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Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387 Peter Nightingale – Page 2 – RI Future Deprecated: Function get_magic_quotes_gpc() is deprecated in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08bf/b1577/ipg.rifuturecom/RIFutureNew/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 4387
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Peter Nightingale is a theoretical physicist and teaches at the University of Rhode Island. He strives to leave behind a more just and peaceful, sustainable post-capitalist world for future generations, and his children and grandchildren in particular.
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There was State House hearing last week about the Lila Manfield Sapinsley Compassionate Care Act. The proposed legislation will provide a legal mechanism whereby terminally ill patients may choose to end their lives using drugs prescribed by a physician.
Two years ago, my dad said farewell to life on his own terms as he exercised his ultimate civil right. He was almost 95 at the time, and lived in Holland.
It replicates laws already in existence in Oregon, Washington, and Vermont, and policies put in place through court decisions in Montana and New Mexico. A similar law has been approved by the Canadian Supreme Court.
The law expands the rights of terminally ill and mentally competent adult patients to end their suffering at the end of their lives.
Two requests are required, separated by a waiting period of at least 15 days.
A second physician must confirm the patients diagnosis and prognosis.
Doctors must explain all the health care and treatment options available, such as palliative care, comfort care, hospice care and pain control.
The physicians must be sure the patient is of sound mind and understands the full consequences of using the medications.
Medications prescribed under the law must be self-administered, and may not be injected or otherwise administered by the physician or anyone else.
I support most of the above, except for the last requirement, which is highly problematic in the case of degenerative diseases such as Lou Gehrig’s disease or any other terminal condition in which the mind is sound but the body is not. In practice, the self-administration requirement (7) creates a terrible choice precisely of the kind we want to avoid: “If I do not get off now, will I have missed the opportunity to choose my own exit?” I would also prefer a less restrictive formulation of the waiting period (3).
The state has no interest in denying anyone the choice enshrined in this bill nor is it organized religion’s business to deny anyone this choice.
I point out organized religion not be divisive, but because in Massachusetts, where a “Death with Dignity” Initiative was defeated in 2012, most of the money came from Catholic sources and the messaging carefully avoided religious contents and the source of the funding.
The messages were perfectly scripted according to the time-honored principles of the Merchants of Doubt, well-known from: “The jury is still out on tobacco and climate change.” Something like that would of course never happen in Rhode Island, but if you start hearing about a referendum
For more information about what made the Massachusetts initiative fail see:
I was part of the decision my dad made and I fully accept responsibility for his death. I have never had any doubts nor do I regret my last words to him after I kissed him farewell: “You may go.”
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Individuals, grassroots groups and towns from the four states adversely impacted by Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) natural gas pipeline expansion project have formed a coalition to file a Request for Rehearing after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the project on March 3, 2015. The coalition engaged DC attorney, Carolyn Elefant, who filed the request on April 2, 2015, asking FERC to vacate the Certificate.
If FERC rejects the request, the coalition will consider taking legal action.
Suzannah Glidden, a co-founder of Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE) in New York said: “Local, state and federal elected officials and citizens along the entire AIM route have repeatedly cited the flawed FERC review. FERC’s approval is not supported by substantial evidence. The Certificate of Approval of the AIM Project should be withdrawn.”
Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh today joined the West Roxbury delegation to announce that the City of Boston has also filed a request for a rehearing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in regards to the West Roxbury Lateral Gas Pipeline.
After Spectra Energy submitted its application to FERC last year, groups and individuals from New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts filed to become intervenors in the FERC process. This entitles them to file a Request for Rehearing within 30 days after FERC’s issuance of a Certificate of Approval. FERC issued this certificate for the project and failed to adequately consider dangerous health and safety impacts as the pipeline and its infrastructure invade the region. For example, FERC approved siting of the 42-inch diameter, high pressure pipeline next to the Indian Point nuclear facility in a seismic zone in Buchanan, New York, and a new pipeline and Metering & Regulating station next to an active quarry in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
Alex Beauchamp, Northeast Regional Director of Food & Water Watch, said: “In light of the serious health, safety, and environmental concerns that FERC failed to address before approving this dangerous project, the agency must grant a rehearing. Without studying the threats posed to the Indian Point nuclear facility or the human health risks from airborne contaminants, it is disgraceful that FERC has approved the AIM pipeline.”
Rickie Harvey of West Roxbury Saves Energy, Massachusetts, said: “No meaningful alternatives to a high-pressure lateral scheduled to deliver nearly 30 percent of the proposed gas via the AIM expansion were provided, despite repeated requests from citizens and politicians alike. Because this proposed West Roxbury lateral pipeline traverses a densely settled neighborhood adjacent to an active quarry, a full rehearing is warranted.”
Spectra Energy’s AIM Project, a $1 billion venture, is the first of three projects designed to ship massive quantities of “natural” gas from the Marcellus Shale to New England and onto Canada and proposed LNG export facilities. Lisa Petrie of Fossil Free Rhode Island said: “Dividing projects to minimize their environmental impacts is considered impermissible segmentation and violates the NEPA process, as FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas) argued convincingly in a recent letter to FERC.
Emily Kirkland of the Better Future Project in Boston said: “As a climate justice organization, we have been fighting the AIM Project every step of the way, both through regulatory avenues like the request for rehearing and through grassroots organizing in communities all along the pipeline route. It’s simply irresponsible to expand the Algonquin Pipeline when we know that our continued addiction to fossil fuels is exacerbating the climate crisis and putting our safety at risk. We should be transitioning as quickly as possible to clean energy, not deepening our dependence on fossil fuels.”
The coalition of residents and groups includes: Better Future Project (MA); Capitalism v. the Climate (CT), Community Watersheds Clean Water Coalition (NY); Town of Cortlandt, NY; Food & Water Watch; Fossil Free Rhode Island; Keep Yorktown Safe; City of Peekskill, NY; Sierra Club Lower Hudson Group; Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (NY); W. Roxbury Saves Energy (WRSE) and impacted residents of W. Roxbury and Dedham, MA.
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Burrillville, RI — On Wednesday a group of activists embarked on a three day, 28 mile march from Burrillville to Providence to raise awareness about the proposed expansion to the ‘Algonquin’ natural gas pipeline. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an initial construction permit for the project on Tuesday, but opponents of the project have vowed to keep up the fight.
The march kicked off at the site of a gas compressor station on Wallum Lake road in Burrillville. The compressor station, which pressurizes gas along the 1,000 mile pipeline, would nearly double in capacity as part of the expansion sought by Spectra Energy. Activists are concerned about the climate change implications of the project, and the impacts that local residents living near the pipeline route would face.
“The compressor station expansion in Burrillville alone would add the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of 14,000 cars a year and substantially increase the pollutants pumped into the air this community breathes. This pipeline expansion must be stopped,” said Pia Ward, a member of FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas), the group that organized the march.
Fellow FANG member Nick Katkevich said the goal of the march was to carry the voices of those most impacted by the Spectra expansion to decision makers in Providence. “It’s time Rhode Island’s elected leaders listen to the voices of those living along this pipeline route rather than fuel executives who are focused solely on profit.”
The group will march about eight miles a day and will travel south through Pascoag and then head towards Providence on Route 44. The march will make stops in Chepachet and Greenville before arriving in Providence Friday afternoon where several events and actions are planned.
Among the marchers are several Rhode Island residents along with activists from Massachusetts, Connecticut and from as far away as New York and Nebraska.
Jimmy Betts of Omaha, Nebraska, has joined the march. Jimmy walked across the country in 2014 for climate action. “Burrillville is not alone in the fight for clean air, water, and community sovereignty. We must broaden the conversation with other communities engaged in these struggles. They may appear local, but they have sweeping global impacts. We can only win this together.”
Members of the community are encouraged to walk a day, an hour, or even a few blocks as they are able. It is recommended to dress warmly. Vehicles will be available for those unable to walk, or who cannot walk long distances. Supporters can also join the marchers upon their arrival in Providence by meeting at 2pm outside of the State House.
Both National Grid and the Rhode Island congressional delegation have argued that the pipeline expansion is necessary to suppress gas price spikes during winter months, but as the region suffers through the coldest weather in nearly a century, gas prices have remained steady. Organizers of the march point to liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals proposed for Maine and Canada as the real reason behind the pipeline expansion.
“This pipeline expansion isn’t about lowering domestic prices, it’s about a fossil fuel corporation trying to make the most profit possible – all while hurting communities, contributing to global climate change and blocking the development of cleaner energy sources” reflected Ward.
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Often called a “climate champion” by his defenders, Rhode Island’s Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse faced criticism in New Haven, Connecticut on Saturday for his strong support of fracked methane gas.
