Toxic Tommy

Of all the crazy things, I've been asked to create an anti-fracking coloring book to parody, lampoon, and otherwise undermine the pro-fracking coloring book recently released by a natural gas company. The title character's name, Toxic Tommy, is not of my design, but the character and his shenanigans are. I offer the first page of the coloring book here; I hope the whole thing will be out soon.

How did a self-respecting English professor like me end up doodling sinister cartoon dinosaurs?

Ruffling Feathers

A letter to the editor I recently published has angered some people (which is not surprising, of course; that's what letters to the editor are supposed to do). This time around, however, the people I've angered happen to be my friends.

It goes like this: in my letter, I question the wisdom, and the impartiality, of the environmental group Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (Penn Future for short) in its stand on the natural gas issue. Penn Future has been promoting natural gas as a clean alternative to coal, and I find this problematic, for obvious reasons. Hence the letter.

But I've got friends in Penn Future. I've attended their conferences, supported them financially, met with individuals in the organization socially. So this seems, I guess, like a betrayal.

And maybe it is. But that may be the best reason it had to be said.

At root, my problem with Penn Future's stand on natural gas is that the organization is too much of an insider to see the issue objectively. Penn Future prides itself on being pragmatic and politically savvy, which means it focuses on lobbying politicians and working with state and local governments, as well as industry, to achieve its objectives. That's fine, and it may produce some positive results. But it also places severe strictures on what the organization can say and do.

You won't get radical critique, visionary thinking, or even impolite discourse from Penn Future. What you'll get is tame, middle of the road, compromise measures. The organization's slogan says it all: "Every environmental victory grows the economy." That's about as centrist a position as you can take.

But the environmental crisis, in my view, will not be solved by centrists; it'll be solved by radicals. Centrism gets us nowhere on important social/political issues. It got us nowhere on slavery, Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement. Every environmental victory may grow the economy--but it needs to be said that growing the economy is the root of the problem, and we can't solve the environmental crisis by continuing to promote the behavior that produced it. We can't overcome our addiction to fossil fuels by consuming them. Neither can we "bridge" the gap to a non-fossil fuel future by investing astronomical sums of money and building exorbitant new infrastructure as we are doing with natural gas.

Penn Future can't see this, or at least, they can't say it. If they did, they'd lose their ability to influence the political process. But from my perspective, it's not worth influencing the process if, in so doing, one becomes merely another failed part of it.

Penn Future has its approach to natural gas, and I have mine. I can't stop them from pursuing their approach; no more can they stop me from pursuing mine. If they want to criticize my position, they're free to do so, just as I'm free to criticize theirs. And if a few friends get their feelings hurt--I'm sorry, but this issue is too important to let that stand in the way.

So for the record: I'm sorry I upset people. But I'd be even sorrier if I let my fear of ruffling feathers interfere with the work I believe needs to be done.

Jumping Ship

Here's my latest anti-fracking cartoon. This one pertains to the practice of "forced pooling," whereby landowners who have not sold their rights to the drilling companies can nonetheless have their lands drilled into from adjacent sites. (Remember, fracking wells move horizontally as well as vertically.) This practice obviously rigs the system in favor of the drillers; a real-life prisoner's dilemma, it pits landowner against landowner, with each individual thinking, "if I don't sell my land but any of my neighbors does, I'll be faced with the negative impacts of the drilling while my neighbors make off with the profits."

For what it's worth, Corbett has come out against forced pooling. But then, he's also come out in favor of college campuses leasing their lands to gas companies as a way of compensating for the budget cuts to education he himself proposed.

The Puppet Master

This whole business with the "independent" drilling inspectors has gotten me so worked up . . . I couldn't resist.

Wake Up and Smell the Poison

This morning, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that inspectors policing the drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale will no longer be able to do anything--issue permits, enforce regulations, cite violations--without approval of top Department of Environment officials. According to DEP spokespeople, this will bring "consistency" to the regulatory process. Yet oddly enough, such consistency is being sought only in regard to the Marcellus Shale; the same policy does not apply to any of the other regulatory protocols the DEP oversees.

Come on, people! This is a shameless ploy to strip independent inspectors of their power to regulate the shale drilling, and to place all decisions in the hands of political appointees whose jobs are dependent on an administration utterly sympathetic to the drilling industry. It's one step short of having the drillers issue their own permits and cite their own violations. My guess is, they wouldn't find themselves having committed any.

Tom Corbett's office denies having had anything to do with the policy change. And if you believe that one....

When are ordinary Pennyslvanians going to wake up and smell the poison?

