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Page added on March 23, 2016
Protesters turn up heat in fossil fuel fight
They came here to get arrested.
Nearly 60 protesters blocked the driveway of a storage plant for natural gas on March 7. Its owners want to expand the facility, which the opponents say would endanger nearby Seneca Lake. But their concerns were global, as well.
“There’s a climate emergency happening,” one of the protesters, Coby Schultz, said. “It’s a life-or-death struggle.”
The demonstration here was part of a wave of actions across the nation that combines traditional not-in-my-backyard protests against fossil-fuel projects with an overarching concern about climate change.
Activists have been energized by successes on several fronts, including the decision last week by President Barack Obama to block offshore drilling along the Eastern Seaboard; his decision in November to reject the Keystone XL pipeline; and the Paris climate agreement.
Bound together through social media, networks of far-flung activists are opposing virtually all new oil, gas and coal infrastructure projects – a process that has been called “Keystone-ization.”
As the climate evangelist Bill McKibben put it in a Twitter post after Paris negotiators agreed on a goal of limiting global temperature increases: “We’re damn well going to hold them to it. Every pipeline, every mine.”
Regulators almost always approve such projects, though often with modifications, said Donald F. Santa Jr., chief executive of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. Still, the protests are having some impact. The engineering consultants Black and Veatch recently published a report that said the most significant barrier to building new pipeline capacity was “delay from opposition groups.”
Activists regularly protest at the headquarters of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, but there have also been sizable protests in places like St. Paul, Minn., and across the Northeast.
In Portland, Ore., where protesters conducted a “kayaktivist” blockade in July to keep Shell’s Arctic drilling rigs from leaving port, the City Council passed a resolution opposing the expansion of facilities for the storage and transportation of fossil fuels.
The idea driving the protests is that climate change can be blunted only by moving to renewable energy and capping any growth of fossil fuels.
But the issues are not so clear cut. The protests aimed at natural gas pipelines, for example, may conflict with policies intended to fight climate change and pollution by reducing reliance on dirtier fossil fuels.
“The irony is this,” said Phil West, a spokesman for Houston-based Spectra Energy, whose pipeline projects, including those in New York state, have come under attack. “The shift to additional natural gas use is a key contributor to helping the U.S. reduce energy-related emissions and improve air quality.”
19 Comments on "Protesters turn up heat in fossil fuel fight"
orbit7er on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 12:00 pm
There is new evidence that the methane leaking from fracked shale gas with 50 times the greenhouse potency of CO2 makes natural gas as bad as coal – it is still a fossil fuel!
PracticalMaina on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 12:11 pm
The real way to protest without supporting BAU…..
Get shirtless and use your blood for body paint. Its free, does not support walmart, gets noticed, and shows your serious.
rockman on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 12:29 pm
orbit – Actually recent researched done by the govt has shown that the vast majority o methane leakage is coming from the local distribution systems run by the utility companies and from the households themselves. I forget the exact number but when the ran a limited road test thru NYC (?) they found a significant and measurable leak every mile or so.
As far as leaks at the well head remember the companies get paid for what they sell…not what they produce. So ever $ leaked is a $ of revenue lost. Not there isn’t some leakage but companies tend to fix problems that are costing them money. And BTW: a leaking well head doesn’t know if the well is producing from a frac’d shale or an old conventional reservoir. Also good to remember that many area where there are NG wells there’s a lot of NG vented from private water wells. Not uncommon for NG to naturally migrate into the fresh water aquifer in areas of commercial NG reservoirs. In fact looking for natural oil/NG were one of the earliest exploration approaches. Soil testing for hydrocarbons is still a common technique in unknown regions.
Apneaman on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 12:52 pm
Fuck off rockman – you just can’t help yourself rushing to the defence of the industry at every turn eh? Won’t change the fact that your life’s work will makes your daughters life short and nasty compared to yours. Tell yourself you were just following orders – had no choice – sure. Do you realize I have already put up plenty of links showing leaking coming from every aspect of the industry? I guess it’s a Pavlovian response for people like you. It’s a industry staple. Lie lie lie. You a damn dirty liar rockman and so are most of your peers.
