If You Ask Me

By Dano T. Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 30, 2016

Boy, the state government and utility commission of Nevada sure know how to kill some jobs! In the most recent installment of the corporate fossil fuel utility attack on renewable energy, Nevada just pulled the plug on viable Net Metering for solar energy, thus all but killing the nascent solar industry there.

Here’s the word from GreenTech Media on the decision from December:

“The Nevada Public Utility Commission voted unanimously in favor of a new solar tariff structure on Tuesday that industry groups say will destroy the Nevada solar market, one of the fastest-growing markets in the country.

The decision increases the fixed service charge for net-metered solar customers, and gradually lowers compensation for net excess solar generation from the retail rate to the wholesale rate for electricity, over the next four years. The changes will take effect on January 1 and will apply retroactively to all net-metered solar customers.

The broad application of the policy sets a precedent for future net-metering and rate-design debates. To date, no other state considering net-metering reforms has proposed to implement changes on pre-existing customers that would take effect right away. Changes are typically grandfathered in over a decade or more.

“While the people of Nevada have consistently chosen solar, the state government today decided to take that choice from them, and damage the state’s economy,” said SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive.

In July, NV Energy proposed reducing the net-metering credit by roughly half — to 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour from the current 11.6 cents — to better reflect the cost of serving solar customers. The plan would have established a three-part structure made up of a monthly basic service charge, a demand charge and an energy charge.

According to The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC), NV Energy’s proposed rate would amount to a $40 monthly fee for most solar customers, who typically save $11 to $15 per month on their electricity bills, thereby eliminating all savings.”

As a radical, I can’t say I love SolarCity particularly. As Elon Musk’s cousins venture into the solar economy, it is a leasing based model instead of ownership, with lots of the benefits going to the company with a lesser upfront cost to customers for installation.

But, “green” jobs are “green” jobs and the solar market in sunny Nevada was booming! Whatever the faults of Solar City’s capitalist owners, it’s the solar workers who’re suffering at the hands of this policy change.

By Dano T Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 14, 2016

So, a large part of my life has revolved around oil refineries.

I was born in Jeffersonville, Indiana, a suburb of Louisville , Kentucky in 1981. My father worked for Ashland Oil (now Marathon Oil) in their Louisville Refinery. This refinery was shut down in 1983, and my dad accepted a transfer to Ashland Oil’s main operation in Catlettsburg, Kentucky, where my family moved when I was 2 years old. Many other workers from Louisville, and from another shuttered refinery in Buffalo, New York were also relocated to the Ashland Oil refinery there.

So, my entire childhood, youth, life, etc. were directly affected by the flux of the industrial economy, one that is now dying or dead in most of the U.S., offshored to other places for higher profits and lax regulation. And as my life was affected by this move, I learned many things from this refinery, which still touches me in various ways.

The refinery is why I grew up in Appalachian, Kentucky, never knowing another place until traveling and moving around years later. Hell, the high school I went to was named after former Ashland Oil executive Paul G. Blazer, know for his pioneering work to seek federal subsidies for the domestic oil industry in the U.S. (ugh, I know, right?) This refinery paid for most everything in my life (my mother worked as well, but for minimal wages), clothes, school, cars, what have you. This refinery not only influenced me economically in a personal way, but it controlled the economy of the whole town and region, sponsoring events and filling city coffers with tax revenue and the like. When it was bought out in 1998 by Marathon Oil from Ohio, and the corporate office in Ashland closed and jobs were slashed, this decimated the area in a way that it has never recovered from. The NAFTA years, which also resulted in what has led to near death blows for the steel industry around Ashland as well, were not kind to the Appalachia Rust Belt on the Ohio River. People left, capital left, towns shrank in half, infrastructure crumbed and drugs arrived. For a good read about these years in Appalachia and how folks fought back, I highly recommend the book, “To Move a Mountain:Fighting the Global Economy in Appalachia.”

As industry fled, its residual pollution and the consequences remained. This refinery also not only affected my health and my families, but the health of the whole region, and still continues to do so. Beyond destroying my dad’s back, industry also worked over the air quality of the region. One gem from a few years ago, concerning the elementary school that I went to and that my mom worked at, is linked here: “Chemical found in air outside 15 schools” Oh, of those schools, three of them are in Ashland, and all of them were exposed to, “elevated levels of a substance that — in a more potent form — was also used as a chemical weapon during World War I.”