During Whitehouse’s keynote address at Yale University’s “New Directions in Environmental Law” conference, members of the Connecticut-based climate justice collective Capitalism vs. the Climate interrupted Whitehouse with an action they called a “laugh riot.”
Each time the Senator suggested he was a climate champion, the demonstrators roared with hearty laughter.
“It’s a joke that Senator Whitehouse is an environmentalist,” said a protester when asked by an audience member what they found so funny. “He needs to stop supporting Spectra’s fracked gas pipeline expansion. He’s not a climate champion. He’s a climate clown.”
Activists then walked to the stage and held a banner reading “Fracked Gas Kills” in front of the Senator. Asked to leave by police, the protesters left the auditorium chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, ha ha, ha ha!”
Apparently, after Yale campus police had cleared the room of laughing rioters, Senator Whitehouse joked that he was glad that open debate was alive and well at Yale. Police-moderated debate in the time of free speech zones! There you have it.
Prior to the senator’s speech, about 30 demonstrators from 350-Connecticut and Capitalism vs. the Climate protested outside the conference in opposition to his support of fracking. Capitalism vs the Climate quoted several examples illustrate Senator Whitehouse’s record as a fracking champion:
Spectra Energy’s website lists Senator Whitehouse as a supporter of their so-called “Algonquin” pipeline expansion in the Northeast states.
Senator Whitehouse praised fracking as a “blessing” in a 2014 interview: “I think it’s been an economic and environmental blessing to have gas as a bridge.”
Senator Whitehouse’s third largest campaign contributor in 2012 was Goldberg, Lindsay & Co., an investment firm that owns several natural gas distribution and pipeline companies. Goldberg, Lindsay & Co. also contributed $20,000 to the Senator’s “OCEANSPAC” that distributes money to candidates who support “ocean and environmental issues.”
Indeed, Senator Whitehouse —in the dedicated company of the other environmentalists of our congressional delegation— has consistently supported fracked gas a bridge fuel.
Early in January, I wrote to Lynsey Gaudioso, the `New Directions’ conference chair, to convey my dismay that Senator Whitehouse would be an honoree and keynote speaker at the conference. Not that I ever received a reply, or expected to, but one of my arguments was:
A plaintiff in one of the suits brought by Our Children’s Trust sued the federal government “for making decisions that threaten our right to a safe and healthy planet.” This right is enshrined in public trust law and demands that government act as a trustee in the management of essential natural assets. Building more fossil fuel infrastructure will delay developing a green power sector, while fracked gas has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. In other words, the policies Senator Whitehouse supports clash with his duty to protect the common good.
Regarding this last point, Bill Moyers recently interviewed Mary Christina Wood. She argued that it is the responsibility of government to hold in trust the health of earth’s environment for present and future generations:
If this nation relies on a stable climate system, and the very habitability of this nation and all of the liberties of young people and their survival interests are at stake, the courts need to force the agencies and the legislatures to simply do their job.
Instead, our legislators support policies that are manifestly inconsistent with their fiduciary duties as trustees of Nature’s Trust. In addition, the executive is in bed with the “stakeholders” it should be overseeing. As a case in point, just think of the agency whose “oversight” was responsible of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. Yes, that’s the famous Mineral Management Service of an ethics scandal, involving sex, drugs and graft. Finally, we have a complicit judiciary that fails to enforce the general requirement that legislative trustees avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.
Oh, oops, I forgot; a $20,000 donation is free speech!
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The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) took the next, and almost final, step required to force through Spectra Energy’s AIM project Friday. If approved, it would expand pipelines and compressor stations needed to transport fracked-gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania to New England.
FERC admits that the proposed project will have “some adverse environmental impacts” but it is of the opinion that most of these would be reduced to “less-than-significant” by minor changes to the original plan, FERC wrote, with a toxic brew of acronyms and legal jargon designed to be impenetrable by the average reader in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS).
I admit that wrecking the global climate and exposing humanity to the risk of wiping out a couple of billion people is highly suggestive of an “adverse environmental impact.” The support offered for the opinion that minor changes would reduce this problem to “less-than-significant” is less-than-convincing.
To put the FEIS in perspective, let me recall some background information. Fracked gas is an essential component of the President’s Climate Action Plan – aka all-of-the-above. It provides the fossil fuel industry with cover for enterprises like the AIM project.
James Hansen, former head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, submitted an amicus science brief in a lawsuit brought against the U.S. government:
[U]nabated fossil fuel emissions continue to drive the Earth increasingly out of energy balance. Unless action is undertaken without further delay … Earth’s climate system will be pressed toward and past points of no return … [D]elay in undertaking sharp reductions in emissions will undermine any realistic chance of preserving a habitable climate system.
Another important piece of background information is the contained in a video clip from Gassland 2 in which Robert Howarth explains the results of a series of scientific studies:
HOWARTH: The hypothesis here is that shale [fracked] gas is better for global warming than other fossil fuels and it’s a good transitional fuel. We tested that and the answer is: “No, it’s not!” The Whitehouse has clearly bought into this idea that natural gas is part of the solution of moving us gradually off of fossil fuels. I don’t think that they did that with good science.
The result of a convincing study of the effects of fracked gas on the climate is that
… both shale [fracked] gas and conventional natural gas have a larger GHG [greenhouse gas footprint] than do coal or oil, for any possible use …
a quote from a peer reviewed paper A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas.
With this in mind, deconstructing the FEIS requires only common sense. The conclusion is that our lawmakers fail in their fiduciary duty to cherish and protect the Earth —water, land and air— for current and coming generations.
This is my “favorite” part of the FEIS (see page I-5); you won’t miss a thing if you only read what I highlighted, but I’m including the whole paragraph for lovers of bureaucratic hogwash:
Commentors also noted that the EIS should address the indirect impacts of induced Marcellus shale development. Impacts that may result from additional shale gas development are not “reasonably foreseeable” as defined by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations. Nor is such additional development, or any correlative potential impacts, an “effect” of the Project, as contemplated by the CEQ regulations, for purposes of a cumulative impact analysis. The development of the Marcellus shale, which is regulated by the states, continues to drive the need for takeaway interstate pipeline capacity to allow the gas to reach markets. Therefore, companies are planning and building interstate transmission facilities in response to this new source of gas supply. In addition, many production facilities have already been permitted and/or constructed in the region, creating a network through which natural gas may flow along various pathways to local users or the interstate pipeline system, including Algonquin’s existing system. Algonquin would receive natural gas through its interconnection with other natural gas pipelines. These interconnecting pipeline systems span multiple states with shale formations in the northeast, as well as conventional gas formations. We cannot estimate how much of the Project volumes would come from current/existing shale gas production and how much, if any, would be new production “attributable” to the Project.
Take the phrase: “not ‘reasonably foreseeable’ as defined.” Of course, it is perfectly clear that we have a problem: we’re importing gas to Rhode Island and exporting death and destruction to Pennsylvania and to the globe as a whole and we are causing health problems for the people living in the vicinity of the pipelines. Might there be a reason why the pipeline does not run through Watch Hill? No worries! The problem has been defined out of existence by laws written by lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions. The law is an ass; you can ride it wherever you like, but it usually delivers for the ruling class.
Then there is is the phase “[w]e cannot estimate.” Clearly, our system of government has reversed the burden of the proof: pollution is just fine until the People prove that it’s not. Nobody seems to notice that this runs contrary to the original intent of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
There is more of this in the next paragraph, also from page I-5 with my bold:
We also note that the EPA and the states have imposed regulations within the past 2 to 3 years on natural gas production to minimize leaks and methane emissions. Therefore, past studies on production leaks and methane emissions cannot be used to appropriately predict future methane emissions. Predicting methane emissions and associated climate impacts is speculative given the newly required minimization efforts.
Again, the burden of the proof has been reversed. There is no evidence that the fugitive methane problems can be solved; all we have is the “yes we can” from the likes of Halliburton.
Tony Ingraffea explains the problem of methane emissions in this video:
Let me summarize it. There are numerous workshops and conferences, and countless papers on “well-bore integrity” for a simple reason: wellheads leak and nobody knows how to fix it. EPA and FERC act as if they have super-natural powers: “We impose regulations; nature know who’s the boss; problem solved!” I also wonder, if past studies cannot be used to make predictions, how does FERC predict the impact of what it’s approving? Once again, in case of doubt, the corporate stakeholders win.
The next paragraph of the FEIS talks about “improper segmentation.” Let me explain what that means: chop the project into several segments and build the first one under different, national regulations. That has the additional advantage that you’re working with New England senators and governors whose main concern, as we know, is to keep the poor in New England warm. Most importantly, you to never have to evaluate the cumulative impact of all the segments that you incrementally ram down the People’s throat.