My Maine Man

Inspired by my own analogy of a week ago, I came up with this cartoon to satirize Tom Corbett's position on a natural gas severance tax. For the record, his administration is now talking about some kind of monetary compensation for communities hard hit by the environmental effects of fracking, but he's still insisting that a severance tax is "off the table."

There He Goes Again

If he has his way, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett--he who refuses to impose a severance tax on multi-billion-dollar natural gas companies--is about to impose a huge severance tax on ordinary Pennsylvanians.

A severance tax is a tax on the use of public resources. In the case of natural gas extraction, for each unit of gas taken (or severed) from Pennsylvania's lands, the gas company pays a marginal tax.

Corbett (and the Republican-controlled State Senate) won't impose such a tax. They claim it would drive industry away. Forget the fact that every other state in the Union that possesses shale gas formations, including tax-averse Texas, imposes such a tax. Forget, too, that the gas companies are limited in where they can drill; there's no shale gas underneath Rhode Island, so drilling there would be like fishing for lobster in Arkansas. Facts be damned, Corbett, his campaign coffers swelled by industry dollars, has stood firm against a severance tax.

At the same time, Corbett's proposed budget would slash funding for public education at every level, from K-12 through college. The results of these proposed cuts would be catastrophic (I just read that the Duquesne public school district might close entirely), but that's Corbett and the Republican party: cut taxes, slash budgets and public services, and boost industry, and we'll live in a utopia.

But the thing is, such a program does not cut taxes. It raises them. In the case of Pennsylvania's public colleges and universities, Corbett's budget proposes a roughly 50% cut in state funding. The result, inevitably, is that public education in Pennsylvania will become more costly; the schools will have no choice but to raise tuition (or, what is in essence the same thing, to drastically cut services, which students will then have to pay for themselves). Thus the budget cuts effectively impose a severance tax: for each unit of education taken (or severed) from the public system, students and their families will have to pay an increased amount. To finance this additional tax burden, especially in these days of cuts to federal and state grant money, they'll have to take on the additional tax burden of bank loans. Or, what is equally likely, they'll have to forego college altogether.

You'll tell me this isn't about taxes. But it is. Pay now or pay later, services in a society cost money; you can either pay for those services through direct taxes of one sort or another, shared (in theory) equitably by the society that benefits from the services, or you can pay for them through higher costs. From the perspective of the taxpayer/consumer, what's the difference?

Corbett, in short, is not opposed to raising taxes. Rather, like all Republicans, he simply wishes to shift the burden of taxation from those most able to afford it--the corporate and the wealthy--to those least able to afford it: the middle classes and the poor. Thus the social benefits of public services, whether they be gas or education, will be disproportionately enjoyed by the rich, while the social costs (not only in terms of dollars but, as with gas extraction, in terms of environmental impacts) will be disproportionately borne by the poor.

But there's a bright side to all this. I'm sure all those kids who can't afford school can find really good jobs working on natural gas rigs.

Nuke Wells

Amid reports from the New York Times that fracking wastewater contains dangerously high levels of radiation--and that regulators are doing little to ensure its proper (notice I didn't say "safe") disposal--I drew this cartoon. What are we willing to suffer, what are we willing to risk, to feed our fossil fuel addiction?

Passing Gas

Here's my latest pictorial comment on newly inaugurated Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and the natural gas industry he supports. If you're a Pennsylvanian (or New Yorker, or West Virginian, or Ohioan, or Texan, or just plain American) concerned about this issue, watch Josh Fox's film Gasland, check out the Marcellus Protest website or the blog "Fracked Again," and get involved!

Fracking Cartooning

Combining artistry with activism, I've been asked to draw a series of anti-fracking cartoons for the website marcellusprotest.org. Here's the first of them; check out the website as well!

Afterthoughts on the People's Summit

Great as the People's Summit was, there were a couple things that troubled me while I was there, and I feel as if it might be important to the movement to note my misgivings.

1. The East-West divide. Numerous westerners, folks from Texas and Wyoming who have been living with the effects of the fossil fuel industry (and fracking in particular) for years, professed themselves thankful that this issue has finally hit the east. They weren't wishing their ill luck on us--they were just pointing out that until fracking became a reality for us, we easterners were all too happy to consume the natural gas produced in their states. Like the fossil fuel industry itself, in other words, we were willing to externalize the costs of fracking, to palm them off on someone else. As a homeowner whose water and air are heated by natural gas, I hope I'll never make that mistake again. But I fear that, in many cases, an issue needs to affect one personally before one wakes up to its dangers, or even its existence.
2. The black-white divide. Though there were numerous representatives of tribal peoples at the summit, there was no one I would have identified as African-American. (This is not to say, of course, that visual identification is foolproof.) One of the oldest splits in the environmental movement, one dating back to its origins in the nineteenth century, is the predominance of (relatively affluent) whites and their tendency to ignore the issues of most importance to (relatively poor) non-whites. Given the anti-fracking movement's emphasis on environmental justice--on securing clean air and water, meaningful work, and civil liberties for all people--I hope the movement will be responsive and receptive to the needs of people of color. But given who is most directly affected by fracking at present--rural and suburban people, large landowners, etc.--I fear the movement may take a while before it begins to recognize the concerns and claims of urban, lower-class, and minority peoples.

