuel fired plant in Burrillville, aka the Clear River en Energy Center. Holding up my sign, I said: “Nice jobs program, Governor, $2.3 million per job. How do you justify that?” Even from within six feet, she did nor see nor hear a thing!

We seem to have a trend here, as observed by Lorraine Savard, who staged a respectful bird-dogging presence at the Cherry Blossom event at the State House earlier the same day. Referring to Governor Raimondo, Lorraine observed: “She is either ignoring me or she is afraid to look me in the eye.”

You’d expect that Governor Raimondo has friends who would be quite able to invest the $2.3 million for a comfortable early retirement of the 300 workers who might benefit from the construction without creating a sacrifice zone. But I’m loosing my thread.

I had the pleasure to exchange a couple of words with our senators and representatives. When I asked Congressman Cicilline if he was planning to join us in opposing the power plant, he replied that Burrillville was not his district. True enough, but not all that gutsy. Fortunately, he agreed with me when I replied that it was not my district either, but my world.

The NORAD celebration made twitter buzz; @QuonsetRI:

@jimlangevin: I never get tired of coming down to @QuonsetRI for these great announcements

One of Representative Langevin’s staff told me, when I asked his boss about Burrillville: “This is a different event, Peter.” I have to sleep on that one.

Unfortunately, Mike Miranda, private owner of NORAD, did get tired with me and my off-topic message. He asked me to leave the event, which he referred to as private. The press was there and my impression was that the public was invited, but I left. Do you blame me when I wonder how much state and federal money is spent on shuttling our leadership to and from these “private” events?

One final tweet from @QuonsetRI:

Mike Miranda, CEO & Pres. of NORAD: We’re likely only port in country w/ 7 diffrnt manufacturers snding cars here

Undoubtedly, what you see in the picture are all electric cars that soon will run on electric power generated by Invenergy’s fracked-gas power plant in Burrillville. We call those “zero-emission” emission vehicles and that’s how we implement the Paris Accord and the #CleanPowerPlan. Unfortunately, not only here in Rhode Island.

March 2, 2016March 3, 2016

Founding father of Saudi America indicted

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Aubry McClendon, ousted CEO of Chesapeake Energy Corp, was indicted on Tuesday for conspiring to rig bids to buy oil and natural gas leases in Oklahoma. The indictment is the result of a four-year antitrust investigation by the US Department of Justice.

Let’s revisit some of the prehistory. McClendon was among the scam artists who took the White House for a wild ride on the natural-gas bridge to nowhere. Recall Obama’s 2012 State of the Onion address celebrating the founding of Saudi America:

… oil is not enough. This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. [thunderous applause] A strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs. We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years.

McClendon’s scheme was simple:

Lease land throughout Greater Frackonia.
Drill in the sweets spots.
Pretend that the gushing wells are representative.
Flip the leases before the buyers realize that the productivity of a typical fracked well is far worse and tends to decay by a factor of ten within three years.

Obama bought into McClendon’s scam. From there it trickled down via Rhode Island’s Congressional delegation, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Next, the snake oil flowed to Rhode Island’s Office of Energy Resources, with Commissioner Marion Gold blazing the fracking trail for Team Raimondo.

Janet Fire Wall Coit, hapless director of the Department of Environmental Management, is collateral damage of the tragedy. She is implicated by the bizarre Rhode Island statute that puts her on the Energy Facility Siting Board and makes her part of the “regulatory” process that will decide the fate of Invenergy’s proposal for a gigawatt fossil fuel power plant in Burrillville.

Recently, Steve Ahlquist raised the question why the siting board is in such a hurry to push through Invenergy’s proposal. One part of the answer is that McClendon’s gig is up; his co-conspirators know that their time is running out. The other reason to make haste is Saudi Arabia’s frontal attack on Saudi America by means of the current oversupply of oil, aka Oilmageddon. The title of this post on DeSmogBlog says it all: “Top Drillers Shut Down U.S. Fracking Operations as Oil Prices Continue to Tank.” Of course, Chesapeake is one of those.

No surprise that all of this coincides with the precipitous drop in Spectra Energy’s stock since the middle of 2014. This is the corporation that will be the main supplier of fracked gas for Invenergy’s stranded asset-to-be in Burrillville. Fortunately, Team Raimondo is ready to bail out Spectra by creating a market for its gas and by selling Rhode Island down the “Clear River.”

Guess who will be paying the bill for the construction of this power plant? We the people of Rhode Island, of course! It’s joke of cosmic proportions that there will be a 38 Studios hearing to begin at 4:30pm this Thursday in room 101 of the State House.

Thanks, Team Raimondo! We love you as you step on the gas in Burrillville to create 300 fleeting jobs. Special thanks also to you, Rhode Island AFL-CIO, for your support for “Clear River” in your October 2015 resolution

Hey, only $2.3 million a job. How do you beat that?

Note added to original post: Aubrey McClendon, 56, Ex-Chief of Chesapeake Energy, Dies in Crash a Day After Indictment

January 26, 2016January 26, 2016

Precaution the new aggression

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In the up-is-down world of the corporate media and higher education, the precautionary principle is now an example of aggression. Let me explain.

In its latest rating, Politifact analysed the question: “Could methane be worse for the climate than coal?“ They quote my URI colleague, geoscientist David Fastovsky:

But without appropriate historical context, he says he isn’t ready to say that fracked gas is worse for the climate than coal. That is a very aggressive statement to make, he says.

Is he awaiting the historical “oh oops, we just passed yet another tipping point?” The question about the effect on the climate of the national policy of methane as a bridge fuel came up in a position paper of the RI Environmental Justice League. The paper shreds National Grid’s proposal for an LNG liquefaction facility at Fields Point in Providence. This is about public policy, health problems, poverty and environmental racism, not ivory-tower science.

Maybe by “appropriate historical context” David Fastovsky means that in reaching a verdict on methane as a bridge fuel one has to decide whether we count on having a decade or a century to avoid climate chaos. If so, I agree and I’ll get to that issue.

During the last 13 months, I was arrested twice in FANG fracked gas actions. One act of civil resistance was my refusal to leave Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office until he ended his support for fracked gas—he still has not, to the contrary. The second arrest was after locking down with my pediatrician friend Curt Nordgaard as we blocked the Spectra Energy Gates of Hell in Burrillville, RI.