FERC has yet another half-assed argument to show that improper segmentation is not a problem for the AIM Project. I’ll spare you the gobbledygook; it’s again on page I-5 of the FEIS. Let me just mention that the price of natural gas on the world market was probably three of four times as high as the national fracked-gas price when the AIM Project was hatched, but we are supposed to have forgotten that.
There has been a corporate takeover of government. We have to step up street protests, blockades, civil resistance, and direct action in general. This will become increasingly more difficult as the proposed law to make blocking roads in RI a felony demonstrates: the ruling class is waking up to the reality that the party is over and they are fighting back.
The fracking ban in NY (see this press release) goes a long way toward putting the burden of the proof where it belongs. The NY argument is essentially that not enough is known to proceed with fracking and that what is known does not bode well. That indeed suffices to warrant a ban.
For failing to fulfill its fiduciary duty to protect the environment and Nature’s Trust of which this office is a trustee, we should file a lawsuit against the Governor of Rhode Island. We should name our congressional delegation as co-defendants. In other words, let’s join the Atmospheric Trust Litigation movement!
This last point deserves a fuller explanation. For that see this video or better yet read Mary Christine Wood’s book: Nature’s Trust.
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I’m a 67 year-old physics professor at the University of Rhode Island. I have a wife, four kids, five grandchildren and sixth on the way. I would claim to be a respectable citizen, and yet, earlier this week Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had me arrested for caring about the global climate.
About ten friends from the multi-state NOPE (No Pipeline Expansion) Coalition and I set up a sit-in at Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s downtown Providence office that ended with my arrest by a Providence police officer when the senator’s staff was about to close the office.
I understand that Senator Whitehouse is well-regarded as a climate champion and a realist who understands the constraints imposed by political reality. Senator Whitehouse might understand politics, but I know something about physics. The problem is that the Earth’s climate does not obey the rules of that reality; it evolves according to the laws of nature.
Knowing that the lives of many millions are being put at risk, and that the impact would be distributed according to the same old rules of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy, I refused to leave the Senator’s office. All of us were there to make it clear that with his image of climate champion, he had become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
After attending the PUC hearing about National Grid’s proposed 23.3% rate hike, RI members of the NOPE Coalition started out on our mission to occupy Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office in downtown Providence. The action was coordinated with a similar action at his DC office. On our way, we picked up a couple friends from Burrillville. We made our way into the Providence office, and announced the purpose of our visit. We also made it known that some of us were willing to risk arrest to accomplish our goal, namely to convince the senator to do the right thing: to withdraw his support for fracked gas as a substitute for coal and oil.
That plan is being sold as a step in process of kicking the nation’s fossil fuel addiction, but in reality it will simply continue business as usual at best. As usual, the profits will going to Wall Street both as the shale bubble is being inflated and once again as it will pop.
We came equipped with sleeping bags and settled in comfortably for the duration.
We peacefully took over the space and started filling it up with our signs.
Our message was a follow-up of another NOPE action: on the previous day, police arrested two of our friends of Capitalism vs. the Climate, who had chained themselves to a mock “bridge to nowhere” and blocked the driveway to Spectra Energy’s methane gas compressor station in Cromwell, CT.
This is our bridge to nowhere:
The sign on the right reads:
HOW MANY KATRINAS, SANDYS AND SUPER TYPHOONS WILL IT TAKE, SENATOR WHITEHOUSE?
MOTHER NATURE IS NOT OUR KINDLY GRANNY
SHE’S NOT MOVED BY POLITICAL COMPROMISES
NOR ARE THE MILLIONS WHO WILL DIE ON THE FRACKED-GAS BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
SENATOR:
DRILL, BABY, DRILL
=
KILL, BABY, KILL!
On the left is a sign that identifies the problem with the President’s Climate Action Plan, which features natural gas a the bridge fuel between us and a green future:
…both shale gas and conventional natural gas have a larger GHG [greenhouse gas footprint] than do coal or oil, for any possible use… A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas
RobertW.Howarth
Energy Science and Engineering 2014 http://tinyurl.com/meth-bridge
Of course, we made sure that we identified the central problem with what we still call a democracy for lack of a better word. You might wonder how all of this ended. Well, it has not ended. I have a court date for January 8 and we’ll see how that goes, but I was back out on the streets of Providence and on my way home within an hour after arrest. One member of our group had picked up my car and was waiting outside. I was released without ever having seen the inside of a cell.
In fact, I may have made some friends among the Providence police. We had a pleasant conversation during the ride to the station, as I sat with with my hands shackled behind my back. (One of the unknown advantages of yoga is that this pose is quite comfortable compared to the more extreme positions I tend to favor.) The officer who drove us to the station told me that he respected me for standing up for my convictions. He asked me if I wanted to be processed quickly so I would be out within an hour. Who’d say no to that? I heard the other officer, the one who wrote up the incident report, say to one of his colleagues that I was the nicest protester he had ever arrested. That really made my day as I thought of the motto of the People’s Climate Movement: “To change everything we need everybody.” And, yes, that includes not only the police, but also Senator Whitehouse, his staff, and all of those whom we hope to welcome in our midst once they will have freed themselves of the chains of predator capitalism. Please help us to make that happen, but remember that time is running out: we are in Decade Zero of the climate crisis.
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Burrillville, Wakefield, RI; Danbury, CT; West Roxbury, MA — Grassroots groups from four states along the proposed route of Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) pipeline expansion, which cuts through New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, have joined together to host a coordinated “Week of Respect and Resistance” with actions from December 13 through December 19 in opposition to the project.
The project includes the expansion of a compressor station in Burrillville which is already “a major source of hazardous air pollutants”, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee.
The actions are planned in anticipation of the release of the final Environmental Impact Statement by the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) due on or about December 19, 2014. The week of action will target local, state and federal legislators and government agencies – all of whom have direct roles or influence in the approval of the project. These actions will build on the numerous rallies, vigils, meetings and call-in campaigns that have been happening across the states for the past several months.
“We are calling this a Week of Respect and Resistance: respect, because it’s important to honor the other struggles for justice that have come before us, and those that are taking place right now around the world. It’s also time for Spectra and our elected officials to respect our power and respect our desire to see a world powered by community owned renewable energy,” FANG organizer Nick Katkevich explains.
Fossil Free Rhode Island, a grassroots group promoting divestment from fossil fuels, will kick off the week with an event this Saturday, December 13, at the Alternative Food Co-op in Wakefield to highlight the need to build a localized, worker-owned economy and rein in the power of multinational corporations that perpetuates fossil fuel dependence.
Fossil Free Rhode Island will follow up with a call-in campaign next week to ask elected officials and state agencies to intervene to stop the AIM project.
Rhode Island groups will also be present at the meeting of the Public Utilities Commission next Tuesday, Dec. 16, to protest the 23.6% electric rate hike proposed by National Grid, a corporation headquartered in London, Great Britain. The meeting will be held at 10 am at 89 Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick.
Late last month, Fossil Free Rhode Island launched a campaign urging the Rhode Island Department of Health to block the expansion of the compressor station in Burrillville, citing elevated asthma rates in the surrounding area.“We are outraged that Rhode Island’s political leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—are ignoring threats to our children’s health, and instead are siding with the fossil fuel industries,” said Tony Affigne, chair of the Green Party of Rhode Island, a signatory to the campaign. “This week will show the state’s leadership that people and the environment are more important than Spectra’s profit margin.”
Rhode Island Clean Water Action, the Sierra Club of Rhode Island, Occupy Providence, and the Voluntown Peace Trust have also signed on. As Peter Nightingale, Professor of Physics at the University of Rhode Island, stated: “We need an immediate end to uncontrolled experiments that threaten public health in Rhode Island and the habitability of the planet.”
Many elected officials in New York, including Congresswoman Nita Lowey, wrote to FERC requesting an independent risk assessment of a massive 42” new segment of pipeline that would run 105 feet from critical structures at the Indian Point nuclear facility.
Renowned pipeline expert Rick Kuprewicz stated: “[I] cannot overstress the importance of performing a full and complete process hazard safety analysis, independently demonstrating, especially to the public, that there will be no interplay between a possible gas transmission pipeline rupture and the IPEC facilities to failsafe shutdown or cause a loss of radiation containment in such a sensitive and highly populated area of the country.”
“We are at a critical juncture. Expanding the Spectra Algonquin pipeline will lock us into a reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure for decades to come. Communities across the region are coming together to oppose this pipeline and call for clean energy alternatives, energy conservation and efficiency,” says Michelle Weiser, Community Organizer with Toxics Action Center.