If this movement is to succeed, it can't be exclusive or exclusionary. Here's hoping the next People's Summit works to address the issues that divide us.

The People's Summit, Day Two

The People's Summit ended today with another excellent round of presenters and a slew of frightening, but galvanizing, facts. Mayor Calvin Tillman of DISH, Texas (featured in Josh Fox's film Gasland) spoke, introducing us to a new nonprofit he's created to help low-income families and communities get their air and water tested. The lunchtime keynote speaker, EPA whistleblower Wes Wilson (also of Gasland fame), fired the crowd up with his homey aphorisms and grassroots passion. (His best line was a Winston Churchill quote: "You can always count on the American people to do the right thing--after they've exhausted all the other options.") And at the conference's close, Fox himself Skyped in from Australia, where he's doing location shooting for a Gasland sequel. I missed a morning session on new online tools to help people in the anti-fracking fight track the industry and connect with each other, but overall, I feel as if I'm bursting with new information and energy.

For me, the most enlightening presentation was given by Bob Howarth, a professor at Cornell who challenges the industry's claims that natural gas is cleaner than coal and oil. In particular, he demonstrated that when you take into account routine leaks of methane from the pipelines and storage tanks, as well as the carbon-intensive activities necessary to transport the fracking water and refine the gas, natural gas ends up being a greater contributor to global warming than either coal or oil. As a longtime follower and advocate of the fight against global warming, this was important news for me to hear--and it suggests that the two movements need to start communicating to a far greater extent than they've done thus far. The only sour note to all this was the speaker who followed Howarth, a former industry vice president now working for the UN who addressed a roomful of activists as if we were kindergartners while he explained to us why gas is much better for the planet than coal and oil. He even had the gall to ask Howarth--a Cornell professor, mind you--if his research had been peer-reviewed! If nothing else, his presence reminded us of what we're fighting against, and of the depths to which they'll sink to try to invalidate our movement.

I returned home to a nice surprise: an email from a fellow blogger, John, who'd noticed my blog and featured it in his own. For those who are following this issue, John's blog is essential reading, focused as it is specifically on fracking. You should definitely check it out!

The fight continues. And thanks to the summit, I think it's safe to say the movement is stronger, more unified, and more prepared to take on the challenge than ever before.

The People's Summit

Today, I attended the first half of the EarthWorks National People's Oil and Gas Summit, held in Pittsburgh (whose City Council, earlier this week, unanimously passed an ordinance banning gas drilling within the city limits). Attendees came from as far as Wyoming and New Brunswick to discuss hydrofracturing ("fracking") in the various shale formations that underlie the North American continent; some of those who spoke are featured in Josh Fox's film Gasland (which, we learned today, has been short-listed for an Academy Award nomination). One of those speakers, Wyoming rancher John Fenton, summed up the attitude of those assembled when he said: "Drilling might be the industry's pot of gold, but to me it's a pot of poison." Stories were rife of people sickened and forced from their homes (or unable to sell them), of communities divided and disenfranchised, of itinerant workers bringing crime and drugs to town, of callous industries threatening and equally callous governments ignoring the communities they claim to serve. One speaker discussed how the profits from drilling are privatized while the costs (economic, environmental, and social) are "externalized" and foisted on the public; another described industry-funded studies based on flawed data, outmoded models, and insupportable comparisons; yet another documented the links between fracking chemicals (those we know of; many remain shrouded in secrecy) and health risks ranging from neurological impairments to cancers. A number of shocking facts emerged, including the following:

• In two communities in Wyoming and Texas where fracking is taking place, between 70 and 80% of residents are experiencing respiratory problems.
• While drilling is often touted as a job-maker for local communities, fully 70% of the industry's workers in Pennsylvania come from out of state.
• The natural gas methane--which is not only deadly to humans but a potent greenhouse gas--has been recorded at asphyxiation levels in some homes near fracking sites.
• High rates of sexual predation--including predation on children--are reported among fracking workers.
• Though Pennsylvania's State Senate insists that a severance tax will drive industry away, Wyoming, with the highest taxes among western states, also has the highest energy production in the U.S. (indeed, it ranks close to the top compared to other energy-producing nations).

On the positive side, some legal battles have been won against the drilling companies, ordinances such as Pittsburgh's are being contemplated by other municipalities, and as evidenced by today's summit, the movement against fracking is growing larger every day.

The chief message I took from today's meeting was the need to learn as much as possible about this issue, and to act on that knowledge in every way imaginable.

I'll be going back tomorrow to continue that process.

Or Well

Pennsylvania voters, God love ‘em, have just elected (by a sizable margin) a Republican governor and (in a squeaker) a Republican senator who share, among other loony opinions, the belief that taxes are evil and should not be imposed under any circumstances. Seems like folks in the Keystone State were sick an’ tired of them damn tax-and-spend liberals in Warshington and Harrisburg with their bailouts, stimyoolous plans, and what-not draggin’ our country and our economy down.

Never mind that without the bailouts of the automobile, banking, and lending industries, millions of jobs (not only in those industries but in all sectors affected by them) would have been lost. Never mind that without the stimulus, we’d be in a full-blown depression comparable to the Great one. Never mind that the deficit under Obama is actually lower than it was after eight years of Bushonomics.

Never mind any of that. The citizens hath spoken, and their word is law.

Now, from an environmental perspective, the most depressing part of this whole business is the governor-elect’s vow to resist imposing a severance tax on the gas companies that have descended on my state like a swarm of locusts. Every other state in the union that allows deep-well drilling (the “fracking” process you’ve heard me talk about before) makes the drillers pay such a tax, which the states use to support various programs including, most importantly, environmental clean-up from the drilling. Pennsylvania’s State House, controlled by Democrats, passed a severance tax last year, but its State Senate, controlled by Republicans, can’t seem to move this legislation out of committee. With the new governor at the helm, all hope for a severance tax is lost: even if, by some miracle, the Senate could be convinced to pass this legislation, the governor would surely veto it.

Those opposed to the severance tax say it will scare away the gas companies. If this were true, I’d say that's the best reason of all that we should impose a severance tax. But it’s not true: the gas companies will come wherever the gas is, and the gas is in Pennsylvania. They’ll pay the tax if that’s what it takes to mine our state’s natural resources, just as they pay it in every other gas-rich state across the land.

As you know, I'd prefer a permanent moratorium on gas drilling. That would be the ideal. But in the absence of that unlikely outcome, a severance tax is a minimal palliative against the environmental devastation drilling causes, as well as a minimal mechanism to level the playing field for alternative energy development. It’s a recognition that when drillers drill on public lands--as they’ve already begun to do in Pennsylvania’s state forests--they owe the people who own the lands, namely the citizens of the state of Pennsylvania, something in return. It’s a tax, sure, but it’s a tax that returns money to the citizens, not one that takes money away from them.

But in the Orwellian logic of our newly anointed governor and senator, any tax is a bad tax. The only exception they’ll make, the only tax they’re all too willing to impose, is the exorbitant tax on the health, the environment, and the communities of the very people who put them in office.

Frick, Frack

In the city of Frick, the people are taking a stand against Frack.

Today I attended a rally in downtown Pittsburgh to protest industry plans to drill tens of thousands of natural gas wells (through a process known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”) into the Marcellus Shale formation that lies beneath our fields, forests, and cities. A broad coalition of environmental and citizens’ groups has formed to push for a state moratorium on drilling until further research into its environmental impacts has been conducted, to call on lawmakers to impose a severance tax on the drilling companies to help mitigate environmental impacts, and--most radically--to declare the city of Pittsburgh off-limits to drillers, permanently. The latter ordinance is working its way through Pittsburgh City Council. If passed, it would be the first such ordinance nationwide.

The rally was attended by none other than Josh Fox, rogue visionary behind the film Gasland. Fox whipped the crowd into a frenzy by citing the copious evidence (all of it denied by industry) of negative environmental and health consequences of drilling. He also showed his characteristic flair for the theatrical, calling up the Republican governor-elect of Pennsylvania on his cell phone and, while the crowd hooted approval, leaving a message with the man’s secretary. But the grandstanding had a serious purpose: as Fox represented it, the fight against fracking is the environmental battle of the day. Win this one, he told us, and we secure a greener, brighter future. Lose it, and we concede a future of runaway environmental and human degradation.

Now, all environmentalist prophets say these sorts of things. For Aldo Leopold, the issue was land. For Rachel Carson, it was pesticides. For Al Gore, it was global warming. Environmentalism thrives on these sorts of dire prognostications of utter collapse if that one issue, whatever it may be, is not addressed.

But this time around, I tend to agree with Fox. The natural gas industry stands in the way of healthy environments and communities not only in Pennsylvania, but nationwide (if not worldwide). This latest boondoggle by the fossil fuel industry represents an effort to keep our future locked into the same sorry path we’ve been walking since the time of the industrial revolution, a deal with the devil where we forfeit environmental and communal wellbeing for the luxury lifestyle offered by rapacious robber barons. The rush to drill is based on two deeply flawed propositions that, if exposed and rejected, may well set us on the road to recovery as a people and as a world:

1. Natural gas is a clean energy source. This is, quite simply, bullshit. While natural gas is marginally cleaner-burning than coal or oil, the process by which it’s extracted is brimming with environmental hazards: contaminated water, damaged soil, toxic air. Of the three, the threat to water is perhaps the most ominous: the amount of water required to drill one well is astronomical, and there’s precious little regulation concerning where that water comes from and where it goes after it’s been drenched in hazardous chemicals. As several speakers at today’s rally pointed out, if drilling is as safe as the industry claims, then why did they enlist Dick Cheney and his cronies in Congress to ensure that legislation would be passed exempting the fracking process from key provisions of the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Superfund law? To tout natural gas as a “clean” alternative to oil is akin to praising crack as a safer-burning form of cocaine.

2. Natural gas represents a “transition fuel” to a clean energy economy. Again, total bullshit. If you look at the history of the fossil fuel industry, you’ll find plenty of transitions--but only from one fossil fuel to a yet more cheap, abundant, energy-intensive, and environmentally destructive fossil fuel. From charcoal to coal to petroleum, the industry has tried them all, and they’re seeking newer and unhealthier sources of energy (tar sands and the like) even as we speak. There’s simply no incentive for the industry to do anything else, and anyone who thinks it will diversify out of the goodness of its heart or concern for its customers has been drinking its toxic Kool-Aid for way too long. (We all saw how well BP fulfilled its vow to move “beyond petroleum,” right?) Unless the rest of us make it inconvenient, unprofitable, and in fact illegal for these vampires to conduct their filthy business, the industry will continue to suck fossil fuels from the planet until it’s literally sucked dry. If we are to embrace a clean energy future, it has to start now, with heavy investment in renewables and disincentives for business as usual. This will hurt in the short term, but it will not hurt nearly as much in the long term as a continued dependence on fossil fuels.

So if you’re following this issue, keep your eyes on Pittsburgh. If my hometown can secure victory in this battle--if we can claim our land, our communities, and our health as inalienable rights no one can steal--then the collapse of the fossil fuel industry is within grasp, and a sustainable world within reach.

Drill in Pittsburgh? As they chanted at today's rally: "No fracking way!"

Going up in Flames

For those who cling to the illusion that natural gas is a cleaner, safer source of energy than oil--and that would include all the politicians, businesspeople, and lobbyists in my home state pushing natural gas drilling as the solution to our energy woes--yesterday's natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California might come as a shock. Following close on the heels of the BP oil well blowout, this massive explosion--which killed at least six people, wounded many others, destroyed over 50 homes, and smothered the horizon in flames--should tell us that there simply is no safe source of energy that involves drilling or burning.

To drill is to kill. If only to burn were to learn.

The California explosion didn't involve drilling, of course. But it still staggers the imagination that gas prospectors in my state--in my city--are talking about digging wells near, around, and even under people's homes. The stuff they're digging for isn't cotton candy, after all. It's a flammable, poisonous, deadly substance. It blows up. It makes people (and other living things) sick. It makes people (and others) die. And let's not forget that burning it does cause greenhouse gas emissions. Less is not none.

The more I think about this issue, the more I perceive our society to be paralyzed--unwilling or unable to move, to develop, to change. I keep wondering what it's going to take to jolt us out of this fossil fuel haze we're living in. A natural gas explosion that kills 10,000 people? An oil spill that we just can't plug? Yesterday's blast happened very near a public playground, which fortunately was deserted at the time. But is that what it's going to take?

I hope not. I hope no children are sacrificed on the altars of our addiction.

But I know that they are sacrificed every day: sickened, killed, brain-damaged, deprived of their present and future.

I read yesterday that Barack Obama, offered a free solar panel for the White House (one of the old, but still functional, panels installed by Jimmy Carter and removed by Ronald Reagan), refused to commit to the installation, his press secretary explaining that the issue was "complicated." Personally, I don't see the complication. He's got children. What kind of future does he want for them?

Apparently, one that's going up in flames.