Earthships

There are a lot of thing that some people in the transition community seem to really want. One of them is surely to have a home off the grid, something that doesn't contribute to climate change and is built in a way that is bioregionally appropriate.

Enter the Earthship, a home concept that can be built in any (really?) environment. And it must have gotten somewhere when it's on the Weather Channel. Come on guys, there's a guy who works for the oil and gas industry living in one. Why? Because he understands the planet's systems.

Watch.



But can you retrofit houses in the northeast to be biotecturally in sync?

Mann Scores a Goal with Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars

In his new book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, Dr. Michael E. Mann (pic at left from Scientific American) recounts a moment on the Great Wall of China just months before his daughter was born. He wonders about “what sort of world our new child and her generation would inherit.” It will be…No. It already is a world whose land and climate industrial humans have radically changed. The only truly moral response from any father must be to work for a world that mitigates human impacts on the climate so that his daughter and her children and her children’s children can live well and live happily. That means reducing our reliance on fossil fuel and creating new strategies – moral, behavioral, and technological – for living today and living tomorrow.

The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars is a combination of personal storytelling, reflection, and science education that grants readers a tour of climate science. More importantly it shows us how our political process has been poisoned by shameless and corrupt interests. Reading Mann’s work is to get a sense of what it means to strive for thorough and important work as a “gee whiz” kid. But then we witness the “gee whiz” kid get schooled in the art of power politics and come out having outsmarted his opponents. For now anyway.

In 2009, I read story after story about hackers who’d stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia University and then released them. Journalists, eager for the next headline, ripped chunks from the climate change disinformation narrative. Thus was born “Climategate,” a shameful continuation of attacks on climate scientists by ideologues and fossil-fuel-funded institutes. Among the primary targets were "Penn State geosciences professor Dr. Michael Mann, co-winner [with many others] of the Nobel Prize in 2007 for his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the hockey stick" graph.

Getting off a diet of tar sand with Toni Brink

Toni Brink (pictured at right) was a dietician for over three decades. Today, she sees the U.S. fossil fuel diet as not only unhealthy, but destructive. She doesn’t just hope that President Obama helps us get a better diet, she is doing something about it.

This week Brink, a 66-year-old mother of five and grandmother of ten will join the No Tar Sands (their Twitter feed) protests in front of the White House in Washington, DC.

Over the last week and a half, hundreds of people have joined noted environmental author and activist Bill McKibben (see 350.org). climate scientist James Hansen, and writer Naomi Klein to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed pipeline would bring oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico across vulnerable habitats in the Midwest. A broad coalition of Midwest residents, farmers, conservationists, and scientists worry about the pipelines’ and tar sands’ long-term effects.

“If that oil is taken out it’s a dirty process,” says Brink referring to the tar sands extraction process. Matt Price of the Environmental Defense Fund says that the Florida-sized affected region of Alberta where the tar sands lie is effectively destroyed. And the waste ponds left from the process can be seen from space.

Proponents say that Canada’s proximity to the United States can help us use energy that comes from friendlier sources with less travel. However, the process from beginning to end is itself very fuel-intensive, yielding little energy compared to the energy return from the sands themselves. Daily, tar sands production generates the amount of greenhouse gases of approximately 1.3 million cars. Those effects combine with the tar sands refinement and its eventual use as fuel to create one of the most greenhouse gas intensive fuels on Earth.

Brink says. “The use of that oil will raise the temperature of the Earth more. It’s already evident that we have extreme weather. It could play into making the Earth uninhabitable to humans or at least unfriendly,” she says. Climate and atmospheric scientists have predicted that storm, flood, drought, and heat wave intensity as human fossil fuel use generates more greenhouse gases.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change reports that hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean have become both more frequent and more intense in recent years consistent with predictions by scientific bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. High temperature records have also been more frequent and heat waves longer and more intense.

Noted climate scientist James Hansen has said similar things. Writing on Huffington Post, he says,

Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO2 well above 400 ppm, which is unsafe for life on earth. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels including tar sands are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth's climate.