If approved, Spectra would begin construction as early as March 2015, and the project would be completed in November 2016. Another Spectra expansion, the Atlantic Bridge, is planned to follow right after the AIM Project with additional expanded segments of massive 42” diameter high-pressure pipeline segments and compressor station expansions, and a third project is also in the works.
These expansions would be devastating to the entire northeast region and much of the gas would be shipped overseas to foreign markets. “If the governmental agencies fail us and approve this project, our nonviolent resistance will only escalate. This week will be a demonstration of our commitment to stop this pipeline at all cost,” says Katkevich.
Groups involved with the action include: Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (NY); Sierra Club (CT); Greater Danbury MoveOn.org Council (CT); Capitalism v. The Climate (CT); Occupy Danbury (CT); Fighting Against Natural Gas (RI); Burrillville Against Spectra Expansion (RI); Fossil Free Rhode Island (RI); Green Party of Rhode Island (RI); Occupy Providence (RI); Toxics Action Center (MA & RI); Mothers Out Front; No New Fracked Gas Infrastructure in West Roxbury, Dedham, or New England (MA); Flood Boston (MA) and Better Future Project (MA)
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Scott Nystrom, a senior economic associate Regional Economic Models (REMI), gave a talk at Brown University about Fee-and-Dividend Carbon Tax, a plan proposed by the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL). The talk presented the effect on the economy and power generation of a steadily rising fee imposed on the CO2 content of fossil fuels. The presentation was a condensed version of a report prepared for the CC by REMI and Synapse Energy Economics.
Here are my impressions, based both on the talk and the report. Nystrom started with an overview of the plan, which can be found on CCL’s beautifully-organized web page:
Place a steadily rising fee on carbon-based fuels
Give all of the revenue from the carbon fee back to households
Make border adjustments to ensure fairness and competition
This will be good for the economy AND even better for the climate
Border adjustments is short for fees on products imported from countries without a carbon tax, along with rebates to US industries exporting to such countries. Such adjustments serve to level the playing field for international trade.
Based on model calculations, REMI*Synapse makes the following predictions about what implementation of this plan would look like nationally by 2025 by comparing projections with and without the Fee-and-Dividend carbon tax:
2.1 million more jobs
33% reduction in CO2 emissions
13,000 premature deaths saved from improvements in air quality
The fundamentals of the CCL model legislation are perfectly solid, namely that burning of fossil fuels is causing rising global temperatures and poses an imminent threat to the natural environment and an unacceptable risk of catastrophic impacts to human civilization. Also the principle of letting the polluters pay is sensible. The problem, as I see it, is the unsatisfactory implementation of these principles resulting from incomplete understanding of climate science.
The proposal is to put a fee on carbon pollution, but it fails to account for fugitive fracked gas leaking into the atmosphere at the well, from the pipelines or anyplace else down stream. Clearly, the study predates our current understanding of the effects of fracked gas. The unburnt gas that escapes in copious amounts is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. The net result over the next couple of decades is that conversion to natural gas, as called for in the President’s Climate Action Plan, is very likely to be more dangerous for the global climate than coal and oil.
The Fee-and-Dividend puts a price on CO2 while pollution by fugitive fracked gas continues merrily free of charge. Summing up the climate impact exclusively in terms of a reduction CO2 emissions, as the REMI*Synapse study does, is simply wrong.
Similar criticism applies to the reduction by 13,000 of premature deaths that will result from near-absence of pollution caused by coal fired power plants. The effect of the poisoning of air and water due to fracking are very difficult to quantify with our current understanding.
What we do know does not look good; we are waist deep in the big muddy of an uncontrolled fracking experiment with public health. Notice that we’re not even talking about the effects of the nuclear power generation featured prominently in the study. I guess that the study also manages to suspend the possible health impacts of climate change.
If you can temporarily suspend your disbelief, follow me on to the prediction about power generation. Let’s look at the following figure lifted from the REMI*Synapse study. The figure compares power generation with and without Fee-and-Dividend Carbon tax. The impact on total power generation even as far into the future as 2040 is small. By that time, according to the study, roughly half of the power will be green. The other half will be a a toxic mix of fossil fuel and nuclear energy. The plan will be essentially phase out coal, and the share of nuclear energy will double nationally. Renewable energy increases by about a third relative to the no-fee baseline.
The talk left some of us wondering why the South is projected to have only a minuscule fraction of power generated by wind and solar, while there is a big chunk of nuclear power. Compared this to a proposal by the Solutions Project, a plan for how the world can transition to 100% renewable energy based exclusively on wind, water and sun, with no nuclear power whatsoever.
Time to wrap up. As mentioned, the REMI*Synapse study of pricing carbon emissions fails to price fugitive methane. The results might be interesting for some, but they have no relevance for the world we live in. Computational science has a phrase for such studies: garbage in, garbage out. Of course, this particular problem could be addressed by redoing the study and incorporating our current insights, but there is a more fundamental problem. The study seeks exclusively for market driven solutions. Those proposed by the Solutions Project are simply not in the realm of possible outcomes of any study that take the rules of predator capitalism for granted.
The good people of CCL may think that they have to speak the language of the ruling class to get its attention and they may have a point. It’s not my style, but as long as they do not really hope to get what they seem to wish for, they have my blessing. After all, we’re in this together, and to change everything, we need everyone.
We briefly interrupt the holiday shopping season to remind you of American carbon profligacy. Buy more at Walmart and export carbon pollution to China! It’s genocide and ultimately ecocide. As we shop, people in the Philippines are dying.
Whatever good all of this buying is supposed to do for the economy, it’s time to stop the climate disruption. It’s time to buy less and to share more.
Maybe the events listed below will shed light on the question whether our corrupt political system will be able to correct itself. I doubt it, and think that the transformation of consciousness required to change everything will come from the People.
Please click on the links for time and place of the following events:
A Presentation on a National Carbon Fee and Dividend Study
Regional Economic Models (REMI) and Synapse Energy Economics recently examined the impacts of a national tax on the carbon-dioxide content of fossil fuels.
Join us in discussing the impact of climate change in the South County community as we work towards implementing the recently passed Resilient RI Act. Come and have your voice heard!
“Adapting Waterfront Businesses to Rising Seas and Extreme Storms” will feature three speakers discussing the challenges of rising sea levels for waterfront businesses and how businesses can implement strategies to prevent or minimize damage.
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Last week Fossil Free RI sent out a press release on occasion of its launching of a campaign urging the Rhode Island Department of Health to block the expansion of the natural gas pipeline expansion in Rhode Island. As of this writing, the campaign is gathering steam, generated by green, grass roots energy. So far, the Green Party of Rhode Island, Rhode island Clean Water Action and Occupy Providence have signed on. Other organizations are in the process of formalizing the interest they expressed for doing the same.
The press release
At a screening of film-maker/activist Robert Malin’s new documentary, “People’s Climate March: News You Didn’t See,”Fossil Free Rhode Island, a local climate advocacy group, announced plans to petition the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) to block the proposed build-out of a compressor station in Burrillville. The build-out is part of Spectra Energy Corp’s “Algonquin Incremental Market (or AIM) Project,” a proposed major expansion of a pipeline carrying fracked gas from Pennsylvania to southern New England. Fossil Free RI has drawn up a petition and letter addressed to Dr. Michael Fine, RIDOH’s Director, and is requesting a meeting with him.
According to the letter, “Not only is this project part of a national energy policy that is potentially ruinous for life on Earth, but it poses an imminent threat to the safety and health of the people of Rhode Island.” The letter goes on to state: “Expanding our natural gas infrastructure is likely to accelerate climate change, which carries a plethora of health risks. At best, the project would delay the decarbonization of the Rhode Island power sector; at worst, it could be one of many disastrous missteps that will send the world over the ‘climate cliff’ in the next few years. By locking us into decades of increased dependence on fossil fuels, the AIM Project flies in the face of the Resilient Rhode Island Act of 2014 and the increasingly urgent calls from scientists to move away from fossil fuels.”
In addition to the threat of global warming, the activists cite immediate health concerns. Maps created by the RI Department of Health already show a higher prevalence of asthma insurance claims in the section of Burrillville near the compressor station, which is a “major source of hazardous air pollutants,” according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the project.
Lauren Niedel of Chepachet said:
Knowing that my neighbors are already getting sick here, I don’t understand why the Department of Health hasn’t stopped this. We need DoH to speak up and help us now, before Spectra bulldozers once again plow us under with all their money and influence.
Marie Schopac, a Fossil Free RI member from Charlestown, said:
AIM aims to put money in the pockets of fossil fuel corporations, which have historically disregarded human health. Why should we believe them now that this is safe?
