Corporations think you’re a moron

So for a very long time I’ve been angry with corporations, it started in the 80′s when the issue came up regarding fast food restaurants using South American rainforest land to graze the cattle they used in their burgers. It was a bad deal, it hurt the environment of South America and took advantage of the people of the Amazon. Public outrage then took over and boycotts etc ensued. So as an answer to this McDonalds produced a commercial to let us all know they were dealing with it. They had a commercial with cowboys sitting around a fire in front of the chuck wagon and the end of the commercial said, McDonalds, serving 100% American Beef. Of course they were playing Americans for suckers, because SOUTH American beef is still AMERICAN beef.

Currently several industries are once again playing us all for suckers. Suddenly, there is clean coal everywhere, coal must have miraculously lost all of it’s polluting side effects. Apparently sulfur no longer pollutes the air causing acid rain, and mountain top strip mining doesn’t hurt the environment, create problematic runoff or screw up streams. That’s right coal is now a magic wonderful way to keep us off of foreign oil without polluting our environment.

But don’t worry, because both the tar sands contingencies and the natural gas folks assure us that if we use those resources everything is beautiful and we no longer need middle east oil. Of course extracting tar sands is highly expensive, starts by deforesting huge tracts of forest and uses massive amounts of water in the extractive process. Of course we also need miles and miles and miles of pipelines to transport all of this down from Canada, it’s not like there are ever problems with pipeline spills.

If that doesn’t work for you then of course you can just switch to natural gas, we’ve got a 400 year supply of cheap, clean and unbelievably efficient burning natural gas. It is the answer to all of our energy problems, and it’s safe, the drilling is well below the water table and fully contained as they fracture the rock and extract the gas. Well, totally safe except that they have to use massive amounts of water and carcinogenic chemicals, at least the ones we know of, they highly guard what chemicals they use. The gas infects the water table, check out the documentary Gasland if you want to get really scared. Of course that’s all just hype, gas companies are paying people to replace their water supplies in contaminated areas out of the kindness of their tiny beating corporate hearts.

Finally, my favorite, corn sugar, is just sugar, there is no problem at all. Well except that it’s used as high fructose corn sugar which ramps up the sugar levels in drinks to the point that a super-sized coke can damn near kill a diabetic.

Want to learn more about these perfectly safe, wonderful and life affirming (please note the sarcasm) industries check out the following links:

Tar Sands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/opinion/tar-sands-and-the-carbon-numbers.html

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/tar-sands-most-destructive-project.php

Natural Gas Fracking

http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/an-update-on-drilling-and-fracking-hearings-in-new-york-state/

New York State Assembly imposes moratorium on fracking

The New York State Assembly has voted to place a moratorium on the controversial method of natural gas fracking in New York.  The link that follows provides the details:

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/n-y-assembly-approves-fracking-moratorium/?hp

For those of you who don’t know what fracking is you can read the following:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/bp-and-the-oil-industry-are-only-part-of-the-danger-and-haliburton-is-involved/

And here is a previous post on what’s going on in New York:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/10/15/an-update-on-drilling-and-fracking-hearings-in-new-york-state/

An update on drilling and fracking hearings in New York State

A quick update on the natural gas fracking issue that I’ve written on twice before, these links are from the Christian Science Monitor, not completely mainstream press but we get closer and closer to this finally going mainstream.  This is the link to my previous article:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/bp-and-the-oil-industry-are-only-part-of-the-danger-and-haliburton-is-involved/

The links relate to the debates going in New York considering potential drilling and fracking in New York State.  It does seem however that Haliburton and their friends might finally have to release the actual chemicals they shoot into the water table.

 http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0913/Fracking-for-natural-gas-EPA-hearings-bring-protests

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/0909/EPA-to-natural-gas-companies-Give-details-on-fracking-chemicals

The BP Gulf Oil Spill is nothing compared to this…

The BP Gulf Oil Spill is nothing compared to this…

 Probably the only upside to the BP Horizon drilling platform sinking and subsequent oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is that light has been shed on some other significant problems in the energy sector.

The first area that has gotten recent attention is the situation in the Niger Delta in Africa.  This area in Africa that many multi-national oil companies drill for oil in has had a significant amount of oil spill damage to its environment.  Effectively the river system that the local people are completely dependent upon for everything is a toxic mess.  The monetary fund established to compensate these same people  seems to vanish after it reaches the government of the country.  How much oil has been spilled in the Niger Delta, the equivalent of a spill the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster every year for the last forty years, a total of over 13 million barrels of oil.  This has not only led to an environmental disaster but also political upheaval as well as locals have rebelled against the government by performing terrorist acts upon the oil pipelines and drilling rigs in Niger exacerbating the problem.  However, I have to say, were I in their shoes  I might do the same thing, you can learn more about the situation in the following links:

http://newsdesk.org/2010/06/niger-delta-oil-spills-dwarf-bp-exxon-valdez-catastrophes/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell

The second area that has gotten attention due to the BP disaster has been the issue of previously capped wells that may be leaking oil and methane into the gulf.  According to the Associated Press, there are over 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf of Mexico.  These “abandoned wells” are not inspected and many have been capped since the 1940’s, there are laws on the books that require these wells , particularly recently abandoned wells, to be inspected but there are no teeth in the laws so companies do not comply.  Essentially, neither the government nor the industry have any idea if or more likely how many of these wells are leaking.  Given that wells can repressurize and caps in place for up to 70 years maybe rusted and faulty, how long will it be before we have another huge spill in the Gulf of Mexico, you can read more about this at:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/07/07/1547812/old-wells-are-rarely-checked-for.html

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gz8SP1X8Y6bOR5kwCcuxUdV1XwLgD9GPVQ0G1

Finally there is one issue in the energy sector that has not gotten the attention it deserves during this disaster and that is the environmental damage done by hydrologic cracking or more commonly called, fracking.  I recently wrote a piece on this and you can read it at:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/bp-and-the-oil-industry-are-only-part-of-the-danger-and-haliburton-is-involved/

For me all of this brings up two significant issues, the first being that our insatiable desire for energy has caused us to pursue an extractive energy policy regardless of the environmental and I would argue long-term economic costs.  This mentality has to change and has to come on several fronts including conservation which seems to currently being ignored by everyone; selective extraction with concern for the environmental and health impacts to the public; and finally an energy policy in this country that address and focuses on renewable energy.  No matter what your political affiliation is you can’t deny that renewable energy helps us solve our energy issues in the United States which in the end helps our economy and improves our national security by leaving us less dependent on unstable nations.  Currently in California people are actually trying to repeal a state law that has been helping us down this road, have we learned anything from the BP spill?

My fear is that the only thing that we will take away from this disaster are the rumors of things that haven’t actually happened including the cracking of the sea floor and extinction level methane bubble disasters, both have been debunked in previous posts and can be found at:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/has-bp-triggered-an-explosive-methane-event-that-will-bring-on-dystopian-times/

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/anatoly-sagalevitch-comments-on-bp-oil-crisis-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/

BP and the oil industry are only part of the danger and Haliburton is involved!

I had heard about the documentary Gasland for a while and didn’t pay much attention, I first heard about the film on NPR and then I saw Josh Fox, who made the film, on The Daily Show with John Stewart.  Mr. Fox showed a video clip of someone’s tap water catching on fire, you can see a clip at the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U01EK76Sy4A

That little clip was enough to get me to check out the film which I caught On Demand, through cable on HBO and yes Comcast that was a shameless plug, how about a little free cable.  I watched the documentary and was really impressed with Josh Fox and his story.  Fox was obviously not a filmmaker and that shows particularly early on in the story.  However, the deeper he digs into what’s going on, the better his film work and story-telling become.  Essentially Mr. Fox was offered a decent sum of money to give up the gas rights to his property and unlike most of us he became suspicious of easy money and promises of no adverse environmental effects.  The film is basically about his initial quest to learn more about the offer and proceeds into an in-depth investigation of a process called hydraulic fracturing or fracking.  On a side note fracking serves as the alternate universe substitute for the word fucking on Battlestar Gallactica and the irony of being fracked by big gas companies didn’t escape me as I watched the film.

Fracking, not in the Battlestar Gallactica sense – that’s a talk for your parents to handle, is a process by which natural gas companies drill down through the ground into pockets of natural gas not previously accessible.  Then high pressure water and chemicals are pumped down into the ground to fracture the rock and release the gas helping it flow up through the well to be captured.  According to the companies that do this, the chemicals they use are safe, and there is no contamination of nearby drinking water wells.  However Josh Fox shows us this just isn’t so and visits folks who have some of the nastiest water you’ve ever seen including some that is actually flammable when it comes out of the taps.  Other people show how their cats, dogs and horses are getting ill and losing their hair and talk about the very real fear that their families will get ill or their house will blow up from the gas in the water lines.

Our old friend Dick Cheney and Haliburton are involved, and to quote the promotional site for the film we find out the following:   ”In 2005, the Bush/ Cheney Energy Bill exempted natural gas drilling from the Safe Drinking Water Act. It exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing. Essentially, the provision took the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) off the job. It is now commonly referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.”

The worst part of the loophole is that it means that there is no regulatory agency even looking at this issue and it allows the companies involved, Haliburton included, to poison people’s drinking supply and the people impacted have nowhere to go, enter Josh Fox and his film.  A lot of the folks involved truly looked scared and some have very definite proof of what these companies are doing in their heartless pursuit of profits as some of the companies have paid for alternate water sources of water indefinitely.  These sources include bringing in tankers of water to fill giant cisterns or full industrial level filtration systems.

The scariest part of this issue is the sheer area of the United States that has the type of rock that possess the natural gas.  The areas include some of the largest watersheds in the Northeast including the drinking water supply for New York City.  Take a look at the trailer below and then the link for the movie’s promotional website below that:

The trailer:

http://www.wikio.com/video/gasland-trailer-2010-3378350

The promotional site:

http://gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking

And finally take the time and see Gasland