Oil and gas companies are spending heavily to crush three Colorado ballot initiatives that would limit fracking. And some of the state’s most powerful Democrats are helping them.
The stakes are particularly high for several Colorado communities that have voted to limit or ban oil and gas development locally. Those limits were nullified in two cities by state Supreme Court decisions earlier this month. So the ballot initiatives may be their last best chance to slow development whose speed has surprised even cities that initially supported oil and gas projects.
“We feel it is a last ditch effort,” said Tricia Olson, director of Coloradans Resisting Extreme Energy Development, or CREED, which is pushing to get two of the measures on the ballot.
One measure would allow cities to pass rules to limit or even ban oil and gas development locally; the other would disallow companies from building oil and gas facilities closer than 2,500 feet from “occupied structures.” A third, supported by a separate group called Coloradans for Community Rights, would empower communities to make all kinds of decisions, including whether to frack. The groups are currently in the process of gathering the 98,000 signatures required to get on the ballot.
Campaign finance filings released this month indicate just how much oil and gas companies are willing to pony up to drill freely.
An industry-backed committee created just to defeat fracking ballot measures in Colorado, called Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy, and Energy Independence, collected more than $6.3 million in the first five months of this year.
Most of the pro-fracking group’s money came from two $2.5 million donations, one each from Anadarko Petroleum and Noble Energy. Smaller contributions came from a dozen or so other oil and gas companies and industry groups.
Karen Crummy, who is a spokesperson for the group, said the measures would wreck the economy and strip farmers and ranchers of mineral rights that help them get by in tough times.
By comparison, on the anti-fracking side, CREED’s issues committee raised only $56,000. The total for Coloradans for Community Rights barely surpassed $5,700. The biggest anti-fracking donor, to CREED, was Tricia Olson, a retiree.
The fight for community control took off four years ago in a town named Longmont, when the industry spent more than $500,000 attempting to stop local voters from enacting a citywide ban. But the pro-ballot campaigners, who raised less than $30,000, won.
There was similar voter approval in 2013 in Lafayette, Fort Collins, Broomfield, and the city of Boulder. (Boulder County commissioners had passed a moratorium on fracking in early 2012.)
Ever since, the industry has dedicated itself to defeating the rules in court, an effort that climaxed on May 2, with a pair of Supreme Court decisions against Longmont and Fort Collins.
Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton claim they support locally enacted fracking limits. Sanders wants to ban the technique altogether, while Clinton says she would not support fracking “when any locality or any state is against it.”
But top Democrats in Colorado have warmed to the frackers.
Consider the case of Ted Trimpa, a registered lobbyist for Noble Energy and Encana oil and gas, who sits on the advisory committee of Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development, another front group for Anadarko and Noble that is fighting the proposals.
If anyone knows the power of Colorado cash to swing local politics, it’s Trimpa. He was an architect of Colorado Democrats’ surprise take-back of state politics from Republicans in 2004. The scheme involved aiming the cash of four wealthy donors, known as the “Gang of Four,” at key races, and later evolved into an infrastructure for coordinated Democrat donations through a network of non-profits.
The “Colorado miracle” became a model for Democrats nationwide. Trimpa has since served as a board member of some of the national Democratic Party’s most important funding and policy appendages, including Democracy Alliance and ProgressNow, as well as the American Bridge 21st Century Foundation, which supports the Clinton campaign through a Super PAC of the same name.
He’s joined on the Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development advisory committee by Democratic superdelegate and former Gov. Roy Romer. And Trimpa’s old pal Tim Gill, one of the Gang of Four, is now chairman of another group, Colorado Concern, that has put money down to halt the initiatives.
Watch the video from the anti-fracking group Protect Colorado:
In 2014, two fracking ballot measures very similar to the ones being pushed now were bankrolled by America’s fifth-richest member of Congress (and another of the Democratic Gang of Four), Rep. Jared Polis.
But the measures were apparently too threatening to the political ambitions of too many Democrats. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper was facing re-election, as was Sen. Mark Udall — and Polis himself happened to be running to become chair of the Democratic Party’s Congressional Campaign Committee.
So at the last minute, Polis made a deal with Hickenlooper and oil and gas representatives to kill the measures before they made it to the ballot, despite the fact that the campaign had already collected 200,000 supporter signatures, more than enough to qualify for a vote. In exchange, oil and gas companies threw out a pair of pro-fracking measures, and Hickenlooper agreed to create a panel to recommend policies to hand more control and protection to communities where fracking was taking place. Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, who is up for re-election this year, had also pushed for the compromise.
