Dominion’s Fracked gas Pipeline Threatens Virginia National Forests & Waterways

McAuliffe defends pipeline support at climate-change meeting

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, right, gestures as he addresses the Governor’s Commission on Climate Change as Virginia secretary of public safety Brian Moran listens at the Capitol in Richmond on Wednesday. (Steve Helber/AP)

Reposted from Washington Post

By Jenna Portnoy September 10, 2014

RICHMOND — During the first meeting of Virginia’s newly reconstituted climate change commission, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) defended his support for a proposed natural gas pipeline, despite concerns from the environmental community.The group met Wednesday, about a week after McAuliffe, amid great fanfare, announced that a consortium of companies led by energy giant Dominion Resources wants to build a 550-mile pipeline through Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Environmentalists worry that the pipeline could damage federally protected public lands in the George Washington and Monongahela national forests and indirectly encourage fracking from companies enticed by a cheap, quick way to get their product to market. The National Forest Service is considering whether to make lands in the Virginia lands available for fracking — a practice McAuliffe insisted he would fight.

“They support me on what my decision is. I have told them they will not allow fracking in the national forest,” McAuliffe told reporters outside the meeting. “I do not support fracking as governor of the commonwealth and we’re in mutual agreement on that.”

Calls to the National Forest Service were not returned Wednesday.

The pipeline debate highlighted the competing interests McAuliffe must satisfy.

This summer, McAuliffe reconvened by executive order the Climate Change and Resiliency Update Commission. The panel was initially established by former governor Timothy M. Kaine (D), but it went dark under his successor, former governor Robert F. McDonnell (R).

McAuliffe appointed dozens of businesspeople, environmental activists and lawmakers to the commission and charged them with producing a report within one year on ways to combat climate change, which has had particularly devastating effects on the state’s coastal areas. However, when the time came for questions, the first one was about the pipeline.

Henry “Hap” Connors, who sits on the Commonwealth Transportation Board, asked: “Can you give us a little more information about the natural gas pipeline?”

McAuliffe repeated his pitch for the $5 billion project.

“It will be a game changer for the commonwealth on job creation. It will also be very good for our environment,” he said. “This has nothing to do with fracking. That gas is out West. That gas will be taken to Texas or Louisiana or somewhere else. We’re not doing the fracking; I want to be very clear about that … We will take spurs off of this natural gas pipeline to build a huge new manufacturing base.”

In addition, McAuliffe said last week that the pipeline would prevent spikes in energy bills during severe weather and give Virginians “direct access to the most affordable natural gas supply in the United States.” He added that the pipeline would allow Dominion to close old coal-fired power plants, which McAuliffe said emit more emissions than fracking.

Mike Tidwell, founder and director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, disagreed: “There is no question whatsoever that this gas is coming from fracking and fracking drilling vents an enormous amount of methane into the atmosphere — and that’s over 20 years, over 80 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide,” he said.

Although Tidwell called on McAuliffe to withdraw his support for the pipeline, he praised the governor for re-launching the climate change commission.

Another commission member, Cale Jaffe, director of the Virginia office of the Southern Environmental Law Center, said many recommendations of the previous climate change commission would be satisfied by carbon emission regulations released this summer by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.

The McAuliffe administration is working on a formal response to the proposed regulations that calls for changes that would take into account Virginia’s efforts to reduce its carbon footprint, such as reliance on nuclear energy.

“What the EPA is trying to do and the goals are laudable, however one size doesn’t fit all,” McAuliffe said. “If some of the [proposed regulations] were left in there, [this] could absolutely cripple our economy.”

Dominion’s Pipeline Plan

Oil Train Opponents Blockade Tracks At Port Westward, OR

Clatskanie, OR—Climate justice activists, local Clatskanie farmers, and oil train opponents from all over Columbia County are blockading the tracks that lead to Port Westward on the Columbia River. The blockade consists of a 20-foot-high tripod of steel poles, its apex occupied by 27-year-old Portland Rising Tide activist Sunny Glover. Any train movement would risk her life, as would any attempt to remove her from the structure. A banner suspended from the tripod reads: “Oil trains fuel climate chaos.” She has vowed to stay as long as she is able.