Phasing out emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO2 emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles.

It’s not just climate or extraction. “The pipeline will go over the Oglala aquifer in the Midwest. And they say the pipeline won’t leak but there’s no guarantee,” says Brink. Indeed, the pipeline would transect farmland and interrupt wildlife corridors. However, the risk of spill is predicted to be very low by the State Department. Russ Girling, the President of company proposing the pipeline has said, "[T]he Keystone XL pipeline will have no significant impact on the environment.” But Midwest residents are not convinced.

And what about our energy infrastructure? Brink worries that increasing U.S. reliance on tar sands and the Keystone XL will harm us in other ways. “I’m afraid it will divert from renewable energy sources like solar, wind, and geothermal and also from energy conservation.” Currently, the United States gets only a tiny portion of its energy from renewables. But if Richard Alley is correct in his program, Earth: The Operator’s Manual, things could be different with the major proportion of our energy coming from renewables if society and economy could be rearranged.

Tomorrow she is going to risk arrest at the White House. “I think it’s really important. Future of life on our planet depends on it.” Like many who have engaged in non-violent civil disobedience before her, she believes that this is the right thing to do. It shows that a large number of people think that this issue needs to be visible.
The protestors, she said, “speak out by putting their bodies on the line.”

What does this all come down to? “We could do so much better,” said Brink. So she is going to put her own body on the line.

---

If you care to follow up, Tar Sands Action asks that you call or write President Obama or send a letter to the editor of your local paper to speak against the Keystone XL pipeline. Brink agrees.

#1 Party school. Get #1 in beer cooling. [Updated]

Let's face the reality here. Penn State has been called the #1 party school. The title even prompted public radio's This American Life to do a show about it. For some, this has been a black eye, a blemish, an embarrassment. But maybe...just maybe...it's an opportunity to understand something about energy use.

Look at this low-tech solution to refrigeration.



Go that? All you need is two sizes of clay pots, sand, water, and towels to cover your pots. As a fan of many Pennsylvania microbreweries, I will surely try this out.

What else should we use this for?

***

Here is a picture of my own. I put in some fine Pennsylvania Victory Brewery beers and at the end of the day...They were cool. Not icy cold, but definitely cool. And you know, not having to pay additional refrigeration costs is kind of nice.

Well blows frack water in Bradford County

In LeRoy Township in Bradford County near Canton, Pennsylvania, a well blew out last night while Chesapeake Energy was fracking the well. According to WNEP TV, there is "a massive operation" by officials and Chesapeake to control the spill. According to their story, "the well blew near the surface, spilling thousands and thousands of gallons of frack fluid over containment walls, through fields, personal property and farms, even where cattle continue to graze." However, there were no injuries.

However, the spill has already reached Towanda Creek which flows to the Susquehanna River. DEP will monitor water near the blowout. Watch the story here:



It is curious that the reporter in this story does not name the specific or types of chemicals that would come back up from a fracked well. The story mentions the high salinity of the water but nothing about known carcinogens like benzene or naphthalene, the biocides or lubricants involved, nor the radioactive materials or total dissolved solids (TDS) that "produced water" from a well contains. In a world where we hope that the news can serve us well, this particular aspect of reporting seems woefully lacking in its ability to provide the public with information that could serve its interest. If this case is like others, then the cattle at that farm will be quarantined for fear of milk or meat contamination.

This is also especially interesting given that "The Landman's Manual" was recently leaked (highly recommended reading). In this manual used by people who go to property owners to lease their land to gas companies. In it, they instruct landmen to do the following things. On fracking they advise the following:

"Hydraulic Fracturing, 'Fracking' - This technique to develop gas resources is coming under scrutiny, both in the mainstream media with articles appearing in the New York Times, and even in Hollywood with the movie 'Gasland'. Expect questions on this topic and be ready to diffuse land owner concerns."

