Don’t Frack Me, Bro!
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…)
Archive for the ‘Energy’ Category
Rachel’s Rant
July 26, 2012Truthland’s Shelly Depue Has A ‘Bubbling Annulus’
July 25, 2012Seriously.
Marcellus-Shale.US reports in Trouble in Truth Land DEPUE #8H that Mrs. Depue’s frack well borehole is full of it.
“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
Nightmare Neighbors In Franklin Township
July 24, 2012Has 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 Coalition have 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…)
They Tell You It’s Safe
July 24, 2012via Zack Malitz, WaterDefense.org
If we don’t end America’s growing addiction to natural gas, the gas industry will ruin our communities, our health and our climate.
Saturday, July 28, 2012 – Washington DC
“We’re industrial now. We live in an industrialized zone.”
Visit WaterDefense.org on facebook
Merchants of Drought: Private Water Utilities
July 23, 2012Bechtel, 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?
“Water is for life, not for profit!”
Get The Frack Out of Our Drinking Water!
STOP THE FRACK ATTACK! ~ Saturday, July 28, 2012
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…)
No-Budget, High-Brow Anti-Fracking Slogans
July 22, 2012(i.e. They’re free.) Help yourself, share the wit, and see you at Stop The Frack Attack! on Saturday, July 28 in Washington DC!
Hey Obama: Don’t Pass Gas!
Don’t Frack Your Mother
Thou Shale Not Frack
“Safe Fracking” Is a Fairy Tale
Methane Blows
Kill The Drill
Solar Doesn’t Spill
Frack Barack!
Drill, Baby, Burn!
They Get Rich. You Get Cancer.
Once You Frack, You Can’t Go Back (more…)
Mobbing The Mall, Mindfully
July 21, 2012STOP 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…)
Babes In Truthland
July 18, 2012Rep. 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…)
Nothing Left To Debate
July 17, 2012“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…)
‘Mystery Moratorium’ Sticks In Pennsylvania’s Craw
July 12, 2012“Democrats Exploded”
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…)
Drill, Baby, Drill?
July 11, 2012
Not In Anyone’s Backyward!
Health is the Number One Concern of people opposed to fracking. If you have concerns about the potential adverse health effects resulting from unconventional gas extraction, visit The Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project at environmentalhealthproject.org for valuable tips and clinic information. Read more about this landmark project in Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project To Address Fracking Health Concerns from the Associated Press via HuffPost Green.
An In-Depth Look at Energy-In-Depth
July 10, 2012And Plenty of PA Politics, Too
You may have noticed a new approach by the Gas Industry to reach out and touch us with their concern. The Marcellus 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…)
Restore The Safe Drinking Water Act
July 9, 2012Close The Infamous Halliburton Loophole!
via fractivsta extraordinaire, Jewel-y Ann:
The American Water Works Association has joined with the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies and the National Association of Water Companies in issuing a joint policy statement on the protection of drinking water supplies from hydraulic fracturing and associated oil and gas development. Here’s the statement: (more…)
Just Ask A Pennsylvania Politician
July 8, 2012Natural gas drilling is complicated. I’ve been known to go on about it long past the point of being polite. Woe to those who ask a simple question because there are no simple answers. Yet if you care deeply about our environment, about public health and the health of future generations, it’s difficult not to get a little impassioned when the subject comes up. Thankfully, it comes up a lot more often. When I’m fortunate enough to have the ear of a state official, I keep it brief but I let them know I’m alarmed by specific impacts of Shale Gas Production. I stick to the facts, and mind my manners of course.
FACT 1: (more…)
Shale Gas vs. “Dirty” Coal
June 6, 2012This week, one of EcoWatch.org’s Most Read Items was a post by Andy Rowell of priceofoil.org entitled Fracking Boom Kills Renewable Energy Industry. Commenting on a trio of pithy headlines from The Guardian newspaper, Rowell concludes, “Gas, especially shale gas, is likely to undermine renewable investment. Anyway, gas is now being seen as low carbon by the EU, and will receive subsidies that should have gone to kick-start the clean, renewable revolution. This is despite the fact that shale gas is no cleaner than dirty coal.” (more…)
Crying the Bans
May 31, 2012Fracking Opposition Worldwide
A number of countries have taken action to curtail “seam gas fracking,” yet the fight to permanently protect land, air and water from extreme fossil fuel extraction rages on. Here, an overview of the global state of fracking opposition, brilliantly compiled and regularly updated by Johnny Linehan at FrackingHell (UK). (more…)
Battle Ballads: Alerte Schiste Lists Hundreds of Anti-Fracking Songs
May 26, 2012It’s too easy to waste time on Facebook, yet every once in a while you find something big and beautiful. So, while I hope Mr. Zuckerberg’s new marriage goes more smoothly than his recent IPO, and I was initially daunted by Timeline, I had to share this recent fb discovery, which I happened upon via Alerte Schiste via Fracking Hell UK via Protecting Our Waters via …
Anti-Fracking Songs Version 2.1 (24.3.12) No. Entries 233
If you’ve got the music in you, be sure to send your anti-fracking tune to alerte.schiste@gmail.com.
Moms In HazMat Suits
May 24, 2012Families fracked as threat of shale gas pollution hits home…
WTFrack.org, an impressive anti-fracking organization in Colorado, recently reposted this item from The Denver Post. The story made me mad. Madd mad.
“DENVER — A small group of mothers and children from Erie marched into the building that houses Encana Corp.’s Denver headquarters this morning to present a petition signed by 21,000 people demanding that the energy giant forgo a planned natural gas drilling site near elementary schools and an adjoining neighborhood…”
Why should these women have to fight for their children’s right to clean air? Probably because adequate zoning restrictions don’t exist in their neighborhood. And thanks to Act 13, they don’t exist in my Pennsylvania neighborhood anymore, either. I applaud these moms for organizing a direct action. I’m certain they have plenty of other things to do. (more…)
NPR Drills Into Marcellus To Find “Missing Answers”
May 14, 2012In Case You Missed It…
The Fracking Boom: Missing Answers is a Special Series airing all week on NPR (WHYY in Philadelphia). According to the promo: “The natural gas boom is under way in the United States, with more than 200,000 wells drilled in just under a decade. But people living on the front door step of the natural gas bonanza have a question: Are these wells creating harmful pollutants? NPR explores why there isn’t an answer yet.” (more…)
Keep Tap Water Safe 