elections

Protest shuts down PNC shareholder meeting

Leave a comment

Protest shuts down PNC shareholder meeting

April 23, 2013 3:21 pm

Pam Panchak / Post-Gazette
Michael Scarnn of the Earth Quaker Action team has a discussion with a gentleman outside the August Wilson Center, the location of the PNC Financial Services Group’s annual meeting. The group was protesting PNC ‘s policy on mountaintop removal.
Print Email Read Later
By Patricia Sabatini / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A group concerned with the environmental effects of mountaintop removal coal mining descended on PNC Financial Services Group’s annual shareholders meeting Downtown this morning, disrupting the event and forcing Chairman and CEO James Rohr to abruptly shut it down.

Mr. Rohr tried to deliver his presentation inside the August Wilson Center, but was repeatedly interrupted by members of the Earth Quaker Action Team who took turns calling out the names of individual board members asking them to state their position on mountaintop mining.

After calling the protesters out of order, Mr. Rohr essentially threw up his hands and adjourned the meeting roughly 15 minutes after it began.

Earth Quaker, which has demonstrated at PNC’s annual meetings for three straight years, wants Pittsburgh’s biggest bank to stop lending money to companies that extract coal by shearing off the tops of mountains.

PNC last year said it no longer financed companies with a majority of their business tied to the practice.

But Earth Quaker executive director Amy Ward Brimmer said today that no companies fit that description.

“None of them do a majority of their business in mountaintop mining,” she said.

The group claims PNC remains one of the nation’s two largest financiers of mountaintop coal mining.

Ms. Brimmer said members decided to step up pressure on PNC this year because executives have refused to meet with them.

“This is the only way we can think to get their attention,” she said.

Patricia Sabatini: psabatini@post-gazette.com or 412-263-3066.
First Published April 23, 2013 12:27 am

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/breaking/protest-shuts-down-pnc-shareholder-meeting-684664/#ixzz2RK5xbGNY

Environment, Fracking, Marcellus Shale

Josh Fox’s ‘Gasland’ Sequel Opens

1 Comment

A Return Tour Through a Land of Abandoned Homes and Broken Promises

By Alison Rose Levy

Beaver County Blue via Alternet

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org [3].

April 22, 2013 – Gasland Part II, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, takes us deep into the heartland of America, a land overtaken by gas extraction via fracking. The iconic and recurring depictions of water-on-fire seen in the first Gasland, in the new film serve as postcards from a travelogue through a land of broken promises, abandoned homes, and extinguished rights.

The first Gasland, (which was released in 2010 and nominated for a 2011 Academy Award) became this country’s wake-up call about fracking, the first prod for millions to look beyond the industry-engineered PR facade. Banjo music played throughout the soundtrack revealed director Josh Fox’s chosen musical instrument. But Fox became a kind of Pied Piper for a growing grass roots movement that questioned the need for fracking. Challenging the inroads claimed by the multinational gas and oil industry, fractivism is a popular and youth-driven pushback that these powerful industries are neither accustomed nor equipped to deal with.

Gasland and Gasland Part II (and films like them) unmask the human debt incurred by an array of corporate Goliaths. It turns the lens on those joining the ranks of the Davids—ordinary citizens that awaken from the American dream to discover their way of life has been redefined by impersonal corporate entities, intent on constructing new superhighways towards profits‑—right over the lives of tens of thousands of people.

Gasland Part II continues Fox’s exploration by offering textured, in-depth profiles of half a dozen or so families in geographically diverse locations, from Australia, to Wyoming to Pennsylvania. Fox’s camera takes us into the homes of straight-talking folks who worked hard to secure their corner of the heartland.

Continue reading Josh Fox’s ‘Gasland’ Sequel Opens →

Environment, Marcellus Shale

Gas Fever Fallout: You Have to See It to Believe It

1 Comment

 

(Photo credit: Robert Donnan/ Marceullus Air)

What It’s Like to Have Fracking in Your Backyard

By Tara Lohan

This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org [3].