Hickenlooper was re-elected — attracting nearly three times more oil and gas cash than his Republican opponent. Polis lost his bid for DCCC chair, and Udall lost, too. As for the promised panel, although Hickenlooper appointed six representatives from the oil and gas companies, he included not a single grassroots organizer that had been pushing for more local control. The panel’s recommendations failed to give significant new decision-making powers to communities.
Hickenlooper recently spoke at a luncheon alongside American Petroleum Institute head Jack Gerard, stating that this year’s ballot initiative to increase distances between homes and gas wells could invite lawsuits costing billions. “I don’t think it’s a good idea at all,” he said.
The anti-fracking campaign says it won’t get fooled again. “CREED is very sensitive to the fact that our Democrats had a large hand in the initiatives being pulled last time, because they had so much control,” said Lauren Petrie, a senior organizer for Food and Water Watch, a nonprofit backing the Colorado campaign. This time around, she said, they’re “making sure that this is remaining a grassroots-led effort.”
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Here in NM the historic Mora County ordinance has been overturned in court, and courts are also major factors in killing anti-fracking attempts in other states as well. In the case of the Mora effort, anti-fracking commissioners were removed (talked to one of them), and the court decision has actually put other county efforts to restrict fracking (Santa Fe County’s for ex.) at legal risk.
Clinton’s support for local anti-fracking ordinances is deceptive, given the power of state courts to overturn law created at the level of state political subdivisions (cities, counties). Nor does her position help with the pandemic of extraction of energy on federal lands so common in the west.
Sanders opposition is much more coherent, includes a federal ban. While the details of Sanders’ proposal aren’t completely fleshed out, the two candidates have significantly different positions on fracking, which might not be clear from the reporting here.
On the opposite side of the argument; frack the fuck out of everything, drill everywhere, make many more babies and get the end of the world over with. Then after the total collapse, hopefully, rebuild civilization with peaceful humans who’ll live in harmony with the Earth unburdened by capitalism which is the root of all the problems today.
Not the end of the world: the end of human civilization as we know it, and very possibly the end of humanity itself. Even if there are a few scattered pockets of survival, it’s very doubtful that there will be sufficient energy and resources to rebuild.
The rest of the biosphere will likely be OK, in time, if we don’t launch too many nukes during the final resource wars.
There’s no excuse for optimism.
Fact: there are no clean energy sources. There is none. They do not exist.
On wind
• where will they get the steel to make the turbines/generators once mining or drilling is out of biz
• turbines are fucking ugly and they destroy or interfere with wildlife
On solar
• same as above regarding mining whatever
• another fucking eyesore
On fossil fuels
• well everyone admits what’s up here
On nuclear
• pandora’s box
On tidal
• total bullshit, and same as above reg wind
Afterthought: there’s too many people on the planet. Part of the problem too is sand dredging for concrete.
Man oh man, I believe we are fucking up the planet; but it’s happening because of stuff other than energy or fossil fuel development (of course it arguably does not help). All human development and construction is an interference w/ nature… and we’re losing.
There’s too many people on the planet.
Reminds me of this song: Ænima from Tool
“I want to watch it all go down. Mom please flush it all away.”
I do love me some Tool and Maynard Keenan lyrics! That one’s been a favorite since its release 20 years ago.
Mother Earth doesn’t need a meteor though, she has Yellowstone.
You can’t do enhanced geothermal (EGS) without fracking.
Well class categorization is key- but “informed” progressives, NGOs and “news” sources won’t explain that to you. Furthermore, “grassroots” squadrons refuse to comprehend the logic.
The manipulation of the masses in the dawn of a monopolization is breathtaking.
None of that means content of injectables anywhere near human habitation can’t be strictly inspected and controlled to prevent groundwater contamination, nor does it mean maximum pressures per wellhead site can’t be unapologetically set and enforced to prevent earthquaking. Except all that costs a small percentage of profits, doesn’t it?
There should be no industry on Earth so critical it’s allowed to continue endangering human populations in a completely uncontrolled fashion just to protect its profit margins, yet your first sentence clearly suggests cooking a brighter future requires breaking some of those eggs.
I have to give it up for your last sentence though. I couldn’t have said that any better. It was almost a decade ago I began arguing Monsanto was using GMOs and corrupt patent courts to try and corner global food markets.
