fracking

Article and Image by Dahr Jamail - TruthOut, November 13, 2015

(Depicted: right) Coyne Gibson and Alyce Santoro are part of a grassroots resistance movement opposing a massive gas pipeline project between Mexico and the US. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)

If a couple of billionaires get their way, a 143-mile-long, 42-inch high pressure natural gas transmission pipeline will be built right through the heart of Texas' starkly beautiful and remote Chihuahuan desert. Plans are currently in the works for the pipeline, which would be larger in diameter than the infamous Keystone XL.

Although it has garnered far less media attention than the Keystone XL, this West Texas project has already sparked a massive grassroots resistance movement that has unified ranchers, Tea-Partiers, artists, environmentalists and the vast majority of the residents in this sparsely populated corner of the country.

Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, the head of the Dallas pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) which now boasts former Texas governor Rick Perry on its board of directors, and Carlos Slim of Mexico, who is reportedly the second-richest person on earth, are the core partners behind the Trans-Pecos pipeline project. The aim of the pipeline is to deliver natural gas from Texas to Mexico, where it is in high demand.

Transporting gas from a plant in Coyanosa, near Fort Stockton, Texas, down to the border, the line is supposed to be built underneath the Rio Grande River, after which it will connect into Mexico's gas infrastructure.

Slim and Warren promise that the pipeline will be both safe and environmentally friendly.

But Coyne Gibson, who worked for a decade in the oil and gas industry as an electrical and control systems engineer, vehemently disagrees with that claim.

"I used to do this kind of work, so I admit to past crimes, so to speak," Gibson told Truthout in Alpine, Texas, where signs of the pipeline's construction are already evident.

"I've seen firsthand what this [pipeline] does to the places it touches," he said. "It is horrifically environmentally impactful. The immediate impact is the absolute environmental destruction of every living thing in its path. And that's just to get started."

It is information like this coming from Gibson, coupled with what people are perceiving as an arrogant and bellicose attitude of Energy Transfer, that has created what has now become a battle for the land in Far West Texas.

By Josh Fox and Lee Ziesche - EcoWatch, September 12, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

TRAILER FOR GASWORK THE FIGHT FOR CJ's Law A NEW SHORT FILM BY JOSH FOX from JFOX on Vimeo.

When we hear politicians and gas companies extoll the virtues of fracking, jobs created by drilling is usually high on their list of talking points. But the jobs created by fracking are not the kind of quality jobs American workers deserve.

They are not the kind of jobs American laborers have fought and died for throughout our country’s history.

They are extremely dangerous, exposing workers to chemicals whose long-term impacts on human health are yet unknown. In fact, the fatality rate of oil field jobs is seven times greater than the national average.

In our new short film, GASWORK: The Fight for C.J.’s Law, we conduct an investigation into worker safety and chemical risk. We follow Charlotte Bevins as she fights for CJ’s law—a bill to protect workers named for her brother CJ Bevins, who died at an unsafe drilling site.

We interview many workers who have been asked to clean drill sites, transport radioactive and carcinogenic chemicals, steam-clean the inside of condensate tanks which contain harmful volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and other chemicals, and have been told to do so with no safety equipment.

By Ken Montague - Rabble.Ca, September 10, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Ken Montague, Secretary of the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group, explains what's on at a major national conference in Sheffield on 19 September:

What is the conference about?

The immediate aim of the conference is to contribute to the national and international mobilisation ahead of the UN climate talks in Paris in December. It will also be reporting on, and encouraging involvement in, some of the ongoing campaigns formed in response to the threat of catastrophic climate change. For example, the developing movement for withdrawing pension funds and other investments from companies heavily involved in the production and use of fossil fuels, the national and international trade union campaign for government funded climate jobs, and local protests against fracking.

Why now?

Firstly because world leaders will be meeting in Paris early in December to draw up an agreement following the two-week long “COP 21”talks. It is the most important set of talks about dealing with climate change since the disastrous Copenhagen COP in 2009 and could be the last chance we have of reaching the kind of binding agreement needed to keep climate change within relatively safe bounds. Campaign groups and NGO’s around the world are planning demonstrations and protests on a scale comparable to those last September when 400,000 people took to the streets of New York. For us in Britain it means building for the protests in Paris and the national demonstration for “Climate Justice and Jobs” in London on 29th November.

Any other reason?

The conference will be reporting back on the international climate jobs summit in Paris on 14th and 15th September called by the UK’s “One Million Climate Jobs” campaign and the International Trade Union Confederation. This represents a big step forward for the climate jobs movement which in Britain now has the backing of ten national unions and is seeding itself in other countries, for example Norway, South Africa and the US. Over 160 trade union delegates will be attending from Europe, North America and the Global South. The Sheffield conference also includes a workshop on the prospects for the international climate jobs movement with contributions through Skype from some of the delegates to the Paris summit.

