Tag: fracking
WATCH: AOC Explains How And Why She Backs Biden Despite Policy Differences

WATCH: AOC Explains How And Why She Backs Biden Despite Policy Differences

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was on CNN Sunday morning with Jake Tapper on his State of the Union show. In part because Democratic reps, like Republican reps, going on Sunday shows is about this coming election, and in part because newscasters are not particularly deep or creative when it comes to talking about politics, Tapper decided to spend a lot of time trying to get Ocasio-Cortez to attack Joe Biden for their differences of political opinions. Newsflash: Ocasio-Cortez, progressive hero, co-author of the ambitious Green New Deal environmental package, and Vice President Joe Biden aren't exactly on the same page as to how to handle climate change.

More to the point, Tapper asked Ocasio-Cortez whether or not she was bothered by the fact that Biden has not said he would outright ban fracking. The move to ban fracking in states across the country has been a seesaw battle of fossil fuel interests fighting against progressive environmentalism and science. Biden's refusal to provide full-throated support for a ban on fracking is disappointing to many of us on the left, but it isn't surprising. Even more importantly, it is below the most essential first step the progressive movement—and the country for that matter—needs to take: getting rid of Donald Trump and getting rid of the Republican majority in the Senate.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez isn't going to be pulled into a pointless argument about fracking with Jake Tapper. Her position is well-reported. So is Biden's. AOC explains very clearly that this is how politics work in a representative democracy.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: It does not bother me. I believe, and I have a very strong position on fracking. You know, the science is very clear, the methane emissions from fracking are up to 64 times more powerful than CO2 emissions and trapping heat in the air, and just from a perspective of stopping climate change there is a scientific consensus. However, that is my view. Vice President Biden has made very clear that he does not agree with the fracking ban and I consider that, you know—it will be a privilege to lobby him should we win the White House but we need to focus on winning the White House first. I am happy to make my case but I also understand he is in disagreement on that issue.

Tapper wonders whether this will depress the youth vote, a vote that AOC represents more closely than Biden. This, of course, is literally the only reason Trump and his surrogates have been bringing up this difference of positions the last couple of weeks. The hope is that it will depress the more progressive vote, while spooking some more conservative-leaning folks in fossil-fuel heavy states like Pennsylvania and Texas. Ocasio-Cortez points out that the youth vote over the past couple of years has not simply become more sophisticated since 2016, it has brought in more progressive candidates and officials into local elections. The turnout in 2018 showed that, and Ocasio-Cortez believes that this election is very clearly a choice between Donald Trump, someone who is a non-starter of a human being, and Joe Biden.

Tapper then plays a clip of Biden telling reporters that he isn't "getting rid of fossil fuels for a long time," but that he's talking about getting rid of the subsidies the fake free-marketeers enjoy in the fossil fuel industry. While Tapper is hoping that this will illustrate how Biden isn't AOC and the youth vote may be turned off by this statement, she sees it as an important step in the right direction.

REP. OCASIO-CORTEZ: When he says we are eliminating subsidies, I think that is, frankly, an important first step. A lot of folks who like to tout themselves as free market capitalists, while still trying to make sure they get as much government subsidy, and propping up of the fossil fuel industry as possible. ... If you do believe in markets, solar and renewable energies are growing less and less expensive by the day in many areas. They are starting to become less expensive than fossil fuels. When you eliminate government subsidies, it becomes more difficult for fossil fuels to compete in the market. I think while the vice president wants to make sure that he is not doing it by government mandate or regulation. I do believe that we are moving towards that future. I believe that there's a way and that we should push that process along but again, the vice president and my disagreements are, I believe, recorded and that is quite all right.



Don’t Ban Fracking — Pass A Carbon Tax Instead

Don’t Ban Fracking — Pass A Carbon Tax Instead

The Trump administration’s formal notification that it will abandon the Paris climate agreement should be treated as a huge in-kind contribution to the Democratic Party. It’s an emphatic message to anyone who cares about the planet: Do not, under any circumstance, vote Republican in 2020.

The Democrats running for president could not be more starkly opposed to Donald Trump. He mocks climate change as a hoax, wants to dig coal until West Virginia is just a vast cavity in the ground, and thinks the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge should be a safe space for oil rigs. The Democrats recognize scientific reality, favor the Paris climate accord and are committed to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Some of the candidates, unfortunately, are enamored of the old command-and-control approach to environmental protection: forbidding this and requiring that. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris support a ban on fracking, a method that has greatly increased U.S. oil and gas production. Almost all the candidates would end new oil and gas leases on federal lands. Raising vehicle fuel economy standards and setting a deadline for all vehicles to achieve zero emissions are common ideas.

These proposals all suffer from the same flaw: dictating purported solutions from on high, with little regard for side effects, instead of devising incentives for creative, inexpensive remedies. This approach guarantees that the cost will be higher than necessary and results worse.

It appeals to politicians, though, because it allows the illusion that major progress can be made without any sacrifice by voters, except maybe those who frack for a living. The assumption is that if people realize environmental improvement is not cost-free, they will run screaming from the room.