Donate to help Rising Tide Portland keep blockading!

Massachusetts-based Global Partners ships oil by rail from the fracking fields of the Bakken Shale to the blockaded facility. From there, it is loaded onto oceangoing vessels bound for West Coast refineries. The facility was constructed with public clean energy loans and tax credits to manufacture ethanol in 2008. The owners declared bankruptcy almost immediately, and in a twist of savage irony, it became a crude oil terminal.

“Fossil fuels are catastrophically destructive,” Glover said. “Extraction ravages land, water, and the health of local communities – transport results in deadly explosions, toxic spills and dust – and as they are burned, the Earth is forced ever deeper into immense climate instability. Fossil fuel production is violence, and on an incredibly vast scale.”

Dozens are joining Glover on the tracks. The increase in US oil production in recent years, and the consequent rise in oil train traffic, has outraged a diversity of groups and communities. Rising Tide activists, hoping to deter the most severe effects of climate change, are demanding a rapid dismantling of fossil fuel infrastructure throughout the region and the world. Residents of areas effected by oil train traffic are horrified by the propensity of Bakken crude trains to derail in fiery explosions—a May, 2014 emergency order by the US Department of Transportation describes the trains as an “imminent hazard.” Residents of the patchwork of farms, dikes, and waterways north of Clatskanie are fighting to protect agricultural land and salmon habitat from industrialization.

“When the crude oil trains began rolling through Columbia County, we had no prior warning—not from DEQ, not from the Port of St. Helens, not from the county, and not from the State of Oregon,” said Nancy Whitney. “With the close proximity of our towns, and particularly our schools, and considering the track record of crude oil derailments, my fear is that the potential devastation from leakage or explosion could be astronomical—and it will happen unless these trains are stopped.”

This is the fifth oil train blockade in the Pacific Northwest since June.

“This is only the beginning,” said Noah Hochman. “We will continue to blockade until it is financially, logistically, and politically untenable for oil trains to threaten climate and communities.”

NASA Confirms US’s 2,500-Square-Mile Methane Cloud

by Mike G / DaSmogBlog

When NASA researchers first saw data indicating a massive cloud of methane floating over the American Southwest, they found it so incredible that they dismissed it as an instrument error.

But as they continued analyzing data from the European Space Agency’s Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Chartography instrument from 2002 to 2012, the ‘atmospheric hot spot’ kept appearing.

The team at NASA was finally able to take a closer look, and have now concluded that there is in fact a 2,500-square-mile cloud of methane – roughly the size of Delaware – floating over the Four Corners region, where the borders of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah all intersect.

This discovery follows the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new estimates of methane’s ‘global warming potential’ (GWP): 34 over 100 years, and 86 over 20 years. That number reflects how much more powerful methane is than CO₂.

The methane cloud’s origin? Fossil fuel production

A report published by the NASA researchers in the journal Geophysical Research Letters concludes that “the source is likely from established gas, coal, and coalbed methane mining and processing.”

Indeed, the hot spot happens to be above New Mexico’s San Juan Basin, the most productive coalbed methane basin in North America.

Methane has been the focus of an increasing amount of attention, especially in regards to methane leaks from fracking for oil and natural gas.

Pockets of natural gas, which is 95-98% methane, are often found along with oil and simply burned off in a very visible process called ‘flaring’.

But scientists are starting to realize that far more methane is being released by the fracking boom than previously thought. And it appears that much of it is venting directly to the atmosphere, rather than being flared.

Fracking and horizontal drilling in the frame

Earlier this year, Cornell environmental engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea released the results of a study of 41,000 oil and gas wells that were drilled in Pennsylvania between 2000 and 2012.