April 15, 2013 – Ed Wade’s property straddles the Wetzel and Marsh county lines in rural West Virginia and it has a conventional gas well on it. “You could cover the whole [well] pad with three pickups,” said Wade. And West Virginia has lots of conventional wells — more than 50,000 at last count. West Virginians are so well acquainted with gas drilling that when companies began using high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing in 2006 to access areas of the Marcellus Shale that underlie the state, most residents and regulators were unprepared for the massive footprint of the operations and the impact on their communities.

When it comes to a conventional well and a Marcellus well, “There is no comparison, none whatsoever,” said Wade, who works with the Wetzel County Action Group [4]. “You live in the country for a reason and it just takes that and turns it upside down. You know how they preach all the time that natural gas burns cleaner than coal; well, it may burn cleaner than coal, but it’s a hell of a lot dirtier to extract.”

To understand what’s at stake, you have to understand the vocabulary. Take the word “fracking” for example. When people say it’s been around since the 1950s, they are referring to vertical fracturing, but what’s causing all the contention lately is a much more destructive process known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. Or they’re using "fracking" in a very limited way. “The industry uses [fracking] to refer just to the moment when the shale is fractured using water as the sledgehammer to shatter the shale,” scientist Sandra Steingraber told AlterNet [5]. “With that as the definition they can say truthfully that there are no cases of water contamination associated with fracking. But you don’t get fracking without bringing with it all these other things — mining for the frack sand [6], depleting water, you have to add the chemicals, you have to drill, you have to dispose of the waste, you have drill cuttings. I refer to them all as fracking, as do most activists.”

Continue reading Gas Fever Fallout: You Have to See It to Believe It →

elections

Earth Day Protest at DEP Office April 22nd

Leave a comment

Citizens celebrate Earth Day by protesting DEP

Posted: Thursday, April 18, 2013 10:45 pm

By Rachel Morgan rmorgan@timesonline.com |

PITTSBURGH — Most people celebrate Earth Day by planting trees. But a local coalition of environmentalists plans to celebrate the Earth by protesting actions of the state agency intended to protect it.

The coalition, made up of 60 organizations and individual citizens, is staging a statewide Earth Day protest Monday at six regional Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection offices. The groups are calling for the DEP to return to its mission, “to protect Pennsylvania’s air, land and water from pollution and to provide for the health and safety of its citizens through a cleaner environment.”

The group also has five demands for the regulatory agency, which has come under fire in recent months over its water-testing practices. It stems from a Public Accountability Initiative report that highlighted extensive ties between DEP leadership and the oil and gas industry, and its granting of a permit to Chesapeake Energy for hydraulic fracturing just 1 mile from the Beaver Valley Power Station, among others.

The Earth Day Protest Against Fracking has the following five demands:

• Appoint an environmental expert without industry ties as DEP Secretary to ensure DEP’s mission is fulfilled

• Place a moratorium on permits for gas wells, compressor stations, pipelines, water withdrawals, coal mines, and other infrastructure related to fossil fuel extraction

• Allow no more toxic secrets and full disclosure of water tests and other studies by DEP

• Provide justice for those harmed by the oil and gas industry

• Reopen the DEP Office of Energy and Technology Deployment to develop solar, wind and other renewable energy technologies

The local demonstration will take place at 2p.m. Monday at the DEP Southwest Regional Office, 400 Waterfront Drive, Homestead.

http://www.timesonline.com/news/local_news/citizens-celebrate-earth-day-by-protesting-dep/article_1940092e-1aa5-5ff0-a148-d9a750b16a67.html

elections

US Government Interfering in Venezuela

Leave a comment
President Nicolas Maduro
President Nicolas Maduro

U.S. Must Recognize Venezuela’s Elections

Posted: 04/18/2013 6:03 pm

by Dan Kovalik

The United States is refusing to recognize the results of the Venezuelan elections, insisting that Venezuela conduct a re-count of 100 percent of the votes in light of the narrow margin of victory for Nicolas Maduro. The facts surrounding the voting process and election outcome in Venezuela, the U.S.’s own experiences with close presidential elections, and the U.S.’s recent recognition of coup governments in Latin America demonstrate that the U.S.’s position in regard to Venezuela has nothing to do with the U.S.’s alleged concerns for democracy, but rather, its complete disdain for it.