That theory has prevailed for decades. So I am startled but pleased to discover that this year, many Democratic candidates have decided to treat voters as intelligent people who can be persuaded to embrace optimal remedies.

The best of all is a carbon tax, which would raise the price of different fossil fuels to reflect the harm they do. Among the candidates who favor it are Sanders, Warren and Harris, as well as Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Julian Castro.

It would advance these purposes without draconian regulations, inflexible bans or cumbersome bureaucracy. The money collected could be rebated to every American — yielding a net tax increase of zero.

This represents a major shift. Even Barack Obama saw no way to sell it. His first energy secretary, Steven Chu, told Obama in 2012 that a carbon tax would be the ideal way to attack the problem. “It’s not gonna happen,” the president replied.

In 2015, Obama conceded publicly that it would be “the most elegant way to drive innovation and to reduce carbon emissions.” But he was not so masochistic as to try to get it through a Congress controlled by Republicans who wouldn’t admit the ocean was rising if it were lapping at their chins.

A carbon tax would stimulate good choices rather than force them, giving an advantage to those that are most cost-effective. It would discourage coal use, aid electric vehicles, foster conservation and boost renewable sources of energy. It would end fracking eventually rather than immediately, easing the journey to a low-emission future.

Asking economists if they favor the idea is akin to asking loggers if they like chainsaws. In January, an ad published in The Wall Street Journal endorsing a carbon tax boasted the signatures of 3,554 U.S. economists (“the largest public statement of economists in history”). Among them were 27 Nobel Laureates and 15 former heads of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, from Republican and Democratic administrations.

Contrast that with, say, a prompt ban on fracking, which would minimize flexibility and maximize pain. It would devastate an industry, sharply increase the price of oil, provide a windfall to Saudi Arabia and Russia and disrupt the transition away from coal-fired electricity.

“It would be a humongous shock to the global market and affect economies around the world,” Sam Ori, executive director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, told me. “But you wouldn’t do much to reduce emissions.”

Reducing emissions is the highest priority, to be achieved in the most efficient and least painful way. Democrats may be coming around to the realization that for most voters, a carbon tax is not nearly as scary as climate change.

EPA’s Scott Pruitt: The Great Disruptor

EPA’s Scott Pruitt: The Great Disruptor

Reprinted with permission fromAlterNet.

On January 17, a congressional hearing to confirm Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s chosen appointee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, was held in Washington, D.C. Now, anybody who knows anything about fracking or oil well drilling knows that wherever there’s a roomful of well-dressed executives, oil probably ain’t far behind. So, I figured there was going to be a lot of oil people in that room just listening to themselves talking to each other. I also thought they needed a little education from someone who knows a lot about oil from a somewhat different perspective: namely, me.

Wearing a BP (British Petroleum) jumpsuit and a white hard hat, with a black rubber hose slung over my shoulder, I entered the confirmation hearing. I used yellow crime tape to mark off my dirty oil claim, and then I attempted to set up a fracking operation within the hearing.

While I succeeded in disrupting the congressional hearing of Scott Pruitt to become the head of the EPA, I didn’t get very far. I was arrested and taken to jail while Pruitt went on to be confirmed to lead the very agency he has spent years trying to dismantle.

A few days after Pruitt’s February 17 confirmation, over 6,000 pages of his emails were made public. They prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the new head of the EPA has been working hand-in-glove with big oil and gas producers, electric utilities, and political groups with links to the billionaire Koch brothers to gut environmental regulations.

For me, this affront is personal. I am a fourth-generation shrimper, born and bred in a small Texas fishing village. For the last 25 years, I have been tracking the comings and goings of the oil and petrochemical industries impacting my small Calhoun County.

In 1989, Calhoun County was number-one in the country, as documented by the EPA Toxic Release Inventory, for industry generated toxic waste. My county had half the toxic waste in Texas—more specifically, in a landfill near Lavaca Bay. A couple of years later, Matagorda Bay (adjoining Lavaca Bay) was considered the largest underwater mercury Superfund site in the United States. Alcoa’s personal internal documents reported approximately 1,200,000 pounds of mercury was “lost” to the environment.

In 2001, Texas A&M studies documented DNA damage in the local oysters and the cattle downwind of our petrochemical industry. In the interim years, an entire community was bought out by a petrochemical giant, and my own fishing community that once supported five fish houses and 120 shrimp boats was reduced to two shrimp boats and zero fish houses.

The devastation wasn’t limited to Calhoun County. Similar sacrificial communities on the Gulf Coast have been inundated by the chemical and oil industries.

Try to wrap your mind around these sobering facts: Occupational Safety and Health Administration reported 4,800 Americans are killed every year by industrial accidents, and another 55,000 die from occupational diseases. In addition, the U.S. has about 90 facilities—including chemical factories, refineries and water-treatment plants—that in a worst-case scenario, would pose risks to more than one million people. About 400 other facilities could pose risks to more than 100,000 people.