I took this “very aggressive” stance even though I knew full well that there is an infinitesimal chance that regulation will prove Cornell University’s Robert Howarth and coworkers wrong. Underlying their work is a judgement call about time scales. Howarth addresses this explicitly in his paper A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas.

Rather than reciting the full abstract of Howarth’s paper, we often say: “Methane is worse for the climate than coal and oil.” Yes, this is a short-cut, but does the media ever have time for the fully qualified truth? No, concision is what they want!

Here is my take on the question of time scales. If I look at the 2015 Arctic Report Card and how fast that part of the world is warming up, I conclude that the relevant time scale for climate tipping points is very likely to be a decade, not a century. Not convinced? Read this: Thresholds and closing windows: risks of irreversible cryosphere climate change with its:

Never has a single generation held the future of so many coming generations, species and ecosystems in its hands.

Politifact quotes Raymond Pierrehumbert of the University of Chicago. He implies that, because of methane’s short (about ten years) life time in the atmosphere, the effects of methane on the climate are reversible. I disagree, but let James Hansen speak:

I asked glaciologist Jay Zwally if I would be crucified for a caption such as: “On a slippery slope to Hell, a stream of snowmelt cascades down a moulin on the Greenland ice sheet. The moulin, a near-vertical shaft worn in the ice by surface water, carries water to the base of the ice sheet. There the water is a lubricating fluid that speeds motion and disintegration of the ice sheet. Ice sheet growth is a slow dry process, inherently limited by the snowfall rate, but disintegration is a wet process, spurred by positive feedbacks, and once well underway it can be explosively rapid.” [emphasis added]

Zwally replied “Well, you have been crucified before, and March is the right time of year for that, but I would delete ‘to Hell’ and ‘explosively”’.

The principle of practical irreversibility is sound, but the estimated time of arrival in Hell cannot be predicted accurately. I spent most of my scientific carrier studying these kinds of “explosive” instabilities. Take my word for it: there will be no reliable prediction until after the fact.

There is not a word in Politifact’s analysis about the numerous references in the discussion about threats to the climate system starting on page 108 of this compendium, but the real problem with Politifact’s rating is that it is ethically challenged. It is blind to the precautionary principle, which says that the burden of proof that a public policy is not harmful falls on those who want implement it. As a worthy member of the corporate media, Politifact reverses the burden of proof and puts it on the People.

Stated differently, Politifact fails to address how one makes a moral choice in the absence of certainty. Suppose we knew that the probability that Howarth is correct is 10%? (I think it’s over 90%, but that is not the point.) Would “only 10%” justify ignoring the risk, continuing business as usual and expanding the fossil fuel infrastructure?

Would you play Russian Roulette with a ten-shot revolver with one bullet? Does the expected survival of 9 out of 10 players reduce to 10% the truth value of the statement that this game is lethal?

Do we demand certainty in our perpetual war decisions? Of course not; Cheney’s One-Percent Doctrine prescribes war to avoid risks at the 1% level, but no such doctrine is applied to protecting the biosphere. The ruling class will survive climate change just fine —thank you!

Politifiction, here is your homework assignment. Rate this statement in the President’s Climate Action Plan:

“Burning natural gas is about one-half as carbon-intensive as coal […]”

Hint: notice that there’s not a word about fugitive methane nor about the destruction visited upon communities near the wellheads, the pipelines, the railways and across the globe.

January 22, 2016January 23, 2016

“Zero-emission” cars running on fracked gas

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In an editorial this week in the ProJo, Janet Coit and Marion Gold come to the rescue of embattled Governor Gina Raimondo. Janet Coit is Director of Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management and Marion Gold is Commissioner of the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources. Both serve at the pleasure of the governor and whatever strengths, independence is not one of them.

Governor Raimondo has troubling connections to Wall Street going back to her days as Rhode Island treasurer. Here are just two of a recent flurry of publications questioning the pension fund reforms that she pushed through in those days:

One of Governor Raimondo’s key supporters is John Arnold, a former Enron trader who went on to found a profitable hedge fund.

The irony of the Coit-Gold ProJo editorial is that it’s based on Enron-style accounting, used in this case to hyper-inflate Governor Raimondo’s “visionary” contributions to the climate change battle.

In their editorial Coit and Gold mention that RI ranks number four on the State Energy Efficiency Scorecard put out by ACEEE. You do not have to know how this ranking is produced to understand that it is pure bunk. Just look at what the Energy Information Adminstration web site has to say about Rhode Island:

Natural gas fueled 95% of Rhode Island’s net electricity generation in 2014.
Rhode Island is the second-lowest emitter of carbon dioxide among all states. Like the lowest emitter, Vermont, Rhode Island does not have any coal-fired electricity generation.

Natural gas is mostly methane. It is a greenhouse gas that is about 100 times as potent as CO₂. Methane is burned and escapes unburnt to generate Rhode Island electricity, but we put all of those climate threatening emissions on our neighbors’ tabs.

There is more about the ACEEE rating of Rhode Island as fourth in the nation that is disconcerting. Scan the ACEEE web site and you quickly discover that they mention EPA’s Clean Power Plan again and again. There are some minor problems with this plan:

Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” is a huge gift to the methane (“Clean Energy”) industry — we’ll show you how in a minute. And guess who’s big in methane? Big oil, of course […]

The plan fits perfectly with Obama’s general practice of saying one thing and doing the opposite.

Director Coit is one of the members of the Energy Facility Siting Board that is currently deliberating the fate of the new fracked-gas power plant with the Orwellian name Clear River Energy Center, Invenergy’s plan to sacrifice Burrillville to unfettered greed.

Coit is publicly on record with her support of methane:

With her so-called pragmatism, doesn’t Director Coit not sound remarkably like House Speaker Mattiello?

In the Coit-Gold editorial there is not a word about Clear River, nor about the natural gas that already produces 95% of RI’s electrical power. There is no mention that Governor Gina Ms Wall Street Raimondo is on record supporting fracked gas. That silence must be “because there is a fire wall,” as Director Coit said in the preliminary hearing of the siting board last week. How convenient!