Further, they say,

"If anyone knows about slick water fracturing, avoid the topic. DO NOT discuss the chemicals and other material used during slick water fracturing. The best strategy is to say that the chemical mixtures used are proprietary and are highly diluted with water when injected. Reassure landowners that no well contamination has ever been documented. Do not mention water contamination in Pennsylvania."

This news report seems to follow a slightly weaker version of this kind of policy. Avoid alarm, there is nothing to fear, and continue as if this is business as usual. In fact, the neighbor who has refused to leave seems like he has adopted this position.

Like writers at Grist and Desmog Blog, the tragic irony that this is occurring on the anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster has not been lost on us. And it's hard to look at this and not feel frightened by these events. To paraphrase what Barb Jarmoska from the Responsible Drilling Alliance told us a two weeks ago on the show, we are in a precarious position in Pennsylvania. It's enough to wonder how responsibly gas extraction can be done.

It will be interesting to see how activists, officials, elected officials, and regulators act in days to come.

Some thoughts on the Deepwater Horizon disaster one year later

On April 20, 2010 11 men died on the BP/Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion, caused by equipment failure and inadequate monitoring and maintenance, led to the worst oil spill in United States history.

As the picture from May 1st, 2010 at below reveals, the spill released roughly 140,000,000 gallons of oil and covered more surface area than Florida, considerably larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster. Though experts say an ecological Armageddon didn't occur, the damage has been severe.


Clearly, the loss of human life on the rig sits in the minds of families and friends. For example, Living on Earth aired a story last week on the human costs of energy. They reported, "Roy Wyatt Kemp of Jonesville, Louisiana, was 27. He worked for Transocean on the Deepwater Horizon. He had two children." There are 10 other such stories.

The plume has cost billions of dollars to the Gulf economy. The Times Picayune reports that fishermen are still having trouble selling their fish on markets. They report,

"Where I'm fishing it all looks pretty much the same," said Glen Swift, a 62-year-old fisherman in Buras. He's catching catfish and gar in the lower Mississippi River again. That's not the problem.

"I can't sell my fish," he said. "The market's no good."

People around the country and the world worry about fish contamination. And their fear may be founded. Biologists worry about cascading effects. What will happen to ecosystems and species that accumulate toxins from either the oil itself or the chemical dispersants used to clear the oil slicks.

It's very difficult, if not impossible, to know the long-term effects to marine life. We have reason to believe that upwards of 5,000 whales and dolphins may have died from the oil spill, approximately 50 times the natural death rate. It threatened thousands more sea birds like pelicans, placed the already threatened Kemp's Ridley turtle in more danger, and killed an unknown number of fish, shrimp, coral, and other sea life. These effects stack on heavily fished areas and an expanding dead zone caused by effluent and nutrient saturation from the Mississippi River.

Meanwhile, the oil industry and the GOP are pushing for more offshore drilling permits. Mother Jones reports

[Three] bills, all from Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, would open new areas for drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic oceans, as well as Alaska's Bristol Bay. They would also speed up the process of approving drilling permits; after 60 days permits will be considered approved regardless of whether an environmental review is complete.

This comes at a time when the EPA is expected to have its funding cut heavily and have its regulatory abilities hampered for Clean Water Act, Clean Water Act, and the CO2 endangerment finding. According to The Center for American Progress, those cuts to EPA could easily be covered by enormous tax subsidies for oil companies that will cost the federal government $45 billion over the next 10 years.

However, the freeze on new offshore permits until this February and a more patient permitting process has slowed domestic oil production according to the Wall Street Journal. This coincides as well with President Obama's call to reduce oil imports by as much as one-third in the next decade. Our energy mixture in this country puts the gulf in a precarious position. First, we have experienced nothing short of an ecological catastrophe. Second, other parts of the economy have suffered horribly for our oil use and a lot of people have not been compensated. Third, people have died and their families and friends suffer from their loss. Fourth, the previous three call for stricter oversight because of a perceived lack of regulation and enforcement capability. But, fifth, domestic oil and gas demand is rising.

