I’ve been curious why the lamestream media has been slow to cover the Stop The Frack Attack! rally on Saturday in DC. After all, there were several thousand protesters. (I was there, I counted them.) Then I was reminded that no major news network, not even CNN, covered the largest public protest in Japan’s history earlier in the month, either – 100,000 people opposed to more nuclear power for that Fukushima-shocked nation. Similarly, the media ignored ensuing protests in Tokyo, though the story was finally picked up by Reuters and The Washington Post after protesters vitalized a key gubernatorial election there. Has ANGA threatened to pull their eight billion ads? Philip Bump examines the troubling phenomena of an under-performing media willfully ignoring the news in A Weekend Of Protests Barely Makes The Papers on Grist.org. (more…)
I may have been the 5000th protester, but I got to shake Josh Fox’s hand and thank him for keeping our tap water safe! For every person who made it to the Stop The Frack Attack! rally in Washington DC, many more were there in spirit. This movement is growing!
Filmmaker Josh Fox With A Cluster of Reporters
“This issue’s not going away,” said filmmaker Fox, flanked by reporters on the march. (more…)
A single sane voice in the lamestream media? As early as 2010, msnbc‘s Rachel Maddow has been asking the seemingly obvious questions no one else wants to ask. (more…)
“Research has revealed that there is trouble in truth land. One of the Depue wells (8H) is severely flawed with a bubbling annulus. An annulus is the cemented layer between layers of steel, you know, the one that ‘never leaks’ and can survive cannon-type explosions as seen toward the end of the “Truthland” movie. Two more of the Depue wells (2H and 6H) have Pennsylvania DEP violations, which are shown below. Needless to say, it’s not going nearly as well as all the ‘experts’ interviewed in the Truthland movie led Shelly to believe it would!”
Read more details, and see copies of the Depue H8 DEP inspection violaiton reports, at Marcellus-Shale.US
Has The Truthland™ 8H Frack Well Ruined The Water Table?
Scott Cannon’s video camera is loaded for bear.
Routinely stonewalled by state agencies like the DEP, Resources Environmental, Fish and Boat, or the many other offices they’re told to call, Pennsylvanians have been quick to recognize that it’s up to them to put the impacts of industrial shale gas drilling on record. Official documentation of the damage inflicted by the industry on land, air and water may be slow to emerge, if ever.
Filmaker Cannon and Gas Drilling Awareness Coalitionhave long chronicled the devastating impacts of shale gas development in the epic The Marcellus Shale Reality Tour series. Here, the fifth installment covers events occurring in Franklin Forks, PA, not long after several frack wells were drilled nearby. It’s a perplexing and pathetic irony that four of those wells are on property owned by the Depues, the perky Truthland family seen sprawled across sofas, slamming Gasland, referring to it as “this little movie.” Y’know, the ones with the bubbling annulus. (more…)
Bechtel, a private water corporation operating in Bolivia, once went so far as to prohibit citizens from collecting rainwater… Sounds extreme, yet are rising water prices in the United States merely the first wave? As shale gas drillers ‘consume’ millions of gallons of fresh water everyday in Pennsylvania, depleting and despoiling local water tables, what will it mean for the million-plus well-water users across the state?
Sign the Water Bill of Rights via the website for the landmark film, Last Call At The Oasis, by Academy Award-winning director, Jessica Yu, based on the book by Karl Weber. Learn more, start here … (more…)
STOP THE FRACK ATTACK! in Washington DC ~ Saturday 7.28.12
Clearly, this thing’s gonna be The Thing. In fact, STOP THE FRACK ATTACK promises to be the biggest anti-fracking rally in the United States. Ever. Fractivists around the country, and around the world, are psyched. A new rallying cry from Josh Fox and Mark Ruffalo doesn’t hurt, either. (more…)
Publicity for the anti-fracking movement and the upcoming anti-fracking rally in DC – Stop The Frack Attack! – has been outstanding. Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon singing Don’t Frack My Mother, and it’s quickly exploding on YouTube. Real Time’s Bill Maher had both Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Maddow on the same show, the season finale no less. Steven Colbert is now even more infamous for locking horns with Pennsylvania Gashole-in-Chief, Tom Ridge, thanks to Fox’s newly released short film, The Sky Is Pink. And no one can stop smiling after David Letterman announced, “We’re screwed!” in a recent anti-fracking rant. Even Business Insider picked up the clip.
Luckily, it’s not just the lamestream who’s buzzing. Facebook is alive with carpool information and bus ticket sales. Can’t wait.