As the Clear River theater of the siting board progresses, we might hear about the CO₂ emissions the power plant will produce in Rhode Island. What we will not hear from the Governor and her allies on the board is to whom we will charge the fugitive methane. Most of that escapes at the wellheads in Pennsylvania and along the pipelines and from the compressor stations. Nor will we hear about the suffering it causes to the people on the frontlines in Burrillville and across the globe. None of that, but we’ll follow the statutes, because we are a nation of laws.

Indeed, all of the Enron-style accounting is perfectly legal, but, dear reader, you surely do not believe any more than I do, that Mother Nature is impressed.

There is yet another accounting trick buried in the Coit-Gold editorial: the Zero-Emission Vehicle Action Plan. True, we need electric cars and they have no tail pipes that emits CO₂. Still, the electric energy such cars use has to be generated somewhere. If it comes from renewables we win; if we generate it with fracked gas, we loose. The latter is of course exactly what will happen if we let Invenergy build the Clear River Energy Center.

We are constructing a 30 megawatt wind farm off Block Island and are talking about a frack-gas facility with 30 times that capacity in Burrillville. Accounting gimmicks devoid of physics may fool the people, the editor of the the ProJo and our hapless leaders, but none of that will change the laws of nature.

Update after the original post: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from National Grid has finally made up his mind and now supports the Clear River Energy Center. He uses his same old arguments about choke points and price spikes. That was none of that last winter is but an irrelevant detail: As New England freezes, natural gas stays cheap.

January 7, 2016January 7, 2016

Invenergy fails to gag activists on power plant intervention

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During the last two days activists filed rebuttals with the Energy Facility Siting Board as they contest Invenergy’s attempt to suppress public input on its proposal to build a fracked-gas power plant proposal.

In a press release late last month Fossil Free Rhode Island cited as reasons for filing a motion for intervention with the Board:

The construction of the proposed power plant —part of the energy policy of team Raimondo— would slow down the transition to renewable energy.

As a recent report of the PERI Institute of UMass in Amherst states: “New investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy will generate more jobs for a given amount of spending than maintaining or expanding each country’s existing fossil fuel sectors.”

“Natural” gas has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. Clearly, team Raimondo is wrong on all counts: physics, economics and morality.

In response to Invenergy’s objections to their Motions for Intervention Sister Mary Pendergast, Occupy Providence and Fossil Free Rhode Island argue that the company misconstrues the rules according to which the Board operates.

The activists also take Invenergy to task on its claim that they lack sufficient interest to justify intervention. They remind the company of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), which declared that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. They also remind Invenergy of the Endangerment Finding of 2009 of the Environmental Protection Agency that determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations.

In a landmark environmental case (Payne & Buttler v. Providence Gas Co., 1910) the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that citizens can sue corporations for damages caused by “deleterious and poisonous substances.”

If these facts, rulings and liabilities do not constitute a direct interest, nothing will.

Occupy Providence, in its rebuttal, said:

Invenergy cannot credibly argue that Occupy Providence lacks sufficient interests to justify intervention in spite of the fact that “the proposed plant will produce greenhouse gases highly injurious to the 99% for the purpose of producing profits which will go almost entirely and certainly disproportionately to the 1%.”

Sister Mary Pendergast echoed the same sentiment and quoted from Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’:

26. Many of those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms, simply making efforts to reduce some of the negative impacts of climate change. However, many of these symptoms indicate that such effects will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption. There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy. Worldwide there is minimal access to clean and renewable energy.”

Two members of the Board serve at the pleasure of Governor Raimondo. That does not bode well for the impartiality of the Board. This is very troubling when it is clear that the Raimondo administration fails to understand the moral imperative to act on climate change.

Is there any ethical system under the Sun that holds that near-term profit is the ultimate standard? It is certainly not what is meant by the Affirmation of Humanism that proclaims:

We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.

Nor is it consistent with, as the Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change puts it:

Re-focus their concerns from unethical profit from the environment, to that of preserving it and elevating the condition of the world’s poor.

Citizens of Rhode Island understand that intervention is fully justified and, in spite of Invenergys’ claim to the contrary, that the public interest is not adequately represented by a state government and its corporate allies who willfully act in violation of Article 1, Section 17 of the Rhode Island Constitution, the supreme law of the State which establishes the duty to provide for the conservation of the State’s air, water and land.

Note added after original post: Also the RI Democrats of America (RIPDA) have filed a reply to Invenergy’s objection to their motion for intervention. In their conclusion they write:

Invenergy’s desire to block RIPDA’s involvement should concern both the Board and the general public, as it suggests that Invenergy wishes to limit the discourse on this topic and stack the deck in its favor.

December 13, 2015December 14, 2015

Paris agreement: COPout21

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COP21: Victoria Barrett, the teen suing Obama over climate change

The “final draft” for the COP21 climate deal in Paris is in and the Twitter spin machine is working overtime:

The strong Paris agreement on climate means a safer, more secure world for our kids. A perfect example of what American leadership can do.

— President Obama (@POTUS44) December 12, 2015

Another gushing tweet:

Today's #ParisAgreement to curb global #emissions is a major victory for our #climate, our oceans & our kids https://t.co/5q1H7Esx8H #COP21

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) December 12, 2015

Never mind that last month a court in Washington issued a groundbreaking ruling in a case of eight youth petitioners who requested that the Washington Department of Ecology write a carbon emissions rule that protects the atmosphere for their generation and those to come. The court validated the claim that the “scientific evidence is clear that the current rates of reduction mandated by Washington law … cannot ensure the survival of an environment in which [youth] can grow to adulthood safely.”

James Hansen has been involved in this Atmospheric Trust Litigation for years. In contrast with Senator Whitehouse, Hansen is not funded by National Grid and he explains in an interview with the Guardian why he disagrees with our “leaders:”

It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: “We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.” It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.

Self-congratulation of our politicians cannot cover up that fracked-gas boosters— such as President Obama, Senator Whitehouse and Governor Raimondo—continue to support an energy policy that ignores that in the anthropocene, when humanity has become the geological driving force, the pertinent time scale is a decade.

Climate change used to happen over the course of thousands of years. These days, it only takes a couple of decades. Here, once again, is Hansen:

Global warming is already affecting people. The Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico heatwave and drought last year [read 2011], Moscow the year before and Europe in 2003, were all exceptional events, more than three standard deviations outside the norm [fewer than 3 in 1000]. Fifty years ago, such anomalies covered only two- to three-tenths of one percent of the land area. In recent years, because of global warming, they now cover about ten percent—an increase by a factor of 25 to 50.