There is no simple lesson in an issue as complex as this one. The environmental blogosphere, exemplified by Grist's "10 Reasons to still be pissed off about the BP disaster," arrays streams of invective against BP and the Republican House of Representatives for not tackling this issue seriously. But it's not just the industry or the congress. I drive a Honda Accord that runs on gasoline. Unless we live in a super bicycle-friendly city most of us use cars, trucks, or buses to get to work. With vanishingly few exceptions, that's oil or some natural gas.

What's to be done? What should government do? What should industry do? What should your community do? What should you and I do?

It's hard to know how to be responsible when we are faced with a disaster of this magnitude. To borrow from Andrew Revkin, I hope that we can find a way to drive the car safely around the foggy corner.

Sustaining what? For whom? For how many? Andrew Revkin from Dot Earth

Demographers estimate that by 2050 the Earth will house 9 billion people. As of now, humans only have one planet that we can live on. This is a bit of a conundrum.

That is the primary conundrum that Andrew Revkin explores on his blog, Dot Earth hosted by The New York Times. Revkin has covered human-environmental issues as a journalist for 30 years for a number of media and is the author of three books. Today, he came to Penn State and gave a presentation on this complex but inescapable issue.

First, human population is growing. Today, there are ~6.8 billion people and many more to come. Second, global development institutions and initiatives, expanding markets, technological innovation, and political, cultural, and climatic changes will change how those people live. To support that development will require a lot of thought and effort on how to supply the developing world with energy, and currently the industrial economies rely overwhelmingly on fossil fuels. Third, the human and ecological impacts of all of this development are large and many are damaging. They include climate change, large scale visible pollution, and massive species loss.

Revkin explains industrial human activities today with this metaphor: Imagine that you wake up in a car and you are in the driver's seat. You have never driven before and have not taken driver's ed. There is no manual for how to drive the car and well, the car is going about 50 mph and accelerating into a foggy night. If there is a curve ahead, will you know what to do?

He said, "I think it's still kind of even odds that we'll hit the guard rail or that we'll fly off or that some large part of us doesn't make it around that curve."

It is with a combination of skepticism and hope that Revkin invites readers into a more fruitful conversation. "We are a young species," he says. He doesn't blame us for what has happened. In a sense, it's as if we are just waking up to the ramifications of our intelligence. If we are seeing things differently, then we have a chance to do things differently by listening to scientists who have told us, repeatedly, that we live on a finite planet with finite resources. If we smartly design our artificial world from cities to economic instruments, perhaps we won't reach peak everything against peak us. Maybe there is some more optimal way to be without a global catastrophe. Maybe.

What is sustainability in such a world? Or as Revkin says, "Well sustain what?" Watch his short answer to Sustainability Now:

To have a sustained relationship with the planet around us requires a lot of innovation, a sense of resilience, and a sense of engagement that the human-planet relationship need not be the way that it's been...Take energy. What I say is energy for the long haul. What is an energy policy that works for the long haul? And that means having a durable sense of responsibility that it's not just about the now but about how you utilize resources that makes sure that people who come after you have some options as well and that nature has some space as well.

What is that responsible energy policy? Where do we put our efforts in this hot and crowding world? Over the past year we've talked about smart grids, about home and business software to help reduce consumption, about energy deregulation, the intransigence and polarization of our policy makers on climate and environment issues, and of course on Marcellus Shale gas development in Pennsylvania (Revkin posted about shale gas rhetoric and distortions today). Energy comes up again and again.

What would you ask Andrew Revkin as a follow-up to his response? Perhaps we can send them to him.

Lax regulations and radioactive water

The New York Times has just released an incredible story on problems with frack water. For quite a while, we've known that frack water contains all kinds of awful materials including benzene, a known carcinogen. And when it comes back up, many people have suspected that the Earth's pressure combined with the injection pressure combined with the minerals beneath the Earth's surface combined with the original mixture would create new levels of toxicity. How much?

[D]ocuments reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.

The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.