Thank you, Alleen, for this story. As you excellently report Colorado has the same corruption problems inherent to its establishment politicians currently seen everywhere else in OUR country. I mentioned to another commenter last week how some in Colorado (me, for one) had nicknamed the Governor, “Frackenlooper.” About a year before his re-election he began suing municipalities that banned fracking on behalf of the energy industry. Simultaneously, he publicly touted what he claimed was his breakthrough “fracking control plan,” except industry compliance reporting was 100% voluntary and the state would provide exactly zero oversight and enforcement. In other words, it was a sham and bad joke on Coloradoans as it was designed to give the energy industry free reign.
Ol’ loopy’s been plenty vocal against marijuana legalization every step of the way, too. He’s an ex energy industry geologist proven neoliberally adverse to science if it affects the profits of industries he favors. Your evidence he’s already one of Hillary’s inside people, combined with her desire to only reschedule marijuana as opposed to descheduling it, indicates they intend to continue the insane, racist and failed drug war – any way they can.
This is exactly why we need to pass the ballot initiatives. The Community Rights amendment would mean that any laws we pass by citizen initiative could not be overturned or nullified by government or corporations. The fracking moratoria are only one example of the ways they have found to keep us from creating our own laws. If you see one of us circulating them, be sure to sign.
Hickenlooper clearly cares more about himself than he does about the people he is supposed to represent. Seems like a typical lying scumbag politician, D or R.
Fun facts:
Jared Polis—super-delegate who’s endorsed Hillary Clinton
Roy Romer—super-delegate who’s endorsed Hillary Clinton
John Hickenlooper—super-delegate who’s endorsed Hillary Clinton
Ted Trimpa—vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton and has given her campaign the max allowable
#NeverHillary
Was suspicious of that! Your NM south neighbor.
In Colorado, Democrats are all but indistinguishable from Republicans.
The DNC likes it that way.
No money from me in 2016.
The statement that “[b]oth Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton claim they support locally enacted fracking limits” is inaccurate at best and slightly deceptive. I’m sure author Alleen Brown didn’t do this on purpose, but Sanders and Clinton are on opposite sides of the fracking issue. Sanders wants to ban it, Clinton wants to allow it.
Environmental regulation of an industrial activity is allowing that activity while making sure that it doesn’t kill everyone around in the immediate future, while giving the appearance of providing meaningful environmental protections.
Not only does Clinton want to allow fracking in the US, as Secretary of State, Clinton actively exported fracking to Eastern Europe and friendly third world countries. Apparently it’s some sort of National Security stance for Western Europe to be less dependent on Russian oil. Destroying the drinking water is a great National Security position. She’s so awesome on policy issues. Wicked Smart. She even named a highway after Tim Russert. Her “accomplishments” cannot be questioned.
After reading this, does anybody believe that any Hillary superdelegate will switch sides in favor of Bernie??? These people are bought and paid for. The people, the country, the world, the rivers, the underground water reservoiers, the fish, the birds the bees… they can all go to hell.
I agree, AtheistInChief. One hundred percent.
I thought that Sanders was being delusional or naive when he said that he’s going to get the super delegates to vote for him because he’s show them that he has a better chance to defeat Trump. Guess what? The super delegates are mostly corporate Democrats, and they’d rather have a Republican in office than a socialist.
I accepted Sanders’s claim because he is, after all, a U.S. senator and therefore has at least some idea of how the system actually works. But I’ve always been highly skeptical of this claim and I’d be somewhere between very surprised and shocked if he swung a substantial number of super delegates in his direction.
That all said, you never know what might happen if you keep trying. So we should continue to fight for Sanders until he loses the nomination.
Think this through, Jeff. Sanders is not a pundit and therefore needn’t make future predictions all the time (actually, pundits don’t either, but it’s a great way to win arguments by using imaginary evidence).
It does Sanders no good to say beforehand, “I know the superdelegates are corrupt, and they won’t support me.” Just as we wouldn’t still be talking about Sanders had he announced last year, “I know the Democratic Party is beyond saving and the majority of its partisans have given up doing anything except making excuses for their mediocrity and pointing out their own preferability to Republicans, so I won’t bother to try to run for president.”
The process is illustrative. It was and is worth doing in itself. So very many more people now know what the Democratic Party is, and what now passes for liberal and progressive behavior.
I don’t get why common sense is so lacking with this issue, or even why it has to be divisive. It doesn’t make sense to let fracking be a black box immune from voters, and it doesn’t make sense to intentionally jam up energy development that will (or should) bring self-sufficiency and tax revenue to the U.S. What we need aren’t bans or cheerleaders, but stuff like:
* No secret ingredients. If you put pounds, let alone tons, of something into the general environment, the people have a right to know what it is.