This month, scientists of the International Cryosphere Initiative published a report Thresholds and closing windows—risks of irreversible cryosphere climate change.

Some of these cryosphere changes have actually already begun. Scientists widely accept that even if we could magically halt warming today, committed and irreversible sea-level rise from glaciers, ice sheets and the natural expansion of warming waters is 1 meter (3 feet), though this new normal will not be reached for about two hundred years. Most scientists also agree that the West Antarctic ice sheet has been so destabilized by warming to-date that it likely cannot be halted without a very rapid stabilization of temperatures, and perhaps not even then. At best, we might only delay the resulting ice sheet collapse, and the associated 3–4 meters of additional sea-level rise, by some hundreds of years.

How much worse things get – how many other irreversible triggers are tripped – is up to us. Unfortunately, this report’s analysis of current Paris climate commitments indicates that they will fail to prevent many, if not most of these irreversible cryosphere processes from beginning.

“Never has a single generation held the future of so many coming generations, species and ecosystems in its hands,” as the report states, and yet we keep building fossil fuel infrastructure that will haunt us for the next fifty years. This energy policy ignores health and climate implications discussed at great length in this Compendium of scientific, medical, and media findings demonstrating risks and harms of fracking (unconventional gas and oil extraction.

If for some reason you do not have time to read the full 151-page report, you might want to look at this handy two-page summary of the “blessings” fracked gas brought to us by our corporately owned federal and state governments.

Our Orwellian #CleanPowerPlan seems to have been written by the fracked-gas lobby. Indeed, if you follow the money, you won’t be surprised that Senator Whitehouse never responded to my open letter of June 23 of this year nor found time to visit Burrillville to explain his support for the destruction he supports.

September 25, 2015

Beyond Extreme Energy breaks fast at noon today

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Day 15 of fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission—industry's rubber-stamp machine — Day 15 of fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, industry’s rubber-stamp machine

Fasters from Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE), together with their supporters from several faiths, will break bread in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in D.C. today to end a dramatic 18-day hunger strike undertaken to demand that FERC stop issuing permits for the pipelines, storage facilities and LNG export terminals that use fracked natural gas, and instead heed Pope Francis’s call to care for the Earth, according to a BXE press release.

On Friday copies of the pope’s encyclical will be presented to the five FERC commissioners. There will be music, brief statements, and a procession, featuring BXE’s colorful and moving 50-foot anti-fracking banner, “The United Sates of Fracking.” BXE will also display the new quilt made in collaboration between fasters and residents of far-flung communities fighting fracking infrastructure in their communities.

“Being here, eating no food for 18 days, has taken me at 72 the oldest faster a fascinating and disorienting rabbit hole, where ‘normal’ appears absurd and even suicidal, and where unrealistic may be our only way out,” said Steve Norris, 72, of North Carolina, is one of the oldest fasters. “I think because of our legal structures, because of their narrow fossil fuel focus, and because people disbelieve in viable alternatives, their minds are wedded to the madness of more fossil fuels.”

Sean Glenn, 23, of Connecticut, is one of the youngest fasters. “I think this fast has just reinforced my belief in the power of people and our ability to overcome our old ways and really embrace new ones with complete curiosity, not knowing what we’re getting into,” she says. “The love that everyone has shown has been really powerful and the respect that we’re receiving for it is what has surprised me.”

WHERE: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), 888 1st St NE, Washington, DC.

WHEN: Friday, Sept. 25, noon to 1:30 p.m.

WHO: The fasters, their supporters, and faith leaders.

WHY: The BXE fasters demand that FERC end its fracking-friendly support for expanding natural gas infrastructure, which has led to a toxic locked-in fossil fuel network at the expense of safe, sound, and clean renewable energy. Fracking wells and gas pipelines contaminate the homes and communities nearby, and also leak methane, which is responsible for about 25% of the man-made global warming we experience today.

Earlier this week a rally took place at the RI State House for People, Peace and Planet.

On Wednesday afternoon fasters adorned a street corner on the city side of the State House.

After that, on Wednesday, there was a vigil and prayer service at the State House in anticipation of Pope Francis’ address to Congress the following day.

Finally on Thursday, Fossil Free RI attended the celebration of International Peace Day at URI.

My oldest grandson, and youngest Fossil Free RI member, Octavio, at Peace Day on Quad at URI — My oldest grandson and youngest Fossil Free RI member, Octavio, at Peace Day on Quad at URI

Today at noon, our friends in DC, in Rhode Island and across the nation will break their fast. Also my wife, Beatrijs, and I will end our two-week fast; the battle against extractivism and wholesale destruction of life on Earth continues: “Where there is no vision, the people perish …” (Proverbs 29:18)

September 21, 2015September 22, 2015

No-new-permits faster in DC tells his story

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Steve Norris, a 72-year-old retired professor from North Carolina, told me on Saturday about his fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington, DC. He was doing surprisingly well, he said, 12 days into his fast and having lost over 10 pounds. One of the first things Steve asked me was if I had read Lee Steward’s testimony:

To fast is absurd. This is true especially for someone like me who doesn’t believe anything absent systemic, revolutionary change will do much good.

Yes, I had read Lee’s testimony; it sums up my feelings.

Steve Norris reminding NPR of the source of its funding

This is what Steve wrote about his experience occupying the Sidewalk at the FERC Gates of Hell:

Being here, eating no food for 18 days, has taken me down a fascinating and disorienting rabbit hole, where “normal” appears absurd and even suicidal, and where unrealistic may be our only way out. I recall hearing Starhawk saying something like this many years ago. “The time for reasonable is past,” she said. But I have struggled to make sense of this. The fast is a journey into unreasonable.

The other day was hot on the sidewalk in front of FERC, I was talking with a guy I dislike – he dominates conversation and is loud and bombastic. He mentioned something about money in the middle of our conversation, but I got so tired of him after 15 minutes I got up and, so as not to appear impolite, distributed fliers to passersby on the sidewalk. He continued talking to another faster, but when he decided to leave, I asked if he was serious about donating money. He hemmed and hawed, but we talked for a minute about the $1000 BXE wanted to give to Lincoln Temple, the very poor African American Church which generously has been providing us space for sleeping. He left, and I forgot about him. But half an hour later he returned and gave me an envelope with $1000 in cash. “Use this for whatever BXE needs.” We’ve given it to the minister of Lincoln Temple.