Now, this is a lot of trust to place in an EPA head who doesn’t see the value of regulations and who used most of his energy as Oklahoma’s attorney general fighting the very agency he is now leading. He repeatedly sued the EPA during the Obama administration, challenging the agency’s legal authority to regulate toxic mercury pollution, smog, carbon emissions from power plants, and the quality of wetland and other waters. He has proudly described himself as a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

I have no illusions about Pruitt doing the right thing. I may have disrupted his hearing, but he has consistently used his power to disrupt and destroy our communities and the environment. Thanks to all the senators who are beholden to Big Oil, Pruitt is now poised to do even more damage. It will take a lot more citizen disruptors to stop him. Who’s with me?

Diane Wilson is a fourth-generation shrimper, environmental activist and peace advocate from the Texas Gulf Coast.

IMAGE: Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma speaking at the 2016 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Gage Skidmore/Flickr

‘Tool Of Energy Industry’ Will Run Trump Administration’s EPA

‘Tool Of Energy Industry’ Will Run Trump Administration’s EPA

A man named Scott Pruitt received some exciting news last week: Donald Trump has chosen him to “lead” the Environmental Protection Agency.

If you were the attorney general of Oklahoma, you’d be thrilled to go to Washington, D.C. — and not just for the opportunity to gut a federal agency that you despise.

A bonus benefit of leaving that part of the Midwest is getting away from the many earthquakes caused by oil and natural gas operations. These days the only seismic activity on Pennsylvania Avenue is non-geological.

Up until 2009, Oklahoma was averaging about two earthquakes a year that exceeded 3.0 on the Richter scale. In 2015, the state experienced 907 quakes measuring 3.0 or higher.

It’s now the “induced” earthquake capital of the continent, thanks to the industry for which Pruitt proudly shills.

The outbreak is being caused by massive deep-well injections of salty wastewater from oil and gas drilling operations, including fracking. Hundreds of billion of gallons are shot underground using high pressure, destabilizing the core rock layers.

Not being imbeciles, Oklahomans have made the connection between the spread of subterranean disposal wells and the quakes.

Last month, residents of Pawnee filed a class-action suit against 27 energy companies seeking damages for a 5.8 temblor that throttled the town.

The oil and gas industry hasn’t publicly admitted responsibility, saying the science is inconclusive.

It’s the same line Pruitt uses when questioning the reality of climate change, although he hasn’t gone as overboard as Trump, who called it a “hoax” perpetrated by China.

On both issues, scientists are in solid agreement. A 45,000 percent jump in earthquakes during a six-year period is not natural in Oklahoma or any state, just as the rapid melting of the earth’s glaciers isn’t natural.

These are man-made cataclysms, and Pruitt is the ideal man to deny it.

As Oklahoma’s top legal officer, he has made a crusade of suing the EPA to help energy companies avoid regulations on how much arsenic, mercury and other toxins they dump into the environment.

Pruitt made a deal with other Republican attorney generals to sue the Obama administration over its climate rules, even before the rules had been written. That lawsuit is still in federal court.

It’s hardly shocking that an Oklahoma politician would be a tool of the energy industry, a huge engine for that state’s economy. However, Pruitt’s devotion is exceptionally slavish.

In 2011, he fired off a stern letter to the EPA complaining that U.S. regulators had overestimated the amount of air pollutants being emitted during the drilling of natural gas wells.

Pruitt’s three-page letter was printed on official stationery and bore his signature, giving the impression that he actually wrote it. He didn’t.

The letter was composed by attorneys for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas exploration companies, and delivered to Pruitt’s office by Devon’s top lobbyist.

Pruitt’s staff made a couple of minor word changes and then sent it to the EPA, prompting a grateful email from the energy firm’s lobbyist: “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”

That wasn’t an isolated incident.

The New York Times found that energy lobbyists drafted other letters that Pruitt sent under his own name to the Interior Department, the Office of Management and Budget, and even President Obama.

Pruitt, who has a law degree, knows how to write. Evidently he prefers to let Big Oil put the words in his mouth, and on paper. The payback has been a gusher of campaign donations.

Now he’s been selected to shrink and enfeeble the EPA, which has existed since 1970. The president who signed the agency into law was Richard Nixon, a Republican with no burning passion for environmental causes.

Still there was a bipartisan understanding in Washington that most Americans believed government ought to do something about pollution. They wanted clean air and clean water, whether they lived in Flint, Michigan, or Everglades City, Florida.

Pruitt says he’ll be faithful to that mission, which has historically conflicted with the practices of the industry that owns his soul.

It would be more earthshaking than the all quakes back in his home state if Pruitt’s moral fault line suddenly shifted, and he morphed into someone who put the public good ahead of his own fevered loyalty to the energy companies.

IMAGE: Attorney General of Oklahoma Scott Pruitt (L), a critic of the U.S. government in the King v. Burwell case, speaks to reporters after arguments at the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, U.S. March 4, 2015. Also pictured are the plaintiffs’ attorneys Sam Kazman (C) and Michael Carvin (R). REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo