Why I’m standing up to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in east Texas

October 18, 2012 — Suzan

From The Guardian UK:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/daryl-hannah-transcanada-keystonexl-pipeline

Don’t buy the tale that this tar sands oil will make the US energy-independent. It’s export for profit, even as spills poison our water


guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 October 2012

On 4 October 2012, in rural east Texas, a 78-year-old great-grandmother, Eleanor Fairchild, was arrested for trespassing on her own property … and I was arrested standing beside her, as we held our ground in the path of earth-moving excavators constructing TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.

Seems there’s showdown in Texas – but, in fact, it’s a battle being waged all over the United States. It’s being fought by ordinary citizens of all colors, economic strata and political persuasions – against the world’s wealthiest multinational corporations, misinformation and deeply embedded fears. While I’m not a fan of war terminology, in these struggles, war analogies seem to highlight both the crisis at hand and perhaps the solution we seek.

Let’s face it, we are in times of great crisis: economic crisis, overpopulation crisis, climate crisis, extinction crisis, water crisis and a humanitarian crisis on so many levels. Energy, and how we create it, is a pivotal issue for many of these crises. It has become increasingly clear that we need to move in a different direction, yet as a species, we humans are uncomfortable with, and resist, change – though we know it is the very nature of life and not only essential, but inevitable.

Scientific findings warn us that a switch to renewable energy is essential if we are to avert disastrous climate change caused by carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. But since scientific findings and the climate crisis have been so successfully politicized – and I loathe politics – I’ll leave the horrifying ramifications of the global climate crisis out of this.

No matter what political rhetoric you choose to follow, or what course we choose to take with our energy options, there are things we all can agree on. As the second World Water Forum wisely stated:

“Water is everybody’s business.”

Clean, regenerative energy could provide a way past peak oil and our detrimental fossil fuel addiction – if we collectively had the will to employ renewables, and addressed the change as urgently as the US did during the second world war when we unleashed our scientific creativity and industrial ingenuity to support the war effort. But there is no escape from peak water. We simply cannot live without uncontaminated water and food.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/daryl-hannah-transcanada-keystonexl-pipeline

Posted in Chemical Pollution, Corporate Abuse, Ecology, Environment, Fracking, Uncategorized. Tags: , , . Comments Off on Why I’m standing up to TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in east Texas

Pinkwashing Fracking? How the Komen Board Is Cashing in on Shale Gas

October 17, 2012 — Suzan

From Truth Out:  http://truth-out.org/news/item/12094-pinkwashing-fracking-how-the-komen-board-is-cashing-in-on-shale-gas

By Steve Horn
Saturday, 13 October 2012

The Wizard of Oz was spot on when he saidto “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” That’s good life advice if you fall into the “Ignorance is bliss” camp. For a journalist though, it’s doing the exact opposite that’s a sin qua non for the job.

Kevin Begos of the Associated Press took the Wizard’s advice to heart in his July 22 story titled, “Experts: Some fracking critics use bad science.”

Citing “Gasland” director Josh Fox’s viral video “The Sky is Pink” as an example, Begos wrote, “Opponents of fracking say breast cancer rates have spiked exactly where intensive drilling is taking place — and nowhere else in the state…But researchers haven’t seen a spike in breast cancer rates in the area.”

As his main source of expertise on the breast cancer issue, Begos turned to Chandini Portteus, Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s Vice President of Research, Evaluation, and Scientific Programs. Of the connection between fracking and breast cancer she stated, “what we do know is a little bit, and what we don’t know is a lot.”

Sara Jerving of the Center for Media and Democracy came to diametrically different conclusions in her April 2012 probe for PR Watch, writing,

Benzene, which the U.S. EPA has classified as a Group A, human carcinogen, is released in the fracking process through air pollution and in the water contaminated by the drilling process. The Institute of Medicine released a report in December 2011 that links breast cancer to exposure to benzene.

Up to thirty-seven percent of chemicals in fracking fluids have been identified as endocrine-disruptors — chemicals that have potential adverse developmental and reproductive effects. According to the U.S. EPA, exposure to these types of chemicals has also been implicated in breast cancer.

Continue reading at:  http://truth-out.org/news/item/12094-pinkwashing-fracking-how-the-komen-board-is-cashing-in-on-shale-gas

Posted in Environment, Fracking. Comments Off on Pinkwashing Fracking? How the Komen Board Is Cashing in on Shale Gas