Jan and Ron Creamer at the RI Peace Fest in the People’s Park in Providence

On Thursday twenty year old Berenice Tomkins, a college student, went into the “open” FERC commissioners meeting, which does not allow public comment. The five polished FERC Commissioners are the corrupt decision makers in this powerful regulatory agency which makes life and death decisions for communities and people all over the country. Most of us are not allowed entry because we have disrupted meetings in the past, but this was Berenice’s first time, so she got in. She wasn’t sure what to do and waited through the incomprehensible conversations of the Commissioners, which in a coded language talk about decisions already made behind closed doors. When they started talking about forest fire mitigation she could no longer hold her tongue. She stood up and with a twenty year old’s strong voice took over the meeting: ” What are you talking about? It’s your policies which are creating the climate crisis, and you can’t mitigate the fires without talking about the climate crisis!” She talked for a minute or so until until FERC Security grabbed her arm and dragged her out. She was crying and proud as she came out.

The brave people of BXE need our love and support, they and all others who put their lives on the line to expose the ecocidal and communicidal crimes of our federal and state governments in support of their sponsors on Wall Street: No New Fracked-Gas Power Plant in Burrillville, RI!

Please join us at the People’s House in Providence tomorrow—come and hear the what motivates some of our local fasters in Rhode Island.

Help us avoid this:

The paper reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks and everything sown by the brooks shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.

Maybe it’s not too late yet.

September 17, 2015September 17, 2015

As the fast continues: Educating Raimondo on climate change

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PeacePeoplePlanet — Peter Nightingale at the State House (Photo by Pia Ward)

“You can’t negotiate with a beetle. You are now dealing with natural law. And if you don’t understand natural law, you will soon.”

Oren Lyons, a member of the Onandaga Council of Chiefs, quoted by Mary Christina Wood in her book Nature’s Trust, sums up what’s wrong with our self-absorbed political system and its failure to deal with our planetary climate emergency in referring to four million acres of Canadian forest wiped out by beetles now thriving in warmer winter temperatures as a result of global warming.

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, our dear governor Gina Raimondo was too busy for an unscheduled intro to the laws of nature. Too busy to interrupt paying back time for her campaign debts, I guess. Thanks, ProJo, for your perfectly timed editorial Familiar Odor. But please remember: Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people.

Maybe Gina was doing the hard work of making sure that Providence will not be left behind, as—in city after city—we build what Frank Deford calls “Athletic Taj Mahals,” monuments for the “filthy rich.” Thanks, Frank; you nailed it: Spending Public Money On Sports Stadiums Is Bad Business. But do not forget that Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people.

We The People who do not revolt against systemic corruption are the problem.

Since August 31, I’ve been trying to make an appointment with Gina to deliver a basic physics message. It took until September 13 before I got a reply: “Once again, thank you again for being in touch,” pretty pathetic writing that I should have received within three seconds rather than after two weeks, but no appointment.

The web site of the Office of the Governor is totally dysfunctional, but, dear reader, I’ll spare you details. I just wonder, why should we trust people to run a state if they cannot manage a web site? Of course, the problem in Rhode Island is not small-scale incompetence; broken democracy is what we are dealing with, but it’s not Gina, for Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people.

Pia Ward, my dear friend, is the engaged artist who made the black-and-white photographs in this post. Pia and I went to Gina’s office on Wednesday to deliver a pizza, a lunch skipped in support of Beyond Extreme Energy’s No-New-Permits fast in DC.

Peter Nightingale at the State House (Photo by Pia Ward)

Of course we were told that web site was not the way to make appointments with the governor. We have to follow procedures, no matter how many people have their lives destroyed or put their lives on the line in DC and elsewhere in the nation. We are but a nuisance and who cares about Terry Greenwood?

One of Gina’s aids, who dutifully took notes of our story, instructed us that I had to go home and to make an appointment I had to send an email to the gubernatorial scheduler, Kelly Harris (Kelly-Harris@governor.ri.gov). Never mind that we were already at the State House; the important work for corporate America and the filthy rich should never be interrupted, for they are all, all honorable people.

Report from the No-New-Permits fast in DC

**Fasters occupying the side walk for an overnight at the FERC Gates of Hell in DC.**

Ted Glick of ChessapeakeClimate.org and one of the Beyond Extreme Energy water-only fasters in DC had the following exchange with Norman Bay, the chairman of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Ted asked if the chairman would come down to receive the five copies of the Pope’s encyclical, Laudato Si’, on September 25th at noon. Bay said he would consider it. We all know what that means, but let Ted speak:

Then he stopped and we looked each other in the eye. He told me that he respected what we were doing with the fast and the commitment it showed as far as our beliefs. He said he felt this type of action was a good type of action.

However, he went on to say that he really had problems with us disrupting their monthly meetings and asked if we would stop doing that.

I responded: “How can we do that when there’s no change at FERC as far as permitting gas pipelines and fracking infrastructure, one after the other, with virtually no exceptions.”

His response: “These are just pipelines. We’re a regulatory agency. Blaming us is like blaming the steel companies that make pipes. It’s the production of the gas that you need to deal with.”

Keep up the disruption, my friends; irritation makes pearls. Dear reader, if you ever have to explain Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil,” this exchange would be a perfect starting point.

Events for the rest of our fast

Following up on the pledge to do three Ramadan-style fasts centered on each event in RI, Wednesday’s visit to the State House got Beatrijs, my wife, and me restarted fasting on Tuesday, after a one-day interruption. The following will get us to Friday, the 25th, when Beyond Extreme Energy will end its fast:

Peace Fest RI, Kennedy Plaza, Saturday, September 19, 2015, 1:30pm-4;30pm
Rally for People, Peace and Planet
URI International Day of Peace on the Quad 10am-3pm

Of course, it’s not too late to call Gina’s friends at Invenergy to tell them that fracked gas is not clean and that they should cancel the fracked-gas power plant proposed for Burrillville. Just keep in mind that Gina signed a contract with Invenergy, but Gina is an honorable person; so are they all, all honorable people. We The People are the problem, we who think that the next fully-scripted ElecToon will bring system change.