Guess what? The E.P.A. has not intervened. Other environmental agencies have not intervened either. In fact, in our own state of Pennsylvania, the newly-elected governor has made it more difficult for anyone to intervene. Public health and environmental integrity might be on the chopping block more than we suspected.

The risks are particularly severe in Pennsylvania, which has seen a sharp increase in drilling, with roughly 71,000 active gas wells, up from about 36,000 in 2000. The level of radioactivity in the wastewater has sometimes been hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water. While people clearly do not drink drilling wastewater, the reason to use the drinking-water standard for comparison is that there is no comprehensive federal standard for what constitutes safe levels of radioactivity in drilling wastewater.

The story explains numerous other problems with frack water in Pennsylvania including an interactive map that you can peruse to see levels of radium, uranium, benzene, and gross alpha found in Pennsylvania water.

Of particular alarm is the following:

¶More than 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater was produced by Pennsylvania wells over the past three years, far more than has been previously disclosed. Most of this water — enough to cover Manhattan in three inches — was sent to treatment plants not equipped to remove many of the toxic materials in drilling waste.

¶At least 12 sewage treatment plants in three states accepted gas industry wastewater and discharged waste that was only partly treated into rivers, lakes and streams.

¶Of more than 179 wells producing wastewater with high levels of radiation, at least 116 reported levels of radium or other radioactive materials 100 times as high as the levels set by federal drinking-water standards. At least 15 wells produced wastewater carrying more than 1,000 times the amount of radioactive elements considered acceptable.

Though people might not be contaminated by showering, they may be exposed repeatedly through ingestion or through bioconcentration in the food chain. Fish, deer, and other managed and hunted species may accumulate radioactive material in their tissues and humans might then eat them. The gas industry calls this a perception problem. Is it? The gas industry reported in a 1990 study that "'using conservative assumptions,' radium in drilling wastewater dumped off the Louisiana coast posed 'potentially significant risks' of cancer for people who eat fish from those waters regularly."

Read on here.

Governor Tom Corbett is quoted at the piece's end. He is quoted as saying, “I will direct the Department of Environmental Protection to serve as a partner with Pennsylvania businesses, communities and local governments. It should return to its core mission protecting the environment based on sound science.”

What do you think should be done? How should government respond to public concerns and sound science?

Leave comments below.

Electricity Deregulation and You

On Sustainability Now we've been talking a great deal about energy. On almost every show we discuss energy "needs," sources, problems, solutions, and approaches. From photovoltaic solar panels to wind energy to coal and the problems and possibilities in the way that communities face energy and power issues, we have explored a lot.

The Transition Town movement in the Centre Region has been one of the foremost community groups in our area considering some of the problems and community possibilities with electricity deregulation. We've hosted Katherine Watt and Bill Sharpe of the local movement on the show and they are looking beyond the diagnosis of the problems. They are looking to solutions and community actions.

Next Tuesday, February 22nd, they are holding a panel on deregulation hosted by Sustainability Now's Peter Buckland. This would be a great way to cap off your day following the incredible work of students at Penn State to Focus the Nation on climate change and renewable energy.

Over the last two years, the Pennsylvania electricity market has gone from regulation to deregulation. Proponents say increased competition affords people with better and cheaper options. Opponents say removing price caps and other regulations pave the way for excessive corporate profits. On one hand, you might buy "green energy." On the other, prices have risen unevenly around the state. For many, the Enron and California deregulation debacles are fresh in mind.

Join the Centre Region Transition Town for a panel presentation and discussion to learn more about energy deregulation.

7 pm on February 22 in Schlow Memorial Library in State College, in the back conference room, Transition Town will bring together a panel for presentations and to answer questions. Presenters include Erik Foley-DeFiore of Penn State's Office of Sustainability and Shaun Pardi of Envinity, a local "green" business.

The Ecologist's take on fracking

More things to think about with natural gas. One of its key selling points is that it is less toxic than coal and that it's CO2 emissions are lower than other fossil fuels. Watch this video from The Ecologist and you might think again.

What is sustainability?