* Environmental standards. Standards should not be about what you do, i.e. “no gas drilling”. They should be about your IMPACT, i.e. strict standards for waste water, water usage where it is scarce, and the duration and intensity of noise (not using the crooked dBa scale but something that recognizes that low frequency sound is really obnoxious).
* No bullshit. Come on, seriously, the increase in traffic from drilling an oil well?
* Revenue. We need a Bolivarian awareness that the natural resources below the Earth were never made by any man, and their fruits should attend to all humanity; but as the world is divided into hostile factions in conflict, at least they should be shared among our citizenry. There is nothing like some shared benefit to make people think twice about the realities of production as well as the harmful effects.
* Self-sufficiency. The U.S. should put significant barriers both to the import and the export of fossil fuels, except perhaps among close allies with similar environmental standards. We should not be ruled by OPEC nor fear of the loss of their oil, nor have people being too good to burn coal here but it gets exported to China and goes in the atmosphere anyway.
Might also be a good idea to show, and explain to, the people the depletion curves of fracked tight oil and gas wells.
It would kill the whole fantasy of an everlasting cornucopia of domestic hydrocarbons.
Shale Bubble
Sheesh.
Shale Bubble
OK, here’s some common sense for you: Fracking blows up rocks below the Earth and injects toxic chemicals into them. As if that alone weren’t bad enough, those chemicals leach into the nearest water table, poisoning the groundwater.
Your perspective is that of what I call an anti-environmental leftist. You’re completely anthropocentric so you have no concern for the Earth or any of its species except humans, and your politics on these issues are as bad as the Republicans and corporate Democrats.
To paraphrase a Native American friend from a long time ago, the left is as bad as the right, they just destroy the Earth for different reasons. If you think that blowing up ANY part of the Earth or introducing toxic chemicals into ANY part of it is OK, we’re definitely not on the same side.
The Governor of my state allows fracking waste to be dumped here from another state. My town and many around it is full of underground aquifers that cause springs to emanate to the surface. Without rock these aquifers would not exist nor have clean water to drink or to fill streams and rivers. They are also using this horrible fracking waste to melt snow on the roads in winter. It will not only kill the environment, but cause earthquakes by weakening our bedrock foundation. Everyone in every state need to fight this money making scheme at the cost of the environment…we can not live without it.
I don’t know that much about “produced water” (but see http://www.nyenvironmentreport.com/as-snow-melts-movement-builds-to-ban-use-of-drilling/ ). The *main* component is salt, which is extracted from the rock itself. There are specific issues with mercury arsenic benzene and radioactive compounds – essentially, it is a mining waste, and mining wastes range from harmless to deadly depending on the rock and the concentration. So each source needs to be tested carefully and understood before we make a decision. Nonetheless, there is nothing *inherently* safer about digging into a bed of rock salt with heavy equipment and spreading that salt on the road, versus pulling up brine from a well and spraying that. It’s all in the details of either source.
I can’t speak for Wnt but his comments did not strike me as pro-fracking.
He calls for regulated, revenue-producing fracking. How is that not “pro-fracking”? You can’t have it both ways. “I smoke cigarettes, but it’s not like I’m PRO-cancer.” Yah, OK!
I want us to know what’s being pumped into the ground, and make a public policy decision about whether it is OK or not. I don’t know – how can I when it’s secret – but I bet that there are only small differences in efficiency between really toxic stuff pumped underground that we wouldn’t believe and stuff that we won’t really worry about much.
Now a primitivist attitude of never mining the Earth in any way for any reason may have a certain purity to it, but I don’t believe it’s going to win. The guys with the iron conquer the guys without – that’s what actually happened to the Native Americans as you recall. But I think we have a choice between leftist miners and right-wing miners – people who sit down and plan the environmental destruction and moderately long-term sustainability vs. those who only plan their bottom line for the next 90 days. But if we fail to stand up and put in our bid for a left-wing approach, we can rest assured which alternative will win the day. And how does that benefit the environment?
That’s the thing about iron, your awfully false equivalent – swinging it around back in the day didn’t mean my grandkids didn’t get to live. It just meant YOUR grandkids didn’t get to live. See the difference?
Oh okay, Jeff was right. Wnt is talking gibberish, rolling burning strawmen down slippery slopes….
