Category Archives: Laws

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Video: Fracking on “collision course” with National Parks

As Ronald Reagan so famously put it: “There you go again.”

When he uttered that phrase, Reagan was attacking Jimmy Carter. Today, the observation applies equally to another historical dust-up, between Theodore Roosevelt’s old nemesis — Big Oil and Gas — and the home of TR’s legacy: Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP).

As TR’s great-great-grandson, Winthrop Roosevelt, says in a new video, “Unchecked development [of fracking] is on a collision course with one of America’s truly special places” — the grassland park in North Dakota that bears the name of the America’s greatest environmental president.

A Boom With No Boundaries, produced by the Center for American Progress, shows how a slew of new fracking wells — with many more planned — threatens the integrity of TRNP. The 110-square mile park is home to bison, pronghorn antelope, elk, prairie dogs and other distinctive and rare flora and fauna of the American Badlands.

Roosevelt’s “Ethical Movement” Against Big Oil

There is obvious irony in that the threatened park is named for the nation’s “Wilderness Warrior” (the title of Douglas Brinkley’s compelling TR biography). There’s an added layer of irony. One of TR’s biggest and longest-standing enemies was the Standard Oil Company. When Roosevelt became president in 1901, Standard Oil was Big Oil.

Punch Magazine, 1906.

Even before that, in his last formal address to the New York legislature as that state’s governor, Roosevelt warned that without government regulation and oversight, industrial giants would destroy the environment.

“Unrestrained greed,” Roosevelt said, “means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers.”

TR was at least as concerned about the broader, anti-democratic tendencies of concentrations of great wealth and power. To prevent such abuses, President Roosevelt helped create the Bureau of Corporations, a federal body with unprecedented (but still limited) power to investigate and regulate giant corporations like Standard Oil.

The fight, said Roosevelt, was “fundamentally an ethical movement” targeting “the most dangerous members of the criminal class — the criminals of great wealth.”

Roosevelt had his attorney general sue several companies under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for price-fixing and other illegal practices. Standard Oil of New Jersey, the umbrella organization for dozens of interconnected companies, was one of Roosevelt’s primary targets.

The foes duked it out in court for years. Although he was no longer president, Roosevelt was vindicated in 1911 when the Supreme Court ordered Standard Oil of New Jersey to spin off some 33 separate companies.

The More Things Change…

…the more they remain the same. Today, Standard Oil’s direct descendent, ExxonMobil, is the world’s largest publicly-held company. The corporation has used its wealth to manipulate public opinion about climate change, and directs millions to political campaigns to support friends and defeat foes.

The “unrestrained greed” that TR warned about a century ago continues to destroy land, both public and private.

On March 30, an ExxonMobil pipeline carrying a particularly corrosive form of tarsand oil called dilbit, ruptured, spilling 80,000 gallons of oil in a Little Rock, Arkansas suburb.

That same week, the media reported on a new study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, linking sand used in fracking to lung disease in workers.

In a press release accompanying the new CAP video, Andrew Satter and Jessica Goad call on the Obama administration to follow Theodore Roosevelt’s example.

The story of the assault on Theodore Roosevelt National Park is only one example of how energy development and land conservation are out of balance on our public lands. Over the past four years, the Obama administration has leased two-and-a-half times more acres of public lands to oil and gas companies than it has permanently protected. It’s time for the administration to put policies that protect and conserve our public lands and national parks for future generations on equal ground with policies that promote more oil and gas drilling.

 

 

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Germany’s Power Play: Book Review of Clean Break

There’s a positive review of Clean Break in the current issue of The Washington Spectator (reviewed by Kate Gordon, Vice President and Director of Energy & Climate at Next Generation).

Gordon raises an issue I didn’t directly address in the book: The potential effect if inexpensive natural gas becomes available to Germany through newly discovered deposits in Poland.

“If it’s cheap and plentiful enough,” Gordon warns, “natural gas can undermine the renewable-energy sector just as it’s getting off the ground.”

She raises an interesting issue. And while I don’t have a definitive answer, I do have a couple of first-thoughts about this. German’s renewable-energy industry is well-established and enjoys broad political support — unlike its U.S. counterpart. That support, and the fact that the economic benefits of renewables are spread throughout German society, may protect the sector from a flood of cheap gas.

Also unlike in the U.S., the EU has a carbon permit trading program. The system is flawed, but there is pressure to make the cost of emitting carbon conform better to the economic and social consequences of climate change. Will that be enough to stop a surge in artificially cheap natural gas? I don’t know and Gordon’s point deserves serious consideration.

The U.S. suffers from climate-denial disorder. Fortunately, it hasn’t gone viral—or global. Osha Gray Davidson’s refreshing Clean Break: The Story of Germany’s Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn From It tells the story of how one rich country has committed to transforming its economy into one powered by low-carbon renewable technologies.

via Book Review: Germany’s Power Play | Book Reviews.

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When it comes to climate change, Congress is a Fact-Free Zone

“The ocean levels are rising, the icecap is melting, severe storms are more intense and more frequent; Climate change is real. Not that you’d know it in this body.”

— United States Representative Peter Welch (D-VT)

 

Floor Statement of Rep. Peter Welch
*Safe Climate Caucus
March 20, 2013

Rep. Peter Welch.

Mr. Speaker, the ocean levels are rising, the icecap is melting, severe storms are more intense and more frequent; Climate change is real. Not that you’d know it in this body.

We’re still having a debate about the reality. This is a fact-free zone in Congress when it comes to climate change. But we can still make progress even if we debate the science.

We should do things that allow all of us to use less energy. Energy efficiency is good, regardless of what fuel source you use. It creates jobs for the folks out of work in the home construction industry, doing retrofits for commercial and residential buildings. It saves families money, and saves businesses money.

There’s an enormous amount of advocacy on both sides of the aisle to do this practical, commonsense step. It will have an incidental benefit as well of reducing carbon emissions.

Even as we have an unresolved debate about the science of climate change, let’s take practical steps that are good for jobs, good for the economy and good for saving taxpayers money.

Rep. Welch tours Acorn Renewable Energy Co-op solar project, March 16, 2012.

Welch is one of 24 Representatives who comprise the Safe Climate Caucus — a group organized in February 2013 and headed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. According to the group’s website, each day that Congress is in session a member of the caucus will speak about climate change on the House floor.