Rep. Jesse White’s Search For An ‘Honest and Fact-Based’ Discussion
There’s nothing irrational about wanting to protect our land, air and water from the ravages of industrial shale gas drilling. Today, Truthland is making the rounds with sponsored viewings in drilling regions across the state. I suppose the showings are meant to mimic the viewings of Gasland that fractivists regularly host in their homes. Make no mistake, Truthland was created by and for the Gas Industry, so they could have an artsy puff piece, sort of a mockumentary answer to Josh Fox’s powerful, Golden Globe winning, Academy Award-nominated film. But serious propaganda it ain’t, and if the ramifications of people believing this dreck weren’t so serious, one might even say it’s a gas. Truth is, Truthland only generates more exposure for Gasland, and makes us impatient for the promised sequel, Gasland2. Until then, Fox fills the factual void with this emergency short film, The Sky Is Pink.
Rep. Jesse White [D-46th] recently attended a viewing of Truthland in his district “to learn” … (more…)
“They’re poisoning you, and they’re telling you there’s nothing wrong…”
Gas companies don’t have to win the debate over whether fracking is safe or not, they only need to run out the clock. To argue the point seems kinda moot when they’re fracking away anyway. There are more than 200,000 fracking rigs in the US and, according to StateImpact’s frack map app, nearly 7,725 of them are in Pennsylvania. Yet if there’s no honest debate, who really wins and who loses? If you happen to live in a drilling-free county (you know who you are), consider taking a moment to listen to the people who live among the 7,725 rigs. Their experiences make it difficult to maintain that more fossil fuels and deadly dangerous drilling jobs are such a great thing.
The Woodlands by Rich Waters from Butler County, Pennsylvania
“When you’re so used to being healthy, it’s not fun getting sick and not knowing why.”
Uploaded by NatureAbounds:Residents in Butler County, Pennsylvania share their fracking experience. Film shared courtesy of Nature Abounds’ friend Rich Waters, a local photographer and videographer who is documenting how fracking is changing the lives of his neighbors in Southwest Pennsylvania. (more…)
Gas Industry Still In Denial
Shale gas extraction isn’t simply dangerous, it’s toxic. Uninsurable. And it’s not just Nationwide who denies rig operators commercial coverage. Fraccidents and industrial workplace accidents related to fracking have spiked. (more…)
This is big. When Nationwide Casualty Insurance Company, a large US commercial and personal insurer said the risk involved in underwriting fracking operations is “too great to ignore,” the gas industry’s fangs came out.
Energy-In-Depth spokesperson, Simon Lomax, emailed Associated Press reporter Rik Stevens, snarking, “Practical implications aside, the fact that the company would send out a statement this reckless, and this uninformed, should tell us a lot.For starters, it tells me that I won’t be buying home and car insurance from this company.”
Nationwide‘s “recklessness” does say a lot, but not what Willy Loman, er… Simon Lomax would have us believe. The insurer simply cannot afford to clean up the gas industry’s toxic messes. Maybe if producers are forced to self-insure, in the same way they are encouraged to self-regulate, they’ll be more careful. I understand that US shale gas production is already the most regulated in the world, better than OPEC nations, but when our air, land, water and health are routinely damaged by a single industry, and DEP enforcement is feeble at best, you certainly can’t blame Nationwide for doubting that gas industry assurances will cover it. Insuring fracking operations is too much of an unknown. (more…)
Gotta hand it to our sneaky, fathead governor. The ban on unconventional gas drilling in the South Newark Basin has been as divisive as a new Duke water study.
Since the Bucks and Montgomery county moratorium was tucked into the new state budget, which was signed on July 2, 2012, the articles, posts and Op-Eds decrying the hypocrisy of the measure have been proliferating like crazy. The Inky editorial, Fracking Ban Is About Our Water, says it all. Turns out, when you slyly slip seven all-important paragraphs into a late draft of an already cumbersome state budget, as did Sen. Chuck McIlhinney [R-Bucks], the body politic leaves for summer recess with a sour taste in its mouth. Reporters Michael Macagnone and Angela Couloumbis lay out the details in Local Drilling Moratorium Rankles Rest of State on Philly.com. (more…)
You may have noticed a new approach by the Gas Industry to reach out and touch us with their concern. TheMarcellus Shale Coalition has taken to the radio to promote its new online forum. Their new web-effort, which runs until July 20th, focuses on Southeastern PA, and was created “to better understand the questions residents of greater Philadelphia have about natural gas development in Pennsylvania.” Another major industry lobby group, Energy In Depth, has been busy debunking Gasland with all its might, along with all the other documented evidence which proves shale gas development pollutes land, water and air. If all this makes you uneasy, then your instincts are right on. Writer Dory Hippauf takes a good look at this latest industry tack, delving into the people and companies behind it, in Energy-In-Depth: The Dots. (more…)
Keep Tap Water Safe 