Peer reviewed public health literature shows that there are correlations between health impacts and residential proximity to compressor stations. Indeed, many toxic chemicals –including precursors to ozone, which is linked to asthma– are strongly associated with such facilities.
As Peter Nightingale, Professor of Physics at the University of Rhode Island stated:
We need an immediate end to uncontrolled experiments that threaten public health in Rhode Island and the habitability of the planet.
For the extensively documented FFRI letter to the Rhode Island Department of Health click here.
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Fossil Free Rhode Island stands in solidarity with the courageous protestors and takes emphatic exception to the statement issued by Senator Reed’s office that the senator is an “environmental champion” who “always puts public health and safety first.”
In June of 2013, the Obama administration launched the President’s Climate Action Plan, which touts natural gas as a “bridge fuel.” In June, the EPA proposed its Clean Power Plan that allegedly “will maintain an affordable, reliable energy system, while cutting pollution and protecting our health and environment.” Both Rhode Island U.S. senators, although aware of the problems associated with natural gas, are on record for their strong support of its expanded use.
At a public forum held May 16, 2014, responding to a question of the senators’ stands on natural gas, Whitehouse said:
I do think that trying to ease the choke points into New England so that we are not seeing price spikes, as a short-term benefit for our economy, is a value.
We should be able to generate significant resources to safely rebuild our pipelines in New England so that we do not have methane leakage so that we tap into energy sources around the country.
Unfortunately, a “short-time economic benefit” is inconsistent with the typical 50-year lifetime of natural gas infrastructure. Even more jarring is that science tells us that humanity has about a decade to develop a global, sustainable energy system. A report released in December of 2013 by a multidisciplinary team of scientists “conclude[s] that the widely accepted target of limiting human-made global climate warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial level is too high and would subject future generations and the earth itself to irreparable harm. Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use must be reduced rapidly to avoid irreversible consequences such as a sea level rise large enough to inundate most coastal cities and extermination of many of today’s species.”
More important than what the senators say are their omissions. In their pitch for a business-as-usual infrastructure in New England they mention that escaping methane is a serious problem. However, they fail to mention that 75% of the leakage occurs near the fracking wells rather than in the pipelines. Nor do they utter a word about the public health and safety concerns associated with fracking: “A significant body of evidence has emerged to demonstrate that these activities are inherently dangerous to people and their communities. Risks include adverse impacts on water, air, agriculture, public health and safety, property values, climate stability and economic vitality.”
Meanwhile, the planned use of natural gas is based on serious underestimates by the EPA[10] of how much methane leaks into the atmosphere. The bottom line is that this development is likely to exacerbate the greenhouse gas emission problem.
We’ve seen many governments delay and delay and delay on implementing comprehensive emissions cuts. So the need for a lot of luck looms larger and larger. Personally, I think it’s a slim reed to lean on for the fate of the planet.
The climate disruption resulting from “all of the above” is morally unacceptable in terms of its human, environmental, and economic toll.
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Last Tuesday, Fossil Free Rhode Island screened an early version of Robert Malin’s documentary People’s Climate March News You Didn’t See. While there is a lot to be said about this breathtaking documentary and the discussion that followed, this post is more limited in scope and continues the Capitalism = Climate Chaos theme.
We’re doing our part in terms of carbon reduction. […] I’m particularly excited by the off-shore wind work that we are doing. Rhode Island has set an example for the rest of the country in terms of how you site an off-shore wind turbine and for the first time we’ll be generating significant amounts of domestic, Rhode Island clean power. So, it’s exciting.
Excitement! I love it, but at such moments my scientist’s instincts issue a red alert: “Where are the numbers?” That brings me to David MacKay’s book Sustainable Energy — without the hot air, and in particular to its first part Numbers, not adjectives. So, let’s see how the just-quoted adjective “significant” does in terms if numbers. First, we need a little physics: a unit to measure power, the rate of energy production or consumption. I’ll borrow the unit that MacKay uses because, as he says, it fits the “human experience.” This unit of power is the kilowatt hour per day. It is roughly what a single human worker can produce. It is also close to the power used by an old-fashioned, 40 watt incandescent light bulb. Just look at your monthly electricity bill, divide the total amount of energy consumed in units of kilo watt hours by the number of days in the month, and there you have your average power consumption in kilo watt hours per day.
Now, let’s figure out what the planned Block Island wind farm produces for the average Rhode Islander. It is nominally rated at 30 mega watt. That is on the “nameplate,” but we have to take into account the capacity factor, the fraction of the nameplate value that is actually generated after down-time and less-than-perfect wind conditions take their toll. Capacity factors vary, but typically they are in the 25%-50% range. Let’s be optimistic and go with 50%, which means that we can count on an average of 15 mega watt. Spread that out over the people of Rhode Island and you get about 0.35 kilo watt hour per day per capita.
At this point a light bulb should go on in your head: “That wind farm will light up what? One third of a light bulb?” Please, arithmophobes, bear with me; we need just one more number. Go to this web site of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and look up the total power consumed by the average Rhode Islander on electric power, transportation, home heating, etc. The total —only one third accounts for electricity— turns out to be 140 kilo watt hour per day per capita. Just pause to realize that this is the equivalent of having 140 people working for every single one of us, 24-7. Once you grasp that the fossil fuel industry is renting out a “140 person work force” to each one of us, you understand why fossil fuel money is one of the major sources of corruption of our supposedly democratic system.
Putting all the numbers together, we find that the Block Island wind farm will account for a one quarter of one percent of the “power experience” of the average Rhode Islander. We, scientists with our admittedly poor appreciation of politician’s reality, do not call 0.25% a significant amount. Unfortunately, without these sorts of rhetorical flourishes one does not get elected to public office. Indeed, last June I spoke to Congressman Jim Langevin’s aid dealing with environmental issues. After I had expressed my concern about the woeful inadequacy of our national greenhouse gas emission reduction “plan,” she gave me the same spiel about the great leap forward planned off Block Island. Yeah, one quarter of a percent, here we come!
During that same conversation I was shocked to hear the congressman’s aid say that I was the first constituent who expressed concern about methane, the bridge fuel to nowhere and linchpin of our national climate plan. As I have said in public before, our congressional delegation’s words are disconnected from its actions. As always, specious rhetoric reveals how the system works for its corporate masters. Sadly, “the best lack all conviction” and shine merely for want of competition.
Hot air may obscure but it cannot change that we are not doing our part for carbon reduction. Globally, we have to reduce greenhouse gasses by 6% per year as of the beginning of 2014, almost a year ago. That percentage that will increase rapidly every year we continue business as usual, but once again in 2013, the greenhouse gas emissions increased by 2.5%, extending an age-old trend. Our current trajectory will hit the cold-turkey limit of 100% instantaneous reduction in 2027. Only those who live in fool’s paradise see a one-time planned emission reduction by 0.25% as “doing our part.”
A minor dose of elementary science may reveal that we’re being fooled, but it cannot teach us values and priorities. The real issue is sustainable development as defined by the Brundtland Commission Report in 1987:
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
This statement acquires meaning once one define “needs.” The commission did that in stating that overriding priority should be given to the needs of the world’s poor. It also mentioned limitations imposed by technology, social organization, and the environment, but failed to conclude that sustainable development is incompatible with capitalism, as is clearly shown by the 180 degrees that separate our system’s walk from its talk.
Most of all, those who live on the front lines of climate change know that the U.S. is continuing business as usual. News You Didn’t See brought word that the tide is turning and that there is real movement in the streets, but let me quote what Melina Laboucan-Massimo, environmental activist and one of the indigenous women who had come from Canada, had to say:
Resource extraction and exploitation of our lands is so easy because they go hand in hand. Violence against the Earth begets violence against women, and if we don’t deal with both of them, we are not ever going to resolve the issue of the colonial manners and the colonial mentality, and the values of patriarchy and the values of capitalism that essentially exploit the land and exploit our women.
We, the privileged people of the industrialized world, are carbon debtors; we have vastly overspent our fair share of humanity’s carbon budget. Rather than continuing business as usual under the false flag of doing our part, we should be offering reparations, stimulating green power, opening borders to people rather than corporations, forgiving debts and doing away with patents. We should be working seriously on removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. Our current path with its free-trade agreements, denial and deceit moves us in the wrong direction; it will not address poverty nor will it restore even a semblance of morality.
Fundamentally, the task is to articulate not just an alternative set of policy proposals but an alternative worldview to rival the one at the heart of the ecological crisis— embedded in interdependence rather than hyper-individualism, reciprocity rather than dominance, and cooperation rather than hierarchy. This is required not only to create a political context to dramatically lower emissions , but also to help us cope with the disasters we can no longer to avoid. Because in the hot and stormy future we have already made inevitable through our past emissions, an unshakable belief in the equal rights of all people and a capacity for deep compassion will be the only things standing between civilization and barbarism.