That’s like saying I should vote Democrat because they’re not as bad as Republicans. Forget it! I fight for what I believe in, not crappy choices of lesser of evils. It’s not about purity, it’s about loving and respecting all life. I realize that in this totally evil society most people are so highly compromised they don’t get it, but I don’t compromise my ideals. Talk to some traditional Native Americans, maybe you’ll get the point.
1. Common sense has nothing to do with fossil fuels. For example, climate change.
2. Once you understand how entwined foreign policy & geopolitics are with fossil fuels, you soon see there is nothing simple or rational about domestic policies. For example, overthrowing the democratically elected Shah of Iran. Or wars in Iraq.
3. In America, we are living at the height of corporate power. They’ve literally bought the best government for their entities that money can buy and the Supreme Court signed off on it. Regulatory capture. And O&G is the Don of regulatory capture – they do what they want because they own the system.
4. The light crude we are fracking up everywhere in certain states, by and large, cannot be refined here. We import the heavy stuff and sell the light stuff overseas.
5. Have you looked up how many truck trips are required for a single, fracked well? What about the air pollution that the entire process generates?. Put that in your neighborhood or next to your kids’ school and multiple by 5 or 10 wells.
Keep reading from a variety of sites and you’ll start to get it.
Somehow we have managed to avoid Nuclear Armageddon; for 60 years but the Missiles are still there by their thousands commanded, in some cases by people who just left childhood. We will not avoid Climate Armageddon, there is just too much money in doing what we are doing and our best brains say time is up or in some cases, past up. I too read Naomi Kline’s book and why she decided to have a baby knowing what she knows is beyond me but we do live in hope and the most rational among us are still irrational. Obama is on his way to Vietnam, a country the mighty USA failed to defeat militarily but which was defeated by greed/capitalism. Oh well, there will be good money made in the Climate Wars and the HVAC industry. What is coming is impossible to conceive, the stuff of science fiction. The poor southern country’s will suffer the most, the soonest and there will be billions, yes billions of climate refugees; anthropological dystopia; ready or not; here it comes.
Sob o comando de Eduardo Cunha o Legislativo impediu a presidenta de governar, desde o primeiro dia do atual governo. Ela não apoiou Eduardo Cunha para presidente da Câmara.
Na verdade, não aceitaram a derrota de Aécio Neves, o candidato do PSDB, com projeto neoliberal. Temer participou do Golpe mesmo tendo declarado um ano antes que esse impeachment não tem base legal e mesmo tendo assinado decretos sauplementares também.
A presidenta Dilma não disse, mas a grande mídia brasileira (em particular a rede Globo) é promotora do Golpe.
Vamos lutar para reconduzir a presidenta e corrigir essa INJUSTIÇA.
House of Cards “teaching” miss only <> in this news, and package is complete.
It’s hard choice in USA betwenn a *multinational puppets* as Hillary Clinton, and the “new Hitler” Donal Trump.
That video is from an anti-fracking group? Good article and great to see it. There is so much to say about this. Naomi Klein’s recent book is 100% right about capitalism. Meanwhile it got the story about Boulder, CO 100% wrong. While Boulder, CO is fixated on taking over its municipal power plant, it increased the gap 99-to-1% gap by giving rich people tax breaks for solar panels; because as Mussolini would certainly agree, rich people should pay less for electricity, or even get paid for giving some back to the grid. Boulder City scammed all of the money which should gone to medium and low-income housing solar installations, and CU-Boulder! Now, please forgive me, let me get to the point. The oil barons want nothing more than fracking wells in Boulder, CO, right there next to the Pearl Street Mall, much like neighboring Erie and other towns. They also want them in the mountains above Boulder where the remaining hippies are holding out. What a symbolic a victory to watch one of the top-rated environmentally friendly cities fall!!! Even better when Boulder owns its own energy company and has to buy gas from wells in the town. Game, set, match for the planet!
Great article. Props.
One more datapoint supporting the hypothesis that the US is a one-party state: it has a Corporate Party with a right wing (the Republican Party establishment) and a left wing (the Democratic Party establishment). The rest is electoral theater, designed to engineer compromises that deliver unto the 1% the policies they want: socially libertarian and economically neoliberal, with the goal of creating corporate-owned global governance that can discipline troublesome nations (including democracies).