This link with Ashland Oil extends to my adult working life as well, again concerning not only air pollution but water pollution as well. The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, who used to employ your truly, fought its first big campaign back in the 1980’s and 90’s against Ashland Oil and their assault on the health and environment of the community. A summary of their great work on this can be found here. Highlights include: “in response to persistent (ten-years) and intense pressure from OVEC members and the organized surrounding communities, the US Department of Justice fined Ashland $5.8 million, and forced them to put aside over $30 million to bring their three US refineries into full compliance with pollution laws. Ashland was forced to install video cameras linked to regulators’ offices for pollution monitoring-the first such action taken in the United States.”

Ashland Oil later went on to spin off its nascent coal division into a separate company, which became Arch Coal, which is now the second largest supplier of coal in the U.S and the major proponent of Mountaintop Removal coal mining in Appalachia.

This oil refinery also shaped my views of organized labor and the power of a union. My father was a proud member of OCAW, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, which later became PACE and was eventually folded into the United Steelworkers union. These union wages and benefits are what prompted my father and my family to relocated for this job, and also made them able to pay for the things I mentioned previously. It was not just oil that enable me to have a middle class upbringing, and it was not just my father’s labor, it was the collective labor of all those at the refinery and their collective union bargaining for these wages and benefits. I distinctly remember a labor dispute in the early 90’s, the picket lines, the strike fund, the scabs and the solidarity. It gave me a profound respect for these brave workers and how the middle class was built in this country, which was not given to us by corporations but by us demanding our fair share. It was also great to see their successful labor action of last year as part of a nationwide refinery strike, speaking up for worker safety and winning.

By Dano T Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 10, 2016

So, I guess I gotta weigh in on this whole Oregon wildlife preserve/bird sanctuary/stolen native land takeover thing. Jeez, what a spectacle! I guess that is what the “wanna be militia” wanted, though, right? I’m just not sure why we are obliging to give it to them, but it is a bit too late to stop that.

My first thought upon hearing about it was to ignore it, not give them my media attention. No, I don’t think they should be ignored period, at the risk that they turn out to be dangerous and harmful to the land and people, etc. But, media-wise, I wish that we collectively didn’t believe the hype, which I don’t personally.

A couple of good reads have summed up a lot of my thoughts on this. The irony of bourgeois white men talking about this collectivized land as “stolen” from them, while ignoring it was stolen from indigenous peoples, as Earth First so correctly points out. Yeah, the Paiute are probably first in line if anyone has dibs to this land first stolen from them by the government and then set aside and reserved for the public, and for endangered birds.

Oh, and poor ole Ammon Bundy! Sure, government oppression is real and fucked up, but getting a $53,000 dollar Small Business Administration loan, and refusing to pay public grazing fees for your cattle at below market rate prices, is not exactly my idea of “oppression” at all, more like class warfare from those with money, privilege and resources refusing to pay for the collective good of our society to use public land to make more money for themselves, at our expense. And yes, you read that right, Oregon ranchers are getting a 93 percent discount from the going market rate, according to 538.com, to use OUR public land for their own benefit and cattle grazing.

I will say, though, that Jacobin did have a very thoughtful article on the real problem with those calling for state violence or crackdown on these “occupiers.”

I quote, “But what we must not do is call for the police to move in with the tear gas and rubber bullets of Ferguson and Baltimore, or the live rounds of MOVE or Wounded Knee, because equal injustice is not justice done.”

I complete agree, and hope that more rational minds and more radical attitudes come to favor this view. The rest of the article is gold and I want to quote it at length.

By Dano T Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 7, 2016

So, if you’ve been in a cave the last week, or on holidays time, or only follow corporate media (Washington Post did cover this), there is a massive gas leak going on in southern California right now that no one seems to know how to stop, especially the company responsible. Pretty bad, right? Yeah, really bad. Here’s the basic details:

Methane gas, a HUGE contributor to climate change as a Greenhouse Gas, is currently leaking from from a facility at Aliso Canyon(Orange County, below Los Angeles) at rate of 110,000 pounds per hour, all day everyday. Somewhere around 2,000 some odd homes have been evacuated thus far, and building moratorium has been proposed for the area near the leak. Residents are also gearing up to sue the hell out of the owners of the facility, the Southern California Gas Company(feel free to contact them).