Today on the show, we had two of our most interesting guests on the show today. Typically, we have people who have a hopeful or optimistic view of sustainability, but today we had guests who come from energy economics. One of our guests, Dr. Andrew Kleit challenged us to think about sustainability. The term is loose. Sustaining what for what and for whom?

He said, "With technological progress, society gets richer. So given that, I'm not sure why I should be poorer today so that someone thirty years from now can be richer. It's like people saving thirty years ago so that we could be richer. I just don't think it makes a whole lot of sense." This creates a great set of questions for us. To get the whole scope of his answer, you can listen here. As you will hear, Dr. Kleit asks some pointed questions and makes some points about energy we don't typically hear on Sustainability Now.

What is being "rich"? Is richness defined by monetary accumulation and expenditure that move on rationalized markets? Is richness defined by life expectancy? Is it measured by happiness and meaning? Is richness measured in number of children you have? The amount of stuff you own?

What is "technological progress"? The Hummer is a piece of technological progress and so is the F-16 and so are hydroponics and so are greenhouses. Are all of those things equally progressive? By what measure?

What do you think about these questions? What is sustainability? What is progress? What does it mean to be rich?

"Natural gas will be a significant improvement"

Penn State, under EPA guidelines and student pressure is almost certainly going to move away from coal. To what?

A large contingent of students has pushed for a larger renewable energy portfolio, mainly solar and wind but some. Others, like Byron Faye who spoke on Sustainability Now in December, don't oppose putting nuclear power into the mix.

But Penn State seems likely to go ahead with a large natural gas component. State College.com reports:

Senior Vice President for Finance Al Horvath told the trustees Friday that natural gas is the most viable alternative to the coal-burning set-up. Speaking with reporters later, Horvath said university officials worked with faculty members in the field to help develop the recommendation for the trustees board.

"The switch to natural gas will be a significant improvement in the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions," he said. He underscored that the project will deliver a 37 percent cut in carbon dioxide emitted from the campus steam facilities.

That's equal to taking 12,400 cars off the road for a year, according to the university.

In the economic and climate change calculus, many will call this a big win. CO2 emissions at university of Penn State's size are considerable. Given the fact that universities prepare the future workforce, this switch and its focus on greenhouse gas reduction are important. But at what cost?

Many do and will see this as a push toward more dangerous extraction processes that endanger Pennsylvania water. What will Penn State do to protect water? Will we ensure better practices than those that exist? How should this be handled? These questions have to come down to more than economic calculation.

When we had Erik Foley on the show, he talked about the environmental assessment that Penn State was putting on coal. Will Penn State do that more rigorously for natural gas extraction? As the institutional home of natural gas exploration, perhaps they can.

"It's not all that it's cracked up to be..."

But maybe it's all that it's fracked up to be.

Is the profit from gas worth the price of destroying tradition?



Are we in a third world country inside of a first world country? Why are farmers left to this? Are we left to "hoping" for clean water?

Thanks to Susquehanna River Sentinel for the post.

New shows up: Biofuels, Penn State's Strategic Plan, and Students for Sustainability

How do people tackle sustainability in the Centre Region? We have had some really great guests on the last few shows. We've had students fighting sweatshops, dirty fossil fuels, and climate change. Well what's Penn State's response as one of the biggest institutions in our state? And how is business in our area working toward cleaner and more sustainable energy? Listen in to see how students, institutions, and businesses are tackling the pressing issues of our day.

What do you think we need to do? What presses you?

Shale Gas: Jekyll and Hyde

Last week, we encouraged you to watch the 60 Minutes piece on shale gas extraction. We've included it below for you to watch again. A lot of the issues we've discussed on the show were front and center. From the need to reduce carbon emissions to the national security/military issues associated with oil to the dreadful costs to communities and ecosystems in terms of water pollution and truck traffic, this feature gets into a lot of the things we've questioned our guests about.



What do you think of Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon's statements comparing Drano and frack water? If we are willing to clean our drains in our own houses with toxic chemicals, why not do it in a massive industrial process? If we use lawn killers and other toxins in our everyday lives, do we have the right to go after natural gas companies? What's the difference?