The only good part of Trumpism is, the non-1% elements that provided the Republicans’ voter base have finally burned that little playhouse down. The interesting question for the next few months is, what will the Sanders voters do now that the Democratic Party establishment has succeeded in railroading Hillary to the nomination? And, for that matter, can Shifty Hill[1] actually *beat* Trump–probably the only US politician with negatives comparable to hers?
[1]: à la Dodgy Dave, the male politician Hillary seems to most resemble
Tom, I had been a strong supporter of Sanders. I remain hopeful that he will join Stein. I am not a long-time Democrat and I have zero allegiance to the party. I rarely vote, and Sanders had offered me the most hope in politics I’ve had in many years; even inspiring me to get involved. (Incidentally, I am past midlife, so I am not one of the Bernie kids).
I loathe the establishment, e.g., this article, and therefore I am inclined to vote for Trump on two counts. One, I have a very, very low regard for Hillary given her harm to humans in this world, and two, Trump, at least, has been anti-establishment.
But to invert the chess board and play both side of this game, it’s not lost on me that it’s conceivable that Trump has been the play all along by the Machine and I am moving exactly the direction the game would dictate. On that note, I am seriously considering not voting as my vote because, well, fuck you game. In either case, I will not vote for HRC.
I’m not inclined to violence, so it’s not my intent when I say this, but as you can see, as my case represents, it almost seems that a political revolution is in order to reestablish democracy that is humane and representative.
Excellent hypothesis, although I don’t know how to create an experiment to test it. It makes me wonder, when was American government not engineered this way? Women didn’t even get suffrage until circa 1920. We had the industrial robber-barons circa 1880s. For much of the 19th century the main focus of the nation was to ensnare natives with so-called legally binding agreements aka treaties and ultimately onto reservations. And last but certainly not least, there was the African Diaspora, and that pernicious slavery problem. So, when?
I’m really off topic here, but as a life long Democrat, (which today doesn’t mean much), if Bernie doesn’t get it and Hillary does, 4 years of Trump beats 8 years of Hillary. What is wrong with 4 more years of gridlock?
Part of me would love to see what actually happens when a President Trump meets a GOP Congress. I doubt much would get done, but I would predict that what did get done would be very, very bad, especially domestically.
But one could say the same of a President Clinton, especially internationally.
You nailed it. Trump and Clinton would be equally awful, just in different ways, assuming that Trump doesn’t cave to the neocons or neoliberals on trade issues, or to the military industrial complex.
Hi;
I was just thinking about the wonders and challenges of the upcoming 4th industrial revolution when I came out with your article about fracking and antifracking antagonism in your community in Colorado. He, just be patient. Wht can’t you awaiting for this upcoming industrial revolution because it will bring much more efficiency and cleaner way of doing business? Please avoid this confrotatuonal aporoach and be more patient, the time will come …and is comming soon when they will cheaper and more safe way of getting energy without compromizing our environment. At this time, every body will be happy: politicians, business people, and of course people of colorado…
fracking kills
http://ecowatch.com/2015/06/04/epa-fracking-pollutes-drinking-water/
Yes, Democrats can be just as sleazy as Republicans when it comes to rolling over on their backs for fossil fuel money. The same thing is going on in California, where ‘moderate’ Democrats lined up with oil&gas to defeat SB 350, which aimed for a statewide 50% reduction in fossil fuel use:
“We’ve seen the millions of dollars the petroleum industry has used to instill fear in Democratic politicians is working,” Carmona said. “Many of them are actually politicians of color that represent black and Latino communities that are poor, that are highly polluted, and it’s shocking and embarrassing that these politicians are still on the fence about these vital pieces of information.”
“The officials targeted by the group are Roger Hernandez, Henry Perea, Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, Ian Calderon, and Mike A. Gipson.”
https://news.vice.com/article/oil-industry-contributions-blamed-for-standoff-over-climate-change-bill-in-california
In the current election cycle, the Chevron and Valero (aka: Exxon) are going after those Democrats who supported that bill, such as San Jose’s Jim Beall, with their ‘independent committee’ having dumped $340,000 into his opponent’s campaign (Nora Campos). (Source: Sacramento Bee).
However, more and more people are aware of these shady tactics, and California’s future economic growth will rely heavily on maintaining its leadership role in renewable energy, so hopefully these sleazy oil tactics will fail.
And Jerry Brown became one of those corporate Democrats once he was elected mayor of Oakland in 1999. (Between being governor the first time and being mayor of Oakland, he was the host of radical/progressive talk radio shows, don’t know what made him sell out.)
And BTW, I hate the term “moderate Democrats.” These are corporate Democrats, there’s nothing moderate about them.