This new mode of thinking will not come from our “elected” cheer leaders with their Madison Avenue sound bites. Yes, we have the problem stated by James Lovelock in the quote at the beginning of David MacKay’s book:
We live at a time when emotions and feelings count more than truth, and there is a vast ignorance of science.
But that is only a minor part of the problem; Evo Morales summed up what is at its core:
If we want to save the planet Earth, to save life and humanity, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system.
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This might seem progress to some, but I’m afraid that our Senators lost me even before the get-go:
We strongly support your Administration’s efforts to address climate change through implementation of your Climate Action Plan as we continue to push for climate action in Congress.
The Climate Action Plan was fraudulent in its presentation as it completely ignored the problem of fugitive methane, escaping gas that contributes with a vengeance to global warming.
The rhetoric of The President’s Climate Action Plan and the hot air generated ever since might sound impressive, but anyone who looks at how the plan is put into action is in for a rude awakening. The following recent news items clearly demonstrate this:
Dominion Wins US Approval For Cove Point Gas Export Terminal: “The U.S. has previously approved liquefied natural gas exports from Cheniere Energy Inc. (LNG)’s Sabine Pass LNG terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana, and the Freeport LNG Terminal in Quintana Island, Texas. About 18 applications are pending at the department.”
These articles refer to 20-year export contracts at a time when we have to reduce global emissions by 6% per year as of 2014. That amounts to a reduction by 70% over those 20 years. Does the Administration have a Secret Action Plan for migration to Planet B, and, if so, do our Senators have reserved seats on an escape vehicle?
Despite the abundance of domestic natural gas resources and low natural gas prices elsewhere in the United States, New England has not received the same benefit as other regions. [… S]ignificantly constrained pipeline capacity into the region has driven up natural gas and wholesale electricity prices …
Let’s see how that works. So, we’re going to keep domestic gas prices down by building export facilities for the global market with its much higher gas prices? Does that not sound as if it contradicts what they teach in Economics 101?
As mentioned, new, damning research about the national energy policy keeps popping up. Indeed, just this week, I came across this open access paper, in which, once again, methane as a bridge fuel is exposed as a sop — beware: skip if you suffer from number phobia.
Abstract
Increased use of natural gas has been promoted as a means of decarbonizing the US power sector, because of superior generator efficiency and lower CO2 emissions per unit of electricity than coal. We model the effect of different gas supplies on the US power sector and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Across a range of climate policies, we find that abundant natural gas decreases use of both coal and renewable energy technologies in the future. Without a climate policy, overall electricity use also increases as the gas supply increases. With reduced deployment of lower-carbon renewable energies and increased electricity consumption, the effect of higher gas supplies on GHG emissions is small: cumulative emissions 2013–55 in our high gas supply scenario are 2% less than in our low gas supply scenario, when there are no new climate policies and a methane leakage rate of 1.5% is assumed. Assuming leakage rates of 0 or 3% does not substantially alter this finding. In our results, only climate policies bring about a significant reduction in future CO2 emissions within the US electricity sector. Our results suggest that without strong limits on GHG emissions or policies that explicitly encourage renewable electricity, abundant natural gas may actually slow the process of decarbonization, primarily by delaying deployment of renewable energy technologies.
That “abundant natural gas may actually slow the process of decarbonization” is, of course, just common sense. Nonetheless, the letter signed by our U.S. Senators ends with “[y]our methane strategy is a key component of your Administration’s effort to combat climate change.” Dream, baby, dream!
None of this should come as a surprise. The US Senate is a staunch supporter of the Washington Consensus, which Noami Klein, recalling the late 1980s, summarizes as follows:
One year after Hansen testified, the Berlin Wall collapsed. History was declared over. This was the moment when we were all being told that there was no alternative to privatization, deregulation, cuts in government spending, tax cuts, free trade.
We’ve been living it; we’ve been breathing it. This is why it is so tragic that the Left has ceded the climate discussion to the environmentalists, because we should have understood this fundamental clash.
Did I mention the shale scam that forms the subprime carbon bubble at the basis of the Climate Action Plan? Let the late Randy Udall explain this, as he talks about a fatal characteristic of extreme extraction wells:
Drill-Baby-Drill is no longer optional; drill-baby-drill is destiny! […] This is progeria [a syndrome in children indicative of premature old age]. This is a well dying as it is born. […] We’ve chained ourselves to a drilling rig and thrown away the key.”
As our US Senators hop along from one fund raiser to the next and from one shale well to the next, they are captives on board of a neo-liberal drilling rig destined for nowhere. At the same time it has become clear how we can fight the Wall-Street-funded industry hype in a supposedly democratic system that operates according to the principle that “whose bread one eats, their tongue one speaks.”
As the nearly half a million people who participated in the People Climate March saw, we do have new leaders. They are in the streets, they are organizing everywhere and they understand that, as Chris Hedges summarized it: “Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.”
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As the nearly half a million people participating in the People Climate March in New York City on September 21 demonstrated, we now depend on our leaders who are in the streets. They will secure our daily bread, and they will forgive our debts, as they organize everywhere.
The message echoing in the streets of New York and across the globe may come as a surprise to some. The following is from a report that Jared Paul posted after his arrest at #FloodWallSt in New York. In Jared’s My report back from #FloodWallSt / #PeoplesClimateMarch he makes the key point loud and clear:
Looking around it became clear that the majority of the messaging was blatantly anti-capitalist. Signs read: “Capitalism Is Destroying Our Planet,”“Corporate Globalism doesn’t work: System change now!” “Climate Change is Class War.” I thought it was just our area but as thousands of people streamed by on either side heading for different parts of the march, I saw that the signs were almost all of similar messaging. From watching #DemocracyNow I knew that there was a large contingent of First Nation activists leading the march with a clearly anti-capitalist message as well.
Not all of URI might be quite ready for this radical position, but some of us certainly are. However that may be and wherever you may find yourself on this political spectrum, please join us for the:
Global Frackdown at URI: October 10, noon-2pm in front of URI Foundation on Upper College Road, Kingston.
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Text messages as the People’s Climate March was unfolding on this historical day, 9/21:
10:36 AM
[…] People flooding in from all streets. Buses are backed up waiting to get into […]
10:33 AM
manhattan – it’s huge! -Matt
11:41 AM
MattLeonard: And we are moving! At the front – but huge crowds packing the whole march, and more on spilling over on sidewalks.
12:31 PM
At 12:58 we’re holding a moment of silence while linking hands overhead in honor of those already suffering in the face of climate change. Spread the word.
12:36 PM
At 1:00 we’ll break the silence and sound the climate alarm that’s been ignored for too long. Be REALLY loud.
02:52 PM
BREAKING: initial count for the People’s Climate March: 310,000. Thank you all for being part of a beautiful, historical day.
03:36 PM
This march is so big that we’re asking people to disperse just before they reach 11th Ave. and 42nd St.
Here is a communication from Emily Enderly in Senator Whitehouse’s office:
Thanks again for all the info and proposing a meeting time and location. 10:30am on Sunday at 71st and 8th Ave works for Senator Whitehouse. […]
This is a unique chance to let Senator Whitehouse know that his position on natural gas as a bridge fuel is misguided.
Specifically, our congressional delegation should withdraw its support for the AIM project for natural gas pipeline expansion, which will disrupt Green Power for The People. Senator Whitehouse has the credibility to get us off this path to perdition.
Surely, our congressional delegation consists of honorable people, but they are part of a system that has lost its way, a system without ethics, empathy and compassion, a system that tramples on vulnerable communities and treats life on Earth as a disposable commodity.
We need system change. It’s really not that hard to understand the words of Jeb Saño, climate negotiator of the Philippines:
Super Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in my family’s hometown and the devastation is staggering. I struggle to find words even for the images that we see from the news coverage. I struggle to find words to describe how I feel about the losses and damages we have suffered from this cataclysm.
Our system can no longer take in the meaning of these words. It ignores what happened in the Philippines. Listen to our Senator Jack Reed. Undoubtedly he is a decent, well-meaning person, but all I can say is when I hear him talk about sea level rise in Bangladesh while he focuses only on how it will threaten US national security is this:
Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame on a system that robs people of their ability to show their sensitivity for human misery!
This lack of morality is what we heard from the organizers at “PCM Central” — read everywhere— on the days before the march. It resulted in a last-minute email to Rhode Island riders to the People’s Climate March:
Please participate in the 1pm moment of silence; text ALARM to 97779 for a signal. This is to honor those on the front lines, those in humanity’s sacrifice zones.