He found that newer wells using fracking and horizontal drilling methods were far more likely to be responsible for fugitive emissions of methane.

According to the NASA researchers, the region of the American Southwest over which the 2,500-square-mile methane cloud is floating emitted 590,000 metric tons of methane every year between 2002 and 2012.

That’s almost 3.5 times the widely used estimates in the European Union’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research – and none of it was from fracking.

That should prompt a hard look at the entire fossil fuel sector, not just fracking, according to University of Michigan Professor Eric Kort, the lead researcher on the study:

“While fracking has become a focal point in conversations about methane emissions, it certainly appears from this and other studies that in the US, fossil fuel extraction activities across the board likely emit higher than inventory estimates.”

Genetically Engineering Poplars for Paper and Biofuels Condemned

Apr 10, 2014 by Indigenous Environmental Network

Industry Hype & Misdirected Science Undercuts Real Energy/Climate Solutions

Genetically Engineering Poplars for Paper and Biofuels Condemned

 Washington, DC–Scientists and environmentalists today condemned a recent press release by researchers at the University of British Columbia announcing they have created genetically engineered (GE) poplar trees for paper and biofuel production, opening the prospect of growing these GE trees like an agricultural crop in the future. [1]

Ecuador: The Rights of Nature Threatened in Yasuní National Park

On August 27, 2013, Indigenous and environmentalist activists took to the streets of Ecuador to protest against a reversal in government plans not to drill for oil in the ecologically sensitive Yasuní National Park in the eastern Amazon basin.

The protests came after Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa announced on August 15 the failure of his Yasuní-ITT initiative.

Experts estimate that the Ishpingo Tiputini Tambococha or ITT oilfields in the Yasuní National Park hold nearly one trillion barrels of oil, about one-fifth of Ecuador’s total reserves. Its extraction could generate more than $7 billion in revenue over a 10-year period.

UNESCO designated the park as a world biosphere reserve in 1989 because it contains 100,000 species of animals, many which are not found anywhere else in the world. Each hectare of the forest reportedly contains more tree species than in all of North America.

Not drilling in the pristine rainforest would both protect its rich mix of wildlife and plant life and help halt climate change by preventing the release of more than 400 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

According to the Yasuní-ITT plan, in exchange for forgoing drilling in the park, international donors would contribute $3.6 billion, half of the estimated value of the petroleum, to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for health care, education, and other social programs.

Despite broad local and international support for the plan, donors were not forthcoming with contributions. After six years, the fund had only collected $13 million in donations with $116 million more in pledges.

“The world has failed us,” Correa stated in a nationally televised news conference in which he announced that he had signed an executive decree to permit exploitation of oil in the Yasuní.

Get Apocalyptic: Why Radical is the New Normal

Published on Sunday, May 26, 2013 by YES! Magazine

Feeling anxious about life in a broken economy on a strained planet? Turn despair into action.

by Robert Jensen

In December 2008, Tim DeChristopher attended a protest at a federal auction of drilling rights to Utah wilderness lands. He found a better way to disrupt the auction when he picked up a paddle and began bidding on the leases as “Bidder 70.” He won $1.8 million worth of parcels and inflated the price of many others. When it was discovered that he had no money to back his bids, the auction had to be shut down.

Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for his actions, but his boldness stopped the sale of 22,000 acres of scenic wilderness and highlighted government misconduct. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar scrapped a rescheduled auction because the Bureau of Land Management had skimped on its environmental analysis and inadequately consulted with the National Park Service. In January 2013, a federal court denied an energy industry appeal to reinstate the leases. DeChristopher was released from prison in April. Photos by David Newkirk

Feeling anxious about life in a broken-down society on a stressed-out planet? That’s hardly surprising: Life as we know it is almost over. While the dominant culture encourages dysfunctional denial—pop a pill, go shopping, find your bliss—there’s a more sensible approach: Accept the anxiety, embrace the deeper anguish—and then get apocalyptic.