Oh, yes, how about that pizza we took to the Gina’s office? As anticipated, it ended up feeding hungry people on Kennedy Plaza.

September 11, 2015

As I begin my fast

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I accuse!
As my friends have dared, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, as I have pledged to tell it, in full, since the normal channels of justice have failed to do so. My duty is to speak out; I do not wish to be an accomplice in this travesty, the President’s Business Climate Action Plan. My nights would otherwise be haunted by the specter of the innocent people, far away, suffering the most horrible of tortures for a crime against Mother Nature they did not commit.

There you have it, a piece of my mind, freely adapted from Émile Zola’s J’accuse, but why and why now? Beyond Extreme Energy issued the following press release last Tuesday to announce their No New Permits fast at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC—this is the industry-captured body that rubber-stamps the projects described in a previous post)

(September 8, 2015) WASHINGTON, D.C.—On Tuesday morning, a dozen people begin an 18-day water-only fast in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to raise awareness of the agency’s contribution to worsening climate change and to harming the health and well-being of frontline communities where these projects are built.

The fasters, ranging in age from 23 to 72, are demanding that FERC issue “No New Permits” for industry projects such as interstate pipelines, compressor stations and LNG (liquefied natural gas) export terminals until the agency prioritizes solar, wind and other renewable sources of energy. These projects release methane pollution, a potent greenhouse gas that is worsening the impacts of climate change.

Fasters, organized by Beyond Extreme Energy, will hold vigil in front of FERC, 888 First St. NE, Washington, D.C., weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. They will be joined by others fasting for shorter periods at FERC or in their own communities.

They will end their fast on Friday, September 25, the day after Pope Francis speaks to Congress, where he is expected to address the issue of climate change and its disparate impact on the world’s poor.

In Rhode Island AFSC-SENE, Occupy Providence and Fossil Free RI are supporting the fast of our dear and unshakable friends in DC. I pledged to fast three days centered at each event in our community that I can attend. The fasts are Ramadan style: no food and liquids from sunrise to sunset. Beatrijs, my wife, is joining me to the extent that her diabetes allows it.

Here is our first event: a vigil with the Raging Grannies in Westerly this Saturday—hope to see you there!

September 9, 2015

Methane gas is no bridge fuel

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After a persistent campaign by a broad coalition of environmental groups and a string of escalating acts of civil disobedience, Rhode Island mainstream media have slowly begun to question the claim that “burning natural gas is about one-half as carbon-intensive as coal, which can make it a critical bridge fuel for many countries as the world transitions to even cleaner sources of energy.”

That misleading statement was pivotal in The President’s Climate Action Plan of June of 2013. Business climate would have been more appropriate. But the media are discovering that the claim fails to account for the climate impacts of methane, the main constituent of “natural” gas, over its full life-cycle.

The latter starts at the well. From there, gas is transported via pipelines and compressor stations, to its final destination downstream. Gas escapes unburned at every stage. When the global warming potential of this so-called “fugitive methane” is taken into account, it turns out that “natural” gas (both conventional and fracked) is a greater threat to the climate than coal or oil burned for any purpose. This came to light in 2011, when Cornell University researchers Anthony Ingraffea and Robert Howarth, along with actor and anti-fracking activist Mark Ruffalo, were named among Time Magazine’s 50 “People Who Matter” for performing and publicizing a study that undercut the bridge-fuel claim. In April of 2014, a recent update of the research has confirmed this finding.

Meanwhile, Rhode Island continues on its misguided path of expanding the fracked-gas infrastructure with two proposed build-outs of Spectra Energy’s compressor station in Burrillville—part of a 3-stage pipeline expansion that will ultimately send fracked gas from Pennsylvania to Canada for export overseas—and the planned construction of a new gas-fired power plant, also in Burrillville. In addition, there is a plan is for a liquefaction facility at Fields Point in Providence, RI.

In a striking instance of environmental racism, the LNG facility will be sited next to a residential, low-income community of color with numerous schools and day care centers, and several hospitals. The area also is the site of the Univar chemical facility which has a hazard radius of 14 miles, within which there are 311 schools with almost 110,000 children.

Increasingly, climate activists across the nation have mounted campaigns against fracked gas, not only because it is disastrous for the climate, but also because fracking causes wholesale destruction of communities and the environment. Indeed, the expansion of fracking and fracked-gas infrastructure across the country continues to draw people from all walks of like into defiant acts of civil disobedience.

On August 13, Curt Nordgaard and I were arrested after locking ourselves to the front gate of Spectra Energy’s fracked-gas compressor station in Burrillville, Rhode Island in a direct action organized by the group Fighting Against Natural Gas (FANG) to block construction at the site.

Nordgaard, a pediatrics resident at Boston Medical Center with no prior history of arrests, gave this explanation for his actions: “if we had legal means to stop this project, we would use them. Instead, we are forced to protect families and communities through nonviolent civil disobedience, in proportion to the severity of this threat.”

As a professor of physics at the University of Rhode Island with four grown children and six grandchildren, I am alarmed by the destruction we visit upon the Earth they shall inherit. In the spring of 2013, we founded Fossil Free Rhode Island to push for a swift transition away from fossil fuels.

Last December, I was arrested for the first time during a sit-in in U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office in Providence to protest his tacit support for the pipeline expansion; with this recent arrest, I have lived up to my words at that time: “Science has shown that natural gas is more dangerous for the climate than other dirty fuels such as oil and coal. This pipeline is immoral and unjust, and we will keep taking action until this project is stopped.”

Let me correct a detail of the Providence Journal article Methane release from gas extraction seen as climate threat. The article states that compared to carbon-dioxide, methane is “20 times or more as potent in trapping heat while it lasts.” In reality, that factor is 86 times over the first 20 years after release. Considered over a 100 year time frame, methane was considered 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide, but the IPCC revised this figure to 34; the EPA still uses 21 as the global warming potential, an estimate decades out of date. (The ProJo has thus far chosen not to publish my Letter to the Editor with this correction.)

Numerous current developments, such as polar sea-ice loss, land-based ice sheet melt, and permafrost thawing, show unambiguously that the 20-year time frame is critical if we want to have a chance to avoid run-away climate change.