Sierra Club director Michael Brune argues that natural gas is the future and it has to be more tightly regulated. Some of our guests think it can't be. If he's right, do we have to deal with our own Jekyll and Hyde? What do you think we should do to make sure this is done "the right way?"

Ignorance. Want. Needs.

Earlier this month, Peter and Mike did a show on the recent Marcellus Summit 2010 hosted at the Penn Stater Conference Center. During that show, Peter spoke about some of his experiences at the conference, his thoughts on who was represented and who wasn't, and what the goal of the conference seemed to be. In part, he found the talk of John Felmy (featured on our YouTube page) to be particularly disturbing.

As a follow-up and an expansion on that episode, Peter wrote an op-ed piece on the most recent Voices of Central Pennsylvania. Here is a brief excerpt:

It takes no leap of imagination or some profound and deep thought to see that the gas-infatuated and addicted industries equate their “wants” with our “needs.” I hope that they are wrong.
Felmy, encouraged the faithful attendants to use “facts,” and hopefully “the same facts,” in their deliberations on these matters. Having listened to his presentation several times, I think the gathered were to conclude that those who prescribe to the high faith of fossil–fuel-addiction-meets-growth-economics jargon that “projections” that “show” gas gas “needs” that increase industry profits are, in fact, “facts.”

Consider some projections regarding climate change and extinction, facts that are both reliable and valid. The Earth, on average, will warm 6.4-degrees Celsius (11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by century’s end. Over a billion climate refugees will migrate. Water scarcity – fueled in some small part by hydraulic fracturing – will plunge nations into civil and regional wars over water. The rainforests and boreal forests will nearly disappear. The oceans will further toxify and acidify. Less than 50% of species alive today will be extinct. Earth will be ecologically impoverished. Bladerunner meets The Stand perhaps?

What are your thoughts on our energy "needs" and our future?

Sustainable Penn State

Penn State is a mammoth institution. We hold the biggest Pepsi contract in the state of Pennsylvania as far as we know. Approximately 42,000 people attend this school at University Park each year and close to 80,000 each year across the whole system. Let's face it. What we do as an institution matters.

Well...what is happening? According to a recent video at Penn State's Center for Sustainability website, We Are! Penn State! is getting closer to the mark. Watch.



We hope to have some of the people on this video on our show to talk about the future of the world according to Penn State's vision of sustainability. Where are we going to shape our technologies? Our politics? Our economy? Maybe most importantly, how do we participate in our culture in meaningful ways to care for the seventh generation and beyond?

The Marcellus Impact Goes Beyond the Marcellus

Penn State is reaching out and out across the Marcellus Shale. And the impact of how the natural gas in the Marcellus Shale is "developed" will ripple out across the planet. PolicyInnovations.org shows how shale play development is playing out across the planet from Pennsylvania and New York to Poland to China. It is possible that what Pennsylvanians do and don't do can be imitated the world over.

Whether the American shale gas experience can be a model for environmental best practices in other countries is debatable. Professor Terry Engelder of Pennsylvania State University told the Financial Times in an interview this June that industry-wide standards are difficult to enforce because fracking techniques will vary based on geological differences and local conditions surrounding the shale formations. He also said that developing best practices would require industry leaders to "experiment" and that a zero-tolerance policy toward environmental damage is unlikely to be achieved.

If environmental and health problems are considered inevitable side effects of shale gas drilling, municipalities may have a hard time embracing the resource. Amid the global hype, signs of resistance to shale gas development are emerging overseas. Hundreds of South Africans protested the exploitation of the country's Karoo shale reserves, citing concerns over water supply.

Will companies and governments learn to avoid past mistakes and take advantage of shale gas without collateral damage? Will public fear become more widespread and bring exploration and development efforts to a halt? On a global scale, questions remain as to whether shale gas can fulfill its potential as an energy miracle or if it will instead become another resource curse.