We are staring down multiple cascading ecological crises, struggling with political and economic institutions that are unable even to acknowledge, let alone cope with, the threats to the human family and the larger living world. We are intensifying an assault on the ecosystems in which we live, undermining the ability of that living world to sustain a large-scale human presence into the future. When all the world darkens, looking on the bright side is not a virtue but a sign of irrationality.

“Action on climate change will be futile unless fossil fuels are left underground.”

Climate Crisis: Radical Action or a New Battlefront in the War on Nature?

Climate change is happening, but geoengineering schemes are not the solutions we need

Reposted from It’s Getting Hot In Here by Rachel Smolker and Almuth Ernsting(cross-posted from Common Dreams)

Will declaring a ‘climate emergency’ help to finally prompt radical action to address climate change?  A growing number of campaigners as well as scientists think so and hope that a major wakeup call about unfolding climate disasters will spur governments and people into action.

The planet needs a break from humanity’s assault, not a new ‘war’ on nature in the form of geoengineering schemes.

Whether a lack of scary-enough facts about climate change has been holding back real action is questionable.  After all, it requires a fair amount of psychological denial to not be alarmed by the escalating heat waves, droughts, floods and destructive mega storms.

Studies about psychological responses to climate change suggest that messages built on fear can cause people to feel disempowered and less likely to take action at all.  Still, constantly playing down the scale of the unfolding destruction of climate and other planetary life support systems so as not to be ‘alarmist’ seems somewhat disempowering to me.  Personally, we much prefer to hear climate scientist James Hansen speak of a ‘planetary emergency’ (in view of  last year’s record low Arctic sea ice cover) than to read excessively cautious comments about uncertainties and the need for more research before concluding what seems obvious, for example that Arctic sea ice is in rapid meltdown and that extreme weather events are already far worse and more frequent than scientists had predicted.

Yet while the language of ‘climate emergency’ may or may not spur more people to action, the crucial question is exactly what type of action is being advocated.  James Hansen’s conclusion: “If we burn all the fossil fuels, we create certain disaster” should be beyond dispute.  Action on climate change will be futile unless fossil fuels are left underground.

Center for Biological Diversity: Obama Allows Dirty, Dangerous Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline to Move Forward

WASHINGTON–(ENEWSPF)–March 1 – The Obama administration today took the next step toward approval of the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline, despite the heavy toll the pipeline and its oil will take on the climate crisis, wildlife and the environment. Some 50,000 people protested outside the White House last month in opposition to the pipeline. Today’s announcement came in the form of a supplemental environmental impact statement on Keystone XL.

Urgent Call to Action – Support the Treesitter blocking Tennessee Gas Pipeline

Reposted from hudsonvalleyearthfirst

Tree clearing has already begun for the Tennessee gas pipeline in Milford, PA where a base of local support has already been organizing. We’re asking folks to come throw down! – Let us know of your availability, the sooner the better.

If you can come down to help out on the ground or make a donation of anything on the list, it’d be greatly appreciated…we are especially in need of folks with medic or direct action experience, but these skills are not necessary to help out.

Below is a list of supplies that we might need:

• Warm clothes (wool stuff, socks, gloves, hats, scarves)
• Food
• Legal Funds (click here to donate)
• Climbing Gear (new prussiks, ropes, carabeeners, harnesses)
• Outdoor store(s) gift cards (gander Mtn, cabellos, eastern mountain sports, etc
• Rain Gear
• tarps
• Camping GearU-Locks, Bike Locks, handcuffs
• Cement
• PVC Pipe
• Chicken Wire
• 55 gallon drums metal or plastic
• Water Filtration
• A Truck or other vehicles for donation (junk cars ok)
• very long aluminum poles or logs
• banner materials (sheer or parachute material)
• truck rope
• small bed frames
• Yurtsrocket stoves

For more info visit: http://www.notennesseepipeline.blogspot.com

or contact us at: notennesseepipeline@gmail.com or 845-542-7541

PDATE 2:13 pm: Ground supporters are released from detention by Police officers.