Politicians are unemployed lawyers who betray their own clients – the people.
Fracking puts chemicals into our earth which are poison. These chems are lighter than water, they will wick UP. These poisons will get into our water supply and cause birth defects, cancer, and a lot of weird stuff. It’s going to be really bad.
After America is descimated, the evil ones will defend themselves in a self-righteous fashion and be willing to kill protesters – just like in syria. Evil does not recognize the sacredness of life.
so much for states’ rights
and thank you Alleen Brown for an eye-opening report.
Ms. Brown
There is a great deal of fear-mongering associated with the use of hydraulic fracturing to recover oil and natural gas. Certainly, part of the opposition is related to the use of fossil fuels which contribute to global warming. Hydraulic fracturing was invented after WWII and has been a part of the oil and gas industry since that time. It’s used for economic recovery of oil and gas in very tight geologic formations, or in older oil deposits which no longer produce oil economically. Its use in the US has helped make the US less dependent on imports while keeping the cost of energy down.
Fossil fuels are not going away anytime soon because they are a cheap form of energy (and fracking helps lowers the cost of energy). It’s another great example of liberals/left shooting “ourselves” in the foot in their war on climate change – and the hated oil industry.
gee craigly,
Here you are branding regular Americans as expendable as you brand Palestinians expendable. Apparently you dont understand the difference between doing and doing more and doing always. Kill one person, could be self defence, kill 10 probably a seriel killer, kill 1000 it’s genocide. What this implies is a timeline, craigly. First kill could be self defence, killing later is seriel murder and killing again it’s genocide.
You probably are getting paid for your nonsense and let’s face it, everyone needs a job until they own. But here is the thing, when you accept Jesus as your savior, you shall have everlasting LIFE provided you also abide by the 10 commandments. Then when you die of old age you get to return to life that is everlasting. Plug that into your conscience if you still have one.
“Liberals/left”? Good to know you presume to speak for people you despise. Just being the totalitarian you are, and you don’t even realize it.
Actually the collapse is well under way and not just among the fracking types. The fat cats of the oil industry already have one foot pointed toward the penthouse elevator. Having plundered the company stock thru buy backs, bonuses and obscene salaries they have stored billions in tax havens and other havens. They and their heirs and assigns will live happily ever after….. while you wonder “what the f happened.”
What’s funny about this, your daily glob of feces flung on the wall, is that you don’t even try to connect your thoughts. You just transparently slide around from one subject to another.
For example, the so-called “fear-mongering associated with the use of hydraulic fracturing” has little to do with “the use of fossil fuels which contribute to global warming,” and you know this. The concerns are around polluting effects on water supplies, and always have been. Dodge #1.
Then you go on about how cheap fracking is, which of course merely supports the continued use of fossil fuels. Perhaps for that reason, you fail to relate that to reducing greenhouse gases and slowing global warming. You don’t even remember to say that natural gas is a generally cleaner energy source than oil. Dodge #2.
Are you getting tired, craig? Give it up.
Baldie
“……..For example, the so-called “fear-mongering associated with the use of hydraulic fracturing” has little to do with “the use of fossil fuels which contribute to global warming,” and you know this……”
It is a part of the war on fossil fuels because it allows the relatively cheap development of more fossil fuels – and if you believe that the end of the earth as we know it results from carbon production, then fracking is bad – if for nothing else – because it makes fossil fuels more feasible.
“…….The concerns are around polluting effects on water supplies, and always have been. Dodge #1……”
That is certainly one area that fracking is attacked in the overall war against fossil fuels – and there may be some truth to that argument at shallow levels of drilling. However, at depths of 10000-20000 feet, contamination of underground waterways which affect surface water are unlikely.
“…….You don’t even remember to say that natural gas is a generally cleaner energy source than oil. Dodge #2……”
I don’t know if I would call that a dodge. Natural gas produces about 50% of the carbon as coal, but it still produces carbon. According to Mark Bittman writing at the New York Times (September, 2013), that is not enough:
“…….One reason natural gas is called “clean” is because it emits 50 percent less carbon dioxide than coal when you burn it. Thus it’s seen by some as a “bridge” fuel until zero-carbon-producing renewables can take over. But natural gas isn’t clean in the way that solar is clean. It’s clean-er than coal. It’s better than the worst……..And the situation is actually too dire for a bridge fuel: experts say we must stop adding carbon into the air within the next 30 years [1] or face a climate “feedback loop” in which global warming continues regardless of subsequent activities, a point at which we would be able to make things worse but not better. If switching to natural gas long delays the dominance of renewables, it’s not doing us much good. That’s why action now is important……..”