California Capped a Massive Methane Leak, but Another is Brewing — Right Here in Texas
“…, estimate that the more than 25,000 natural gas wells in the Barnett Shale emit as much as 60,000 kilograms of methane every hour. That’s more than the 58,000 kilograms per hour the Aliso Canyon was emitting at its peak back in November.”
https://www.texasobserver.org/fracking-barnett-shale-disaster/
penury on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 4:19 pm
It is a predicament, everything that humans need to exist when used in excess also will lead to the death of the species. Gee, maybe the problem is: too many people.
makati1 on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 7:03 pm
Funny, that most of the world’s people do not have access to natural gas in their homes or anywhere. Do not have pipelines running under their streets that can leak. That would not miss it if it disappeared tomorrow.
You are thinking of the approximately one billion 1st worlders that are causing most of the world’s problems. Yes, I agree. Too many 1st worlders. Time to thin them out with a good civil war/riots, a collapse of their financial system and some more super storms and drought.
Pass the popcorn.
geopressure on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 7:35 pm
Apneaman: “estimate that the more than 25,000 natural gas wells in the Barnett Shale emit as much as 60,000 kilograms of methane every hour”
Can you please explain this process of emissions?
I do not understand…
Davy on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 7:47 pm
“most of the world’s people do not have access to natural gas”. Someone does not realize how food is grown and consumed. We have a global food chain and natural gas is a significant agricultural impute. Most people are directly or indirectly eating from the global food chain so yes most of the world’s people do access to natural gas.
http://energyskeptic.com/2014/natural-gas-used-in-agriculture/
Davy on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 8:11 pm
“Record Loss For Petrobras As Political And Economic Crisis Worsen”
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Record-Loss-For-Petrobras-As-Political-And-Economic-Crisis-Worsen.html
“Petrobras reported a record loss for the fourth quarter, a horrendous performance that raises questions about the company’s ability to handle its mountain of debt.”
“The problem for Petrobras is that it has the world’s largest pile of debt, bigger than any other oil company. And that debt, much of which is priced in U.S. dollars, is becoming more expensive to service, particularly since the Brazilian real has depreciated significantly over the past year.”
dubya on Wed, 23rd Mar 2016 11:26 pm
Apneaman, although I generally agree with you I also generally agree with Rockman. I don’t think anything he said was incorrect.
Unfortunately the same argument holds true for the Rock as for me – if he is not out there poking holes in the earth someone else will. For me I’m the one burning avgas, and when I quit for moral reasons there are a dozen pilots lined up behind me for my job.
So we can choose to do the right thing and let everyone else keep taking the profits. But the big dilemma is that if the few percent of us who seem to recognize this issue sacrifice our lifestyles there will be no net benefit to the planet. I have commuted by bicycle for the past 35 years. Have you noticed the huge effect on society?
At some point we all need to make sacrifices. Some a lot more than others – as Makati points out the richer people are the biggest problem. And rich is a relative term. John Travolta – and is it Leonardo DiCaprio who has been in the news telling us to cut back? – are 2 of the truly rich & have giant carbon footprints, but I am a bigger pig than 4 or 5 billion other individuals.
Sadly there are no one sentence solutions. But keep wishing.
Apneaman on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 1:52 am
dubya, I know, many people make the same claim. I wonder if some serial rapist was thinking of quitting raping because he finally figured out raping was immoral, but decided that someone else will just do the raping, so why miss out. No worries we live in an age where money trumps principle %99.9999 of the time now. Me, I don’t make my choices based on what the herd does. I may bounce things off people, but I think I already know before hand and so does everyone else. If you read rockman’s comments in between his excellent insider insights his comments are peppered with industry apologizing and bragging. Bragging about how much he is making and bragging about how they have fooled investors. This attitude is common in a corrupt industry that has had the run of the place for a long time. Lay down with dogs. His favourite remark being “we are not your mommy”. Why would you defend him dubya? You would think the big texas swinging dick could fight his own battles from running his mouth? dubya, in the end it’s not me that you or the rockman or anyone else needs to answer to. If you have kids or grand kids they might ask you ‘why?’ someday. One thing we won’t have to worry about is history judging us. Ape history will soon be over because most were unwilling or unable to make any changes/live with less. Maybe it could be no other way, but that don’t mean I’m gonna stay silent listening to that assholes bullshit every time.
Apneaman on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 1:57 am
geo, the gas is lighter than air.