What's happened already might indicate that the best practices aren't good enough. What do you think?

Marcellus Summit 2010

On Sustainability Now, we've covered issues surrounding the natural gas rush in Pennsylvania. We in Pennsylvania live above the massive Marcellus Shale formation, a deposit of shale over one mile underground that the natural gas industry estimates to hold upwards of 250 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This volume has earned the Marcellus region the title of "the Saudi Arabia of natural gas." As natural gas companies have rushed in to get into the shale play, all kinds of worries have erupted. Most of those have been about water use, waste water disposal, water pollution, human health concerns, and community integrity. The recent film Gasland has brought many people a great deal of concern.

On October 10th - 12th, Penn State and the Interstate Oil & Gas Compact Commission co-hosted the 2010 Marcellus Summit: Building a Sustainable Future. The event hoped to "identify the challenges, opportunities, and common goals among key stakeholders." Sustainability Now's Peter Buckland was able to go to a good portion of the event and talk to a lot of people, see a lot of the tables, hear a few keynote speakers, watch a few panel sessions, and ask some question. So what happened?

On today's show, we'll cover some of what happened. We'll provide an overview of the event, its sponsorship, and its attendees. We'll talk about a collaborative initiative in Louisiana's Corrizo-Wilcox Aquifer area that prevented some water problems and that Tom Murphy (Penn State Cooperative Extension and noted natural gas drilling advocate) vaunted as a "model" of cooperation for Pennsylvania (watch video here).

Two regulation panels gave the audience a sense of what federal and state regulation is right now for natural gas wells and pipelines. Most importantly, we will talk about a few of the keynote speakers and their presentations, in particular, John Felmy the Chief Economist for the American Petroleum Institute (videos here and here).

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Is "fracking" THE environmental issue for Pennsylvania? Or is it for all of us?

We've done a few shows on the environmental issues associated with hydrofracture drilling (here, here, here, and here) - so called -"fracking" - in the Marcellus Shale. This is a process whereby energy companies extract natural gas that has been sealed in shale deposits that are up to and beyond a mile below Earth's surface. While alleged to be highly lucrative to the state's economy, the whole process brings with it multiple economic, social, and environmental costs.

Some, like Sandra Steingraber think that fracking and the whole network associated with it, present the whole problem in one go. She has written an article at Orion Magazine that you might want to consider:

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS can be viewed as a tree with two trunks. One trunk represents what we are doing to the planet through atmospheric accumulation of heat-trapping gasses. Follow this trunk along and you find droughts, floods, acidification of oceans, dissolving coral reefs, and species extinctions.

The other trunk represents what we are doing to ourselves and other animals through the chemical adulteration of the planet with inherently toxic synthetic pollutants. Follow this trunk along and you find asthma, infertility, cancer, and male fish in the Potomac River whose testicles have eggs inside them.

At the base of both these trunks is an economic dependency on fossil fuels, primarily coal (plant fossils) and petroleum (animal fossils). When we light them on fire, we threaten the global ecosystem. When we use them as feedstocks for making stuff, we create substances—pesticides, solvents, plastics—that can tinker with our subcellular machinery and the various signaling pathways that make it run.

But don't skip the end.

This year I’ve attended scientific conferences and community forums on fracking. I’ve heard a PhD geologist worry about the thousands of unmapped, abandoned wells scattered across New York from long-ago drilling operations. (What if pressurized fracking fluid, to be entombed in the shale beneath our aquifers, found an old borehole? Could it come squirting back up to the surface? Could it rise as vapor through hairline cracks?) I’ve heard a hazardous materials specialist describe to a crowd of people living in fracked communities how many parts per million of benzene will raise risks for leukemia and sperm abnormalities linked to birth deformities. I’ve heard a woman who lives by a fracking operation in Pennsylvania—whose pond bubbles with methane and whose kids have nosebleeds at night—ask how she could keep her children safe. She was asking me. And I had no answer. Thirty-seven percent of the land in the township where I live with my own kids is already leased to the frackers. There is no away.

Please read on.