Meanwhile, our congressional delegation continues to recycle National Grid’s talking points in favor of more fracked-gas infrastructure. Supposedly, it is all about avoiding price spikes and choke points. Never mind that there were none of these last winter, as explained by Reuters in this article As New England freezes, natural gas stays cheap.

In all those years since Howarth was honored by Time as a “person who matters,” and in spite of his 100+ climate change speeches in the US Senate, despite countless attempts to get him up to speed, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has been unable to absorb the fact that, as far as global warming is concerned, natural gas is worse than coal and oil. No surprise; this comes with our corrupt political system in which access exchanged for campaign contributions takes precedence over the common good. Our state government, of course, is just as much a victim of the corrupt political system we still tolerate: Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo’s Campaign Contributions From Financial Services Industry Come Under Scrutiny.

In this picture below we see access in action: Lindsey Graham, Sheldon Whitehouse tour coal-fired plant with new technology. I still try to teach my students to consult independent experts when they want to educate themselves. How quaint!

**Industry educating Tom Rice, Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse (CBC)**

June 23, 2015June 24, 2015

Open letter to Senator Whitehouse: Mother Nature not moved by political pragmatism

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Dear Senator Whitehouse,

In response to your latest email A Moral Urgency To Act On Climate, I would like to let you know that I have a hard time reconciling your writing with your support of natural gas as a bridge fuel. The problem with your email is not with what you write, but with what you omit.

"Someone will get upset." — **“Someone will get upset.”**

Here is the video that shows Pope Francis holding up that t-shirt saying “NO AL FRACKING.” The conclusion is clear, Senator Whitehouse, you do not have the Pope on your side. Indeed, in his Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ he quotes Patriarch Bartholomew:

[F]or human beings to degrade the integrity of the earth by causing changes in its climate, by stripping the earth of its natural forests or destroying its wetlands; for human beings to contaminate the earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life – these are sins.

The secular humanists among us might not have chosen the word “sin,” but that’s not the point.

I uploaded several papers for your perusal on my web site. The titles of the first two say it all:

A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas
A crack in the natural-gas bridge

These two papers are not all that new, but they are just as relevant now as when they were first published. They demonstrate that your support for natural gas as a bridge fuel is extremely ill-conceived. A third paper, A Comprehensive Analysis of Groundwater Quality in The Barnett Shale Region, has just been accepted in Enviromental Science and Technology.

This paper only scratches the surface of the reality that comes with the wholesale destruction of the environment that you support. This, Senator Whitehouse, is its human face:

The late Randy Udall estimated in 2013 that the oil and gas industry had leased 10% of the Lower 48—wholesale destruction indeed.

Look at this from the perspective of Pope Francis’ encyclical:

We all know that it is not possible to sustain the present level of consumption in developed countries and wealthier sectors of society, where the habit of wasting and discarding has reached unprecedented levels. The exploitation of the planet has already exceeded acceptable limits and we still have not solved the problem of poverty.

Shrill is the contrast with the economic ideology that can can come up with nothing but a carbon fee “to adjust the market.”

The papers you’ll find are just a tiny fraction of the science that led to a ban on fracking in New York and Maryland. If you are interested, I can supply you with quite a few more. Science is having a hard time keeping up with the pace of the industrial developments. As a consequence, little of it is definitive, but what is known is extremely disconcerting. One thing is clear: fracking poses a serious threat for the environment and for the health of vulnerable communities that are sacrificed to the pernicious ideology of perpetual, reckless growth.

With the impending start of the build-out of the compressor station in Burrillville and the construction of the rest of the AIM Project, it is particularly distressing that you have remained silent while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has ignored numerous requests for rehearing of the AIM Project. Mayor Martin Walsh of Boston—see #4 on my list—and your colleagues, Senators Warren and Markey of Massachusetts have weighed in, but the RI congressional delegation, which seems to take its lead from you in this matter, is nowhere to be found.

Your realization that the AIM Project was driven by the industry’s desire to export gas to the world market came too late, years after it was front page news in the American Oil and Gas Reporter.

We have brought up these issues before, but unfortunately you have never provided a reasoned response. You appear to have delegated your fiduciary responsibility to protect the environment to federal agencies that operate following statutes written by the very corporate interests that they are supposed to regulate. One of the most egregious examples of this regulatory capture is the “Halliburton Loophole.”

Here is the relevant, perverted section of the Safe Drinking Water Act on fluid injection, which together with the resulting “produced water” backflow, is essential to fracking:

“The term ‘underground injection’ –

(A) means the subsurface emplacement of fluids by well injection; and
(B) excludes –
(i) the underground injection of natural gas for purposes of storage; and
(ii) the underground injection of fluids or propping agents (other than diesel fuels) pursuant to hydraulic fracturing operations related to oil, gas, or geothermal production activities.”
While the SDWA specifically excludes hydraulic fracturing from UIC regulation under SDWA § 1421 (d)(1), the use of diesel fuel during hydraulic fracturing is still regulated by the UIC [Underground Injection Control] program.

The effect of the destruction visited on American Frackland does not stay there. As James Hansen on page 7, line 15, of his Friend of the Court Brief (number 5 on my list) wrote:

[F]ailure to act with all deliberate speed in the face of the clear scientific evidence of the danger functionally becomes a decision to eliminate the option of preserving a habitable climate system.

This brief was part of 2011 Atmospheric Trust Litigation, designed to address government’s delinquency as a trustee of the environment, and to secure “the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate for all present and future generations.” Here is a more detailed and more recent presentation of the science that led Hansen to the statement quoted above.

Four years have gone by since Hansen wrote his brief, but we continue our relentless wrecking of the global climate. Those who mistake feel-good rhetoric for reality might see progress, but I’m a simple physicist; I measure progress by numbers not adjectives.

As of today, we have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions globally by 7 percent per year, a number that does not even begin to account for the additional immediate threat posed by the fugitive methane that will be emitted as a consequence the natural gas policy that you support.

Few understand what a yearly 7 percent global greenhouse gas reduction would look like; I certainly do not. All I know is that “Mother Nature is not a kindly grandmother,” as Randy Udall put it. She is not moved by my lack of understanding nor by your apparent political pragmatism.