Who has organised the conference and who is it aimed at?

It’s been organised by the Trade Union Group of Campaign against Climate Change and the Sheffield Climate Alliance, which is one of the largest and most successful of the local climate networks. That means it’s for trade unionists who want to know how they can build support for the climate jobs campaign in their unions, but also for anyone who would like to get involved in, or help to develop, other aspects of the climate movement. Everyone is welcome!

Who will be speaking and what will the workshops cover?

Speakers include Asad Rehman, International Campaigner for Friends of the Earth, John Hilary, Executive Director of War on Want, Dani Pafford from 350.org, Suzanne Jeffery, Chair of Campaign against Climate Change, and Louise Haigh, Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley and supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for the Labour leadership.

One of the features of the conference is the large number of interactive workshops. In addition to workshops on climate jobs and divestment, others cover topics like:

• Fracking and how to fight it
• What is TTIP and how can we oppose it?
• Communicating climate change – engaging and motivating people of all backgrounds and persuasions
• The Arms to Renewables campaign
• The Government’s war on renewables
• Climate outreach with primary schools and families
• Building locally for the London and Paris demonstrations
• Where is it being held and how can I book a place?

The conference will be taking place at Sheffield College, a short distance from Sheffield station, so can be easily reached from many parts of the country. Directions can be found on the Sheffield Climate Alliance website. Registration is at 10.30. To book a place click here – admission £10, £5 concessions.

By Dan Bacher - Elk Grove Citizen, September 6, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Jerry Brown continually attempts to portray himself as a “climate leader” and “green Governor” at environmental conferences and photo opportunities across the globe, but new court documents obtained by the Associated Press bolster the claims by many anti-fracking activists that the California Governor is in reality “Big Oil Brown.”

In these documents, two former senior level officials in California Governor Jerry Brown’s administration reveal that they were fired on November 3, 2011, one day after warning the governor that oil drilling would imperil the state’s groundwater.

In a declaration, Derek Chernow, Brown’s fired acting director of the state Department of Conservation, told the Brown Administration that granting permits to oil companies for oilfield injection wells would violate safety provisions of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, reported Ellen Knickmeyer of the Associated Press.

“Chernow’s declaration, obtained by The Associated Press, was contained in an Aug. 21 court filing in a lawsuit brought by a group of Central Valley farmers who allege that oil production approved by Brown’s administration has contaminated their water wells. The lawsuit also cites at least $750,000 in contributions that oil companies made within months of the firings to Brown’s campaign for a state income tax increase,” according to Knickmeyer.

You can read the full story here.

The Committee to Protect Agricultural Water filed their civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit in Federal Court on June 3, 2015. On the following day, Mark Nechodom, the controversial director of the California Department of Conservation that replaced Chernow, resigned.

By Will Parrish - Counter Punch, July 31, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In a decision bursting with symbolism, the California State Water Resources Control Board recently announced its intention to draw down the main water supply reservoir for a the half million people who live just outside of the state capital to only 12% of capacity by September 30.

Lake Folsom on the American River - the main water source for Roseville, Folsom, and other Sacramento suburbs - will plummet to 120,000 acre-feet by that date, according to a forecast by the water board, which announced the plan at an unusually lively Sacramento workshop on 24th June.

The artificial lake will therefore be only months away from turning into a dreaded 'dead pool', a state in which a reservoir becomes so low it cannot drain by gravity through a dam's outlet.

Such an outcome would leave area residents scrambling for water - if recent predictions of an El Niño weather pattern fizzle and rain fails to appear later in 2015. If that were to happen, then Folsom could be a harbinger for the rest of California.

Indeed, as the American West lurches through its fourth summer of an historic drought, numerous major reservoirs are at or near historic lows relative to the time of year. New Melones Reservoir on the Stanislaus River in Calaveras and Tuolumne counties, which was only 16% full as of last week, appears likely to meet the same fate as Folsom this year.

A study by UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2008, three before the current drought began, warned that the nation's largest reservoir, Nevada's Lake Mead (which supplies much of Southern California), has a 50-50 chance of running dry by 2021.

Natural diasaster or human mismanagement?

So far, a consensus of state and federal officials is that this state of emergency has come to pass due to a natural disaster beyond their control. Water board member Steven Moore has called the drought "our Hurricane Sandy".

In April, after Jerry Brown stood on a Sierra summit barren of snow and announced the state's first-ever mandatory water restrictions, an official press release from the governor's office asserted that for "more than two years, the state's experts have been managing water resources to ensure that the state survives this drought and is better prepared for the next one."

But according to critics, the opposite is true. The main reason California's reservoirs have plummeted to nearly cataclysmic lows, they say, is that federal and state water managers sent enormous quantities of water in recent years to senior water rights holders, especially water districts that supply agribusinesses in the dry San Joaquin Valley.