UPDATE 12:24 pm: Ground Support for Gifford have cooperated with police to leave the park and are being detained by two officers who had placed them in their vehicle handcuffed, but indicated that they are not under arrest. Gifford remains in the tree and is strongly committed to staying and protecting the area from fracking and the Pipeline.

UPDATE 9:24 am: An independent contractor,Mike with TGP’s Michle has informed protesters that law enforcement has been called but no felling would take place unless “it’s safe.”

UPDATE 8:15 am: Protesters contacted by surveyors,

Milford, PA, February 19 2012 – Neighboring Orange County, NY resident Gifford Pinchot, has erected a tree stand to prevent the designated clear cutting required to for construction of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) Upgrade between Foster Hill and Cummings Hill roads.

The Northeast Upgrade would transport additional Marcellus Shale gas west to east  from hydraulically fractured wells along Pennsylvania’s Northern Tier. Hydrofracking, or fracking, has become a controversial method of extracting natural gas due to its reputation for contaminating local waterways, dangerously disposing of ‘frack’ waste, and other social, economic, and environmental concerns.

Pinchot said, “I’m concerned that the TGP ‘s project  is set to go through six sensitive wetlands on its way to Cummins Hill, clearing through mature forest and important ecological habitat, including endangered species.” Cummins Hill is a cultural icon for Milford, being home to at least one bald eagle’s nest as well as being an economic resource for ecotourism. Pinchot added his frustration with the statement, “These gas executives just want to extract from our communities- take what they can and leave us to deal with ecological devastation.”

Simultaneously a large banner reading, “No Pipeline!” in bold black and red lettering was dropped in solidarity, over the interstate 84 overpass on Cummins Hill Rd to display support for the blockades that have been ongoing since Monday. A  lock down on Monday and Tuesday to a Delaware State Forest gate that blocked access to the slated clear-cut is now in it’s third day with Alex Lotorto and Cornelia Pinochot. Trained Emergency Medical Technicians are on site for both actions.

These actions are part of a campaign opposing the Tennessee Pipeline in the Delaware River Basin. The direct action campaign is taking place after nearly two years of local political leaders and grassroots opposition in the courts, public comment, and protest.

This week will culminate with family friendly events, including a vigil on Friday at 5PM at the traffic light in Milford (intersection of Broad and Harford, also Rte 6  and Rte 209, where the Yale School of Forestry was founded and a sidewalk march Saturday afternoon  from the Milford traffic light  across the Milford Bridge, over the Delaware River, to Montague NJ. All are welcome to attend.

At 1pm-3pm Deleware River Keeper is hosting a public meet-up at the Water Wheel Cafe in Milford to help residents watchdog TGP Pipeline tree-clearing activities.

###

Contact:

Alex Lotorto, Pike County, PA Resident 570-269-9589 / alotorto@gmail.com

USGS study shows climate change having catastrophic effect on ecosystems

By United States Geological Survey

Plant and animal species are shifting their geographic ranges and the timing of their life events – such as flowering, laying eggs or migrating – at faster rates than researchers documented just a few years ago, according to a technical report on biodiversity and ecosystems used as scientific input for the 2013 Third National Climate Assessment.

The report, Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Ecosystem Services, synthesizes the scientific understanding of the way climate change is affecting ecosystems, ecosystem services and the diversity of species, as well as what strategies might be used by natural resource practitioners to decrease current and future risks. More than 60 federal, academic and other scientists, including the lead authors from the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Wildlife Federation and Arizona State University in Tempe, authored the assessment.

“These geographic range and timing changes are causing cascading effects that extend through ecosystems, bringing together species that haven’t previously interacted and creating mismatches between animals and their food sources,” said Nancy Grimm, a scientist at ASU and a lead author of the report.