Fossil Free Rhode Island and our legion allies have been trying to get this message across for a long time.
And I think part of the responsibility for this, you know, is shared by the environmental movement in the United States, because there is this sense that:
That is a political no-go zone. You can’t talk about any kind of redistribution of technology or wealth between North and South;
This is toxic.
In her interview with Robert Malin, Vandana Shiva has the looters of Earth and their governmental flunkies stand naked.
VANDANA SHIVA: The issue is so urgent in my part of the world. We just had one monsoon season last year, where the extreme climate events washed away 20,000 people. We’re having extreme climate events in Kashmir right now, which affects both India and Pakistan, and more than 500 people have been washed away and died. We are talking of hundreds and thousands of people dying in every part of the world, every year. This is no more a theoretical debate. It is a human emergency and a planetary emergency.
ROBERT MALIN: So, what we are talking about is the genocide that is a socially committed one. What kind of responsibility does the United Nations have to put an end to that?
VANDANA SHIVA: The United Nations gave us the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and Copenhagen was going to give us the post-2015 commitments. Sadly, President Obama flew in, got China and India and other polluters together and said: “Let’s continue to pollute and let’s not have a legally binding commitment.” So, I would say that the UN is being blocked right now, which is why Ban Ki-moon is coming here to the streets.
ROBERT MALIN: I’ve heard you talking about the corporations structure. How are people that fighting against corporate power, union people fighting for labor, and people fighting for environmental justice are all fighting the same fight?
VANDANA SHIVA: Well, we are all fighting the same fight, because the same corporations are giving us climate havoc. The same corporations are giving us poisons in our food. The same sets of corporations and the same logic of a globalized free trade, which gives them freedom, is dismanteling the hard-won rights of workers to live a life of dignity and justice. Everywhere in the world, workers’ rights are being dismanteled, and the corporations like a system where workers live in misery and can be super-exploited. The Planet can be exploited and nothing should come in the way, but that is both ecocide and genocide.
Our politics is about national security and more bombs and submarines. Have we no decency? Of course, we do; let’s continue to change everything.
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Join us for a screening of ‘Disruption’, a fast-paced, cinematic journey through the wild world of climate change: the science, the politics, the solutions, and the stories that define the crisis at this critical point in the history of Earth.
The movie is close to an hour long, and afterward, we’ll have a discussion about what all of us can do together about this crucial issue.
The screening will prepare the way for the People’s Climate March in New York City on September 21st, when a vast quantity of people will converge in New York City for what may become the largest climate march in history to date. As we march, reported world leaders will be attending the UN for a special summit on the climate crisis.
URI students will join with people from other schools, community organizations, unions and hundreds of other groups from across the country and around the world for this historic occasion. We’ll take to the streets to demand the the climate justice that is within our reach.
There will be buses departing from Kingston and Providence to New York City on September 20th (Providence only) and 21st, and returning on Sunday, the 21st.
Tickets will be $30 round trip, with low-income tickets available for $15. You can purchase your bus tickets here.
Please fill out this interest form if you are planning on attending the People’s Climate March.
The screening of Disruption is sponsored by:
Fossil Free Rhode Island: action for climate justice, urging public institutions that divestment from fossil fuels is the only ethical choice. (Facebook: FFRI and Divest URI
RI Student Climate Coalition (RISCC), a statewide alliance of students and youth working for a clean, safe, and just future for all
URI Multicultural Center, dedicated to the development by means of social justice, change and empowerment of a campus united across culture, identity, and discipline
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A recent post congratulated our RI Governor Linc Chafee, who won an award for “exceptional destruction” and “his support of the Spectra fracked gas pipeline expansion and the natural gas industry as a whole.” NOPE, the grass roots-Green party coalition to stop natural gas pipeline expansion, seems to have been onto something in its act of gubernatorial recognition.
Let’s see what happened since. Let sunlight disinfect!
CLF, the Conservation Law Foundation, published documents obtained by means of a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents show that the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) and the representatives of the NE governors have tried hard to avoid a transparent process and have put in place a massive infrastructure initiative that gambles not only with tax payer funds but with the global climate in its totality. The following sums it all up:
In January, the New England Governors announced a regional infrastructure plan to finance new gas pipelines and electric transmission lines with billions of dollars in funding from residents and businesses. Documents obtained by CLF through public records requests show:
Details worked out “behind closed doors.” The states and the agency in charge of implementing the Governors’ plan – the New England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) – are deciding on the elements, scale, and costs of the plan in secret and have repeatedly shielded technical and legal analysis regarding the plan from public scrutiny.
Self-interested industry insiders shaping the plan outside public view. NESCOE and state representatives have been and are currently working out many of the most important details of the plan in private discussions with gas pipeline companies and the gas and electric utilities that would earn billions from the plan. The states are using talking points directly from industry and allowing electric and gas utilities to help define their roles as middlemen who stand to profit from the plan .
Ignoring smaller , more affordable solutions. Despite public statements to the contrary, NESCOE and the states agree in private that they “ are not looking for market adjustments as alternatives to our current infrastructure investment path” that could be far less costly. According to the executive in charge of the region’s electric grid, the point of the plan is to use public money to “ overbuild ” gas pipeline.
NESCOE claims that it is not subject to public records laws and is refusing to provide any documents to CLF. Several states also are withholding their documents about the plan. CLF is considering legal action to force compliance and bring these document to light.
The dedicated reader may follow this link to learn more about the details. A document that reveals NOSCOE’s own, detailed summary of its stunning ignorance is here.
Finally, it should be reiterated that supporting decisions without understanding the details now seems to be the strategy of choice of the representatives of the Corporate States of America.
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Guy McPherson gave a talk Climate Change — The End? at URI on April 12 of this year. The first part of his provocative presentation is now available as an annotated video, put together by Robert Malin.
This sums up the main points of this installment:
Earth is headed for a temperature increase exceeding 3.5C (6.3F) above baseline, the average global temperature at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
There have never been humans on Earth in that temperature range.
Human extinction will result and come about as a result of absence of habitat.
The main-stream media and governments are complicit in covering up decades worth of scientific research and predictions.
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Yesterday, there was a protest at the State House against the 38 Studios bailout. Let me cite from the announcement over at the Occupy Providence website.
This one of the worst shady deals that politicians have made in Rhode Island. Now, they are trying to stick the People with the bill.
Wall Street has weighed in, trying to pressure the State to use the People’s money to bail out this bad deal for which the People never asked. Should Rhode Island be a place where insider deals get made behind the scenes, while those who hope to profit from these shady deals can be sure of getting paid at the People’s expense?
The Rhode Island will never have a solid economy until it shakes its reputation for paying off these shady deals. Refusing to bail out 38 Studios debt will help put the State on the right track by discouraging other bad deals in the future. The State will be much better off it shows it is willing to resist Wall Streets pressure for a bailout.
38 Studios debt is not the People’s debt; let the insurance company that insured the deal pay!
What else needs to happen
Christopher Currie was at a State House with a handout containing the following article of the Rhode Island State Constitution:
ARTICLE VI (OF THE LEGISLATIVE POWER)
Section 16. Borrowing power of general assembly. — The general assembly shall have no powers, without the express consent of the people, to incur state debts to an amount exceeding fifty thousand dollars, except in time of war, or in case of insurrection or invasion; nor shall it in any case, without such consent, pledge the faith of the state for the payment of the obligations of others. This section shall not be construed to refer to any money that may be deposited with the state by the government of the United States.
Conventional 1% wisdom, equipped with massive amounts of neo-liberalist economic theory and ruling class case law, will solemnly explain that this article does not apply to the 38 Studio situation. As to the economic part of the argument, this summary of Chris Hedges will suffice:
Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.
Those who are not willfully blind can see this destruction develop in front of their eyes, but there is and alternative (TIA)
This is how we’ll be competitive in a resilient, local economy, while we say farewell to self-destructive neo-liberalism for the few:
Workers will create their cooperative businesses owned by the folks who do the actual work. Nobody wants to be a wage slave in a medieval, 1% fiefdom! The folks who will run these places will take good care of them. They will not threaten to leave the State to get special deals. No, they’ll be good citizens who won’t indulge in the smug blackmail of the self-entitled rich.
Those co-op folks will be our fellow Rhode Islanders and neighbors. They will live here among us with their families and friends. They will cherish our communities and they will heal Mother Earth the ravages the rich have visited upon her.
As we say farewell to the destructive capitalism for and by the Vampire class, and kiss its capital and its “investments” goodbye, we’ll build a local economy with food security, and clean water and fresh air for all. We’ll have a power grid owned and operated locally and cooperatively by the People for the People.