Radical environmentalists oppose any fossil fuel – and the future of the earth depends on it. You cannot seem to figure out why propaganda is an important aspect of all political advocacy.
Thanks.
Dear craig…
I don’t know where you live but it is a matter of time before you will be oppressed or even killed by this obscenity. Where do these government and corporate greeds intend on living? Outerspace? They are killing this earth in totality! And you well know it’s true.
It’s fine to complain sparrow – but do tell me what the alternative is RIGHT NOW.
Just curious, why is this the only article I can find about this? Alleen, can you please provide links to other sources? I want to learn more.
No surprise here.
The elite Dems are no different from the Repubs. Evil twins.
Time to go third party even if Trump is elected. At least he may talk to Russia, N. Korea, etc. I would worry about a nuke war with the neocon Clinton as POTUS. I am not minimizing Trump’s negatives, just pointing out that some of Clinton’s are potentially worse. The fact that the Repubs are not trying to stop Trump indicates that they agree with him, or that they might be a little more democratic than the Democrats, who are openly rigging the primary process against Sanders. Clinton’s supporters are just Tea Tards with better manners.
The zion.org types own the federal reserve also own the parties. The republican party is the warring weapons military faction. The democratic party is the bankers lenders borrowers do’ers faction. America is being taken for a ride to hell and it shall continue. Bernie Sanders is America’s way out before the point of no return.
” America is being taken for a ride to hell”
Perhaps I’m mistaken but are you sure you don’t mean a ride on the “highway to Hell(ery).’?
Sanders would be a huge improvement over the usual crap, but I don’t know if he would be a way out. Dennis Kucinich would have been a way out; Sanders is still pretty hawkish on foreign policy, he’s just not psychotically so like the others (Trump isn’t as bad as Clinton or the other Republicans because he’d rather do business than fight, but you can’t trust his personality to refrain from fighting if someone pushes him in that direction).
Karen Crummy? Wow, you can’t make this stuff up! Symbolism is often meaningful and important.
Yeah, how about that? Crummy Karen doing her Crummy best.
Thanks for pointing out the money “connection” to Mrs. Clinton.
For America’s sake, send that totalitarian bitch to prison.
Food and water watch is “grassroots” because? Because it is part of “local” ban efforts like new Yorkers against fracking or Pennsylvanians against fracking and surely the group is part of Americans against fracking too.
By the way food and water watch was part of the creation and promotion of a conspiracy theory on a proposed LNG import project known as port ambrose. It’s hardly a model for an ethical organization.
WARNING! TROLL ALERT!
Food & Water Watch is a totally cool group, I’ve worked with them. Karen Orlando is obviously an industry troll, ignore anything she says.
Yup. What Jeff said.
“Food and water watch is ‘grassroots’ because?”
Because it is and has been a grassroots effort since before it was spun off from Public Citizen about a decade ago. And if you don’t think the anti-fracking efforts of Pennsylvanians and New Yorkers are truly local, you know exactly jack shit (hope the blunt language doesn’t hurt your sensitive ears) about the fights against fracking in those states.
I’m not sure what “conspiracy theory” you are imagining, but the truth is that any plan to put an LNG terminal off the coast of Rockaway Park, in the extremely crowded shipping lanes leading into New York Bay, is not only a conspiracy in and of itself, it’s also a really, really dumb conspiracy.
This is another of so many examples of out and out corruption made legal due to the amorality of both fraudulent campaign financing and corporate personhood.
Within the last couple of years there was a Right Wing talk radio blitz for about two weeks setting up support for what was to protect senators that signed on to a type of endorsement to a bill supporting the Keystone Pipeline.
One talk show host claimed he knew someone that told him the pipeline is safe. He had nothing to back it up. When the two week blitz was up and within a week of his assurance that the pipe line was safe, he had no answer for me when I asked “Why did you not cover this week’s pipeline spill that was the second biggest in North America?
When I asked him a follow up question “Why did you not cover in your recent two week pro pipeline blitz that all the Senators, including 17 Democrats, which voted on an amendment to a bill recently showing their approval for the Keystone XL Pipeline had received an average of $489,000 each in transparent OIL campaign contributions”, he ignored the question and went to commercial break.
This is why I like TI…so many folks here putting out the truth. Thank you…