Apneaman on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 2:04 am
The Psychology of the Notion of Collective Guilt
“it is not too surprising, then, that some still mistakenly think everyone is equally to blame for the current reality that civilization is in deep trouble (Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids?,”
http://blogdredd.blogspot.ca/2015/05/the-psychology-of-notion-of-collective.html
Davy on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 7:28 am
You can blame and complain all you want but the reality is far above the human guilt levels and human culpability. Nature could give a shit about your petty guilt projections. Have your lynch mobs but that will not feed you. We are in a situation where you can end the status quo with all its destructiveness but don’t think you are going to get out whole if at all.
The problem with some on this board is they want retribution for sins but offer no redemption. In other worlds they want you to end fossil fuel use and kill the fossil full providers but then have no clue how we are then going to survive. Let’s have a mutiny on the big ol’ jet airliners but then find out no one can land it.
We have nothing but tradeoffs now and there are no good ones. You can have your relative winners and losers in an end game. You can push people off the bus and in the short time the bus has left that means choosing winners and losers. Pushing the driver off the bus means we are likely going to crash sooner. What I don’t like about the class warfare talk is the lack of acknowledgement of consequences.
These nuts that rail day in day out on the evils of the fossil fuel industry have no solutions. Oh it is popular for sure because everyone loves to point fingers except at themselves. What these nuts have is a lust for retribution. I laugh at the talk that these folks that are feeding and sheltering us are criminals. We are all criminals by virtue of being human.
If we end fossil fuels we will end humanity as we know it. If we don’t end fossil fuels we end humanity as we know it. Within that predicament if you want to have a great ending class war of killing the rich and creating new winners fine but don’t preach survival as a result. You might also admit you will just create another group of connected and privilege. We are the problems. Our species is the problem.
The point I am making is the blame and complain game is not going to save us from the consequences of the trap of our own making. So if you want to preach hate and resentment fine but call a duck and duck. Don’t come on here and say we can end fossil fuels and somehow survive because that is a lie. Negative tradeoff do not offer a positive. Come on here and preach hate and death but call it hate and death.
geopressure on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 7:37 am
I just read somewhere that global methane levels started increasing in 2007 – elevated levels recored in Anartica…
This is NOT from fracking & NOT from agricultural techniques… This methane came from the tremendous volumes of Barnett Shale that were chewed up & deposited on the surface…
It came from the ramp up in Horizontal Drilling of porous, methane-bearing shales…
Davy on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 8:06 am
Geo is coming from multiple sources human and natural. Educate yourself before you speak and you will have more respect.
geopressure on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 8:45 am
I did educate myself… It’s just that the articles I read were incorrect & my explanation is not…
It’s actually rather obvious where this negligible amount of methane came from…
PracticalMaina on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 1:40 pm
I do not think a consensus will be reached on the methane source issue anytime soon. I saw an article recently placing most of the blame on agriculture, which I can accept, but the article then placed all of the blame on Asian rice production, even though that did not come about all at once in 07, they do not even mention Americans love of factory farmed beef, which has a huge methane emissions factor. The omission of any blame towards our own actions in this country make me strongly question the findings. We emit methane, our oil and gas drilling and distribution systems emit methane, our sewers, our landfills, melting permafrost, every animal anywhere, rice patys, swamps.
My outlook is, the oil and gas companys have the infrastructure and market to profit off of their leaking methane, so make them eliminate the leaks and market the wasted gas. Move away from factory farms and encourage the use of biogas wherever possible.
makati1 on Thu, 24th Mar 2016 9:27 pm
Practical… Asia is the new whipping boy to take the blame for the failures of the West. There has always been one such fall guy. Used to be Russia, Japan, etc. Anyone who disagreed with the Empire.
There are approximately 1 billion beef cattle in the world today. Their total mass is greater than all 7+ billion of us humans. Their gaseous waste exceeds those of all of us. Yet most of that beef is consumed by Westerners.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/21/eat-less-meat-vegetarianism-dangerous-global-warming
I have cut my beef consumption to about 1 kilo per month. And I have never felt healthier. It has been replaced by eggs and more veggies that we grow on the farm. Total self-sufficiency in the necessities is our goal. I hope it is yours.
BTW: We have a great substitute for cotton here. It is the kapok tree. So many uses and very hardy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceiba_pentandra#Uses