I first learned of this leak (and I currently live in California!) on the day after Christmas via this super informative article from VICE, “Why Engineers Can’t Stop Los Angeles’ Enormous Methane Leak.” Cheery title and timing, eh?

This article does on to discuss how the EDF, Environmental Defense Fund, found out about the leak a week or so earlier via an infrared heat camera, calling it “one of the biggest leaks we’ve ever seen reported” and “absolutely uncontained.”

The leak originally sprung in mid-October (!) and currently “accounts for a quarter of the state’s entire methane emissions.” Another juicy tid bit from this read:

“Methane, the main component of natural gas, is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide when it comes to climate change impact. About one-fourth of the anthropogenic global warming we’re experiencing today is due to methane emissions, according to the Environmental Defense Fund. Leaks like the current one in California, it turns out, are a major contributor. In Pasadena, for instance, just 35 miles from the leak in Aliso, investigators found one leak for every four miles.”

It goes on to say,”So far, over 150 million pounds of methane have been released by the leak, which connects to an enormous underground containment system. Silva says that the cause of the leak is still unknown, but research by EDF has also revealed that more than 38 percent of the pipes in Southern California Gas Company’s territory are more than 50 years old, and 16 percent are made from corrosion- and leak-prone materials.”

By Dano T Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 12, 2015

So, after more than a week of deliberation and the threat of a hung jury, the Blankenship verdict is in….and well, it is uh, well, kinda disheartening to say the least. He was kinda sorta convicted of something, Conspiracy…misdemeanor Conspiracy. Yep, with a max jail term of, get this, one year! Jesus. Not that I think jail solves everything or well even begins to make him pay back the families of the 29 dead miners of Upper Big Branch, whose blood is on his hands. But, jesus. As my former co-worker and communications extraordinaire, Vivian Stockman from OVEC tweeted from reporter Taylor,

“Taylor Kuykendall @taykuy tweet sums it up

Max time ‪#‎Blankenship‬ faces same as max time one would do for excessive littering in West Virginia.http://www.legis.state.wv.us/wvcode/ChapterEntire.cfm… …

WV Code 4

(2) It is unlawful for any person to place, deposit, dump, throw or cause to be placed, deposited, dumped or thrown any litter from a motor vehicle or other conveyance or to perform any act which constitutes a violation of the motor vehicle laws contained in section fourteen, article fourteen, chapt…

LEGIS.STATE.WV.US

Let that sink in. This man helmed a company that violated workplace safety laws regularly for years, leading to one of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history at Upper Big Branch and now faces what amounts to a penalty for littering.

This is not justice. And this is why we, as activists and humans, should not rely on courts for justice. It is a false path, a neo liberal institution bought and paid for with the same capital Blankenship has used to buy past judicial favor, capital that was created off of the backs of working people, including the working people who died so that Don Blankenship might make more profit.

And speaking of his filthy profit, the two charges that Blankenship was not convicted of (both felonies) were as follows:

“Knowingly and willfully making or causing to be made a materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement related to a material matter within the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and acquitted on count three — willfully, knowingly, and with the intent to defraud making or causing to be made untrue statements of material fact or omissions of material fact in connection with the sale or purchase of securities.”

Financial crimes, crimes of money, not crimes of ending human life. So, we see here what is most important to the courts and to the law. Run an unsafe operation and let people die? Slap on the wrist. Lie to the SEC or investors? Never! That carries a 30 year jail term.

As OVEC founder and friend Dianne Bady stated in a press release, “For those of us who’ve been fighting the power of Big Money for decades, this is a painful reminder that in the “official” view, lying to the powers of Big Money is a much bigger offense than is conspiring to essentially make it possible for miners to be killed.”

So, how do we get justice, or at least try? People power and organizing, same as always, no shortcuts. We take back our courts, our government and our economy from men like Don Blankenship.

After the verdict was announced, Blankenship said to the press, “I feel fine.” It is our job to make sure that this does not remain the case. Because the families of the miners killed at Upper Big Branch and those in the communities that knew them most certainly do not feel fine.