We’ll make an end to a system that creates borders for people and maintains global inequality and racism. We’ll put an end to NAFTA-, TAFTA-, TPP-globalization, which removes those borders to free the United Corporations of the World so they can destroy human solidarity and increase inequality and poverty, which Gandhi saw as the worst kind of violence of all.
As to the State Constitution, it is a living document. Let’s blow new life into it on the People’s terms!
This is what non-violent revolution looks like; cursed be 1% case law be and the predator economy! We need system change; bailouts do nothing but perpetuate the current system.
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Last Tuesday State Senate climate bill S2952 was unanimously passed by the Environment & Agriculture committee. Huzzah! The previous Monday, the EPA announced a “historic” proposal to cut carbon emissions from power plants by “30%.” Ah-choo! The answer to the question “percentage of what?” is given in this panel discussion on The Real News Network, where Daphne Wysham also explains my quotation marks:
It’s historic in the sense that the bar has been set so low. Yeah, it’s good to see the Obama administration finally wresting power out of the hands of Congress and taking some action, but essentially it’s like trying to put out a house fire with a squirt gun. And at the same time, when we should be using multiple fire hoses, instead we’re worrying about the criminal, in this case the polluter, burning our house down.
Here is my cynical take on this consummately capitalist Climate Action Plan put out by the White House – EPA axis of evil:
We’ll build new and retool old coal power plants to run on methane
Item (1), pipelines and exports will drive up the price of methane
This will bail out Wall Street with its toxic weapons of gas destruction, i.e., its investments in the shale gas industry
Meanwhile, we’ll invest billions in chasing fugitive methane
Finally, just after the next presidential elections, when the fracking boom goes bust, we’ll have the “best” of all possible worlds:
Virtually nothing invested in renewable energy
Methane and its price up there in the stratosphere
The economy, environment, and future wrecked with one modest plan, but we’ll be fine until the end of the quarter
The story
Let me explain all of the above. This is what the fracking industry claims:
With a history of 60 years, after nearly a million wells drilled, there are no documented cases that hydrolic fracturing has led to contamination of water.
Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, stated unequivocally in a financial analyst call in 2008:
I can assure you that buying leases for x and selling them for 5x or 10x is a lot more profitable than trying to produce gas at $5 or $6 mcf [per thousand cubic feet].
I smell a Wall Street bubble, but, dear reader, if you’re not convinced, maybe this —from the same source:— will sound familiar:
Banks no longer held on to mortgages. Instead it became lucrative to make loans, package the mortgages, have a ratings agency pronounce it a safe investment and then flip them to investors, thereby collecting large fees. This is not unlike the land grab which shale operators engaged in by leasing millions of acres of land, drilling a handful of wells and pronouncing the field “proved up” and thereby a “safe” investment, and then flipping such parcels to the highest bidder. This exercise quickly drove prices up.
The New York Times, already in 2011 knew what’s going down and published industry insider emails that exposed the shale scam; see Drilling Down. None of this had an impact on the bullish forecasts of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), which has a long history of over-optimistic projections —see page 28 of Drill, Baby, Drill— and breathtaking exaggerations.
This takes care of items 1 through 3 of my Executive Summary for Cynics. Let’s move on to item 4, fugitive methane. Almost a year ago, I explained why, in my opinion, the White House Climate Plan was fraudulent. To sum it up, the fact that methane only produces half the amount of carbon-dioxide per unit energy in the process of burning it is extremely misleading. It ignores the immediate and present danger of the fugitive methane that escapes during drilling and piping. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon-dioxide. To skip over this vital information is, as last year’s “Climate Action” Plan did, is nothing less than a cover-up of conspiracy to commit a crime against humanity, nay, the biosphere.
Still, one critical concern is that methane affects the atmosphere more quickly—and given the ticking climate clock, it presents a unique danger. “We should and must control carbon dioxide because of its long-term consequences, but the climate system is far more responsive on the short time period to methane,” said Howarth. “And so if we are to slow the warming and avoid these potential tipping points just fifteen or twenty years out, we have to control methane emissions.”
We have also analyzed potential upstream net methane emissions impact from natural gas and coal for the impacts analysis. This analysis indicated that any net impacts from methane emissions are likely to be small compared to the CO2 emissions reduction impacts of shifting power generation from coal-fired steam EGUs [steam generating units] to NGCC [Natural gas combined cycle] units. Further information on our analysis of upstream impacts can be found in the Appendix 3A of the RIA [Regulatory Impact Analysis].
(I can’t help it, but bureaucrats’ salaries are based on the average number of acronyms they pack into one sentence.)
Whom should I believe, Wall Street’s own White House and EPA or a bunch of “corrupt, grant-chasing” scientists?
Just to get a sense of perspective, it’s helpful to keep in mind that there is an alternative (TIA) to this approach all-of-the-above coming the the rescue of just-more-of-the-same. Here is one example:
Plans to Convert the 50 United States to Wind, Water, and Sunlight
Local power generation? That might give Power to the People, who —polluted Heaven forbid!— might decide to run the power grid by means of worker-owned co-ops. That would spoil the business climate for the Vampire Class. What would this do to poor corporations such as National Grid, head-quartered in the United Kingdom? That’s a no-go, baby! It does not fit in with our neoliberal, hyper-financialized system operated by our precious, Wall-Street-funded Washington Duopoly.
The only ones who do not seem to understand any of the above are the politicians. And, yes, that includes, our own celebrated Rhode Island congressional delegation — you can hear them hear speak in support of the Meth Bridge to Nowhere.
Of course, none of this is a surprise given the toxic bloom of public servants from Goldman Sachs infesting the White House. Or to paraphrase Upton Sinclair:
It is difficult to get politicians to understand something, when their campaign contributions depend upon their not understanding it!
As mentioned, the US Energy Information Administration has a long history of over-optimistic projections. This is what informed our ElecToon in Chief in the 2012 State of the Onion address:
This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy. (Applause.) A strategy that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.
We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years. (Applause.)
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Energy Information Administration downgraded by 96% its estimate of the amount of recoverable oil in the Monterey Shale in California. The White House continues to blow bubbles for the 1%, and —praise the Lord of Death!— the farcical, all-of-the-above national energy policy rolls on, while 60% of US shale oil goes poof!
Fighting back!
Earlier this month, the Democratic Governors association met in Greenwich, CT. Tim McKnee of the Connecticut Green Party welcomed protesters of NOPE, the No Pipeline Expansion grassroots coalition:
Welcome to Greenwich Connecticut! Welcome to gated communities and billionaires. I’m not talking lowly millionaires, I’m talking billionaires. This is so symbolic! Where are governors meeting? Not in Bridgeport, CT. No! Not in Pawtucket, RI. No! They are meeting here, where the money is!
Death is rather silent. That’s why Death has asked me to speak, but it’s quite an honor that the Lord of Death has traveled from the Underworld to be here today.
The analysis I presented above may be too cynical and even totally wrong. Who knows? We have to keep in mind that indeed there is a lot we —that includes the deciders the 1% bought for us— do not know. What we do know is that Sheldon Whitehouse, who, as he admits is not familiar with the details of the Spectra pipeline, nevertheless supports the pipeline expansion project. Indeed, he and Jack Reed nonetheless blessed the project with their signatures of support. Neither one of this duo seems to understand that most of the methane escapes at the well. United with the shale industry informed we decide. What a marvelous confidence booster!
For war and violence we have the Manhattan Project, and in no time we build enrichment facilities the size of the US car industry. For war and violence we follow the demands of the One-Percent Doctrine, but for peaceful purposes and the future of the biosphere we throw caution to the wind, and all we can come up with are squirt guns!
Randy Udall, a couple of months before his death, gave an intriguing presentation about the oil and shale gas boom with which he was intimately familiar. Here are some of his poetic musings:
Does that carbon have any desire? These ancient plankton and little microscopic sea creatures, do they want to be back on the stage again? And what do people want? And then I asked myself can you have cretaceous carbon without have a cretaceous climate? Again, this period in Earth’s history was very warm and sea levels were very high compared to where they are today, hundreds feet higher. The North Pole was as warm as Denver. Can you mine and burn cretaceous carbon without having a cretaceous climate? I think that … maybe it’s not an open question. Maybe we have the answer to that already.
I’ll end with quoting Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.
[L]et’s just keep being predators and watch the planet cast us off, because the planet is going to cast us off, or at least a sizable majority of us. There’s no question in my mind about that. The planet will go on as it went on after the dinosaurs, but human life might not. And that’s the nature of the challenge that we confront in this century.
Oh, oops I forgot this: NOPE is happy to congratulate our own fearless governor. Keep up the good work for the 1%, Linc!
Important health information — the the price is right, the cost of reading this is your mind:
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