When you write about moral urgency, this causes a painful clash with the fact that National Grid is one of your biggest energy sponsors. This is just a relatively minor example of the legalized corruption we still call democracy. This kind of sponsorship allows the elites to perpetuate a racist, neo-colonial empire in which superpowers thrive while the many suffer, recognized as nothing but unpeople. Maybe, Senator Whitehouse, you prefer Pope Francis’ more delicate formulation:

There has been a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation. They are not recognized by international conventions as refugees; they bear the loss of the lives they have left behind, without enjoying any legal protection whatsoever. Sadly, there is widespread indifference to such suffering, which is even now taking place throughout our world.

Yours respectfully,
Peter Nightingale

June 2, 2015May 3, 2016

Burrillville compressor station buildout for fracked gas exports

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A grassroots coalition, No Pipeline Expansion (NOPE), stated in a press release issued last Friday that the Department of Energy’s (DOE) approval of Pieridae’s Goldboro liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Nova Scotia, Canada confirms their position that natural gas from Spectra Energy’s northeast pipeline expansions will be shipped overseas.

According to the Goldboro LNG website, the Pieridae “facility is located adjacent to the Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline, a 1,400-kilometre transmission pipeline system built to transport natural gas between developments in Nova Scotia, Atlantic Canada and the northeastern United States.” The Spectra Maritimes & Northeast pipeline connects directly to the Spectra Algonquin pipeline in Beverly, MA. Exports by Spectra, assisted by the proposed Kinder Morgan greenfield pipeline and Peabody lateral, could feed most of Pieridae’s needs for gas.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the Spectra Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Project, the first of three proposed Spectra expansions on the same line, on March 3, 2015. FERC’s Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for the project insists that the gas will not be exported, but the approval of the Pieridae project and the statements by the Canadian company reveal the true reason for the huge expansion. “FERC, a Commission funded by fees from the gas and oil industry, has obviously rubber stamped a project that will negatively impact Americans to benefit foreign nations and private corporations,” said Susan Van Dolsen of NOPE. “Many of us raised the issue of export to FERC during the public comment period, but we were told that the expansion was strictly for domestic use. We knew otherwise and this proves we were right.”

Last week, citizens from many states across the country gathered to protest FERC’s rubber stamping and undemocratic processes. #FERCus protestors, as they call themselves, include residents of communities along the AIM route who demand that their health and well-being should not be sacrificed for corporate profit and foreign customers. The protestors also oppose FERC’s approval of the Cove Point LNG export facility in Maryland. Beyond Extreme Energy, qualmless organizer Jimmy Betts said: “The bullying and deceptive tactics of how fracked gas infrastructure projects, like LNG export terminals, are permitted for private profits at the expense of our planet’s water, soil, air, climate, and human and natural rights, should be reason enough to question and ultimately block these devastating fossil fuel follies.”

Support for the Five who were arrested for blocking the FERC crime scene — **Support for the five—front row left—who were arrested for blocking the FERC crime scene**

The NOPE coalition is made up of grassroots organizations in the four states along the AIM route: New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. After issuance of the FERC Certificate, the coalition filed a Request for Rehearing with FERC on April 2, 2015, raising many serious issues including impermissible segmentation, overbuilding and significant risks to health and safety of communities along the route. FERC issued a tolling order on May 1, 2015, which means the rehearing requests are in limbo. Meanwhile, Spectra Energy began moving forward with preparations to begin construction on the project, despite massive resistance from residents and opposition from many elected officials.

Of particular concern is the new 42 inch diameter high pressure segment of pipeline that is proposed to cross the Hudson River, making landfall in Cortlandt, NY adjacent to the aging Indian Point nuclear power plant and two seismic zones. Pipeline expert Rick Kuprewicz and nuclear expert Paul Blanch have called for an independent risk assessment of the siting of the pipeline next to a nuclear power facility in a densely populated area that includes the largest city in the country. They maintain that the evaluation done by the plant’s operator, Entergy, and confirmed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was inadequate and seriously underestimated the risks.

**FERCus banner: natural gas and atomic energy, a match rubber-stamped by FERC**

Furthermore, a new lateral proposed in West Roxbury, MA, would run dangerously near to an active quarry; the City of Boston, Congressman Stephen Lynch, and other elected officials have called for a health and safety review.

The Spectra proposals, called AIM, Atlantic Bridge, and Access Northeast, would significantly increase the volume of fracked gas being transported from the Marcellus Shale through New England, and ultimately send it through the Maritimes & Northeast pipeline to the Goldboro export facility. The NOPE coalition objects to the projects for many reasons, including the risks mentioned above, as well as upstream effects on communities where fracking is occurring and the increase in fugitive methane emissions that contribute to climate change. In addition, ratepayers may bear the costs. “It is a fact that more than half of all the fracked gas moved across Connecticut will be destined for export, according to the US DOE. Yet, our State Senate just voted to force the cost of constructing and operating fracked gas pipelines onto ratepayers. In other words, the customer will pay so that energy companies can export fracked gas and make four times the profit available to them domestically,” says Martha Klein, Sierra Club Connecticut Chapter Communications Chair. NOPE is outraged that FERC is placing local communities and the global climate at risk for the benefit of foreign nations and corporate profit.

Protest at National Propaganda Radio, aka Gas Commercial Central — **FERCus Protest at National Propaganda Radio for Fracked Gas**

It has been known for a long time that natural gas was meant for export. The American Gas Reporter had a cover story in May of 2013 that by 2017 “U.S. gas imports from eastern Canada will have completely flipped to exports.” Members of our political class have been rather slow in understanding how they are being used by energy industry insiders. It took 16 U.S. Senators until February of this year to express concern about the pace at which the U.S. Department of Energy is approving natural gas exports “at the expense of households and industries that will suffer from higher natural gas and electricity prices.”

Governor Gina Raimondo, who enjoys the support of donors from Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital and JPMorgan Chase, supports the AIM pipeline expansion project. Blanking on exports, she said in a press release of April of this year:

I am committed to moving ahead with cost-effective, regional energy infrastructure projects – including expansion of natural gas capacity – that will improve our business climate and create new opportunities for Ocean State workers.

Of course all these politicians agree that it is necessary to destroy the global climate to save the local economy.

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