I just returned from Venezuela where I was one of over 170 international election observers from around the world, including India, Guyana, Suriname, Colombia, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Scotland, England, the United States, Guatemala, Argentina, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Brazil, Chile, Greece, France, Panama and Mexico. These observers included two former presidents (of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic), judges, lawyers and numerous high ranking officials of national electoral councils. What we found was an election system which was transparent, inherently reliable, well-run and thoroughly audited.

Indeed, as to the auditing, what has been barely mentioned by the mainstream press is the fact that around 54 percent of all votes are, and indeed have already been, audited to ensure that the electronic votes match up with the paper receipts which serve as back-up for these electronic votes. And, this auditing is done in the presence of witnesses from both the governing and opposition parties right in the local polling places themselves. I witnessed just such an audit at the end of election day on Sunday. And, as is the usual case, the paper results matched up perfectly with the electronic ones. As the former Guatemalan President, Alvaro Colom, who served as an observer, opined, the vote in Venezuela is “secure” and easily verifiable.

In short, the observers’ experience this past week aligns with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s observation last year that Venezuela’s electoral system is indeed the “the best in the world.”

Continue reading US Government Interfering in Venezuela →

elections

Venezuela Votes to Continue on Socialist Path

Leave a comment
President Nicolas Maduro
President Nicolas Maduro

Maduro’s Narrow Victory

A Wake-Up Call for Venezuela?

by MARK WEISBROT

After a short but bitterly fought, insult-laden campaign, Chavista standard-bearer Nicolás Maduro defeated challenger Henrique Capriles, thus assuring continuity in Venezuela after the death of President Hugo Chávez last month.  But the election was much closer than the polls predicted: a margin of just 1.6 percentage points, or about 275,000 votes.

Capriles is demanding an audit of 100 percent of all votes; Maduro has apparently agreed.  But the audit is unlikely to change the outcome. Unlike in the United States, where in a close election we really don’t know who won, the Venezuelan system is very secure. Since there are two records of every vote (machine and paper ballot), it is nearly impossible to rig the machines and stuff the ballot boxes to match. Jimmy Carter called Venezuela’s electoral system “the best in the world.”

Continue reading Venezuela Votes to Continue on Socialist Path →

Green Energy, Green Jobs, Infrastructure

Germany Showing How to Move to Clean Energy

Leave a comment

German housing producing its own electricity, and selling the excess to the grid

Is Renewable Energy’s Biggest Problem Solved?

By Paul Brown
SolidarityEconomy.net via Climate News Network

April 5, 2013 – Critics of renewables have always claimed that sun and wind are only intermittent producers of electricity and need fossil fuel plants as back-up to make them viable. But German engineers have proved this is not so.

By skillfully combining the output of a number of solar, wind and biogas plants the grid can be provided with stable energy 24 hours a day without fear of blackouts, according to the Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology (IWES) in Kassel.

For Germany, which has turned its back on nuclear power and is investing heavily in all forms of renewables to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, this is an important breakthrough.

The country has a demanding industrial sector that needs a large and stable electricity supply, and some doubted that this could be achieved in the long term without retaining nuclear or large fossil fuel plants.

Solving the problem is becoming urgent. The latest figures show that on some days of the year the electricity being generated from sun, wind, biomass, water and geothermal production already accounts for more than half of the load required in the country.

The research is funded by the German Federal Ministry of the Environment and is aimed at showing that the entire electricity grid could be run on renewable energy.

Dr. Kurt Rohrig, deputy director of IWES, said: "Each source of energy – be it wind, sun or biogas – has its strengths and weaknesses. If we manage to skillfully combine the different characteristics of the regenerative energies, we can ensure the power supply for Germany.”

The idea is that many small power plant operators can feed their electricity into the grid but act as a single power plant using computers to control the level of power (see our story of 20 January, Renewables: The 99.9% solution).

Sharing the load

Scientists linked together 25 plants with a nominal power output of 120 megawatts. Surplus power could be used for charging electric vehicles and for pumped storage (pumping water uphill into a reservoir to produce hydropower later).

When many small producers work together, then regional differences when the wind blows or the sun is intermittent are balanced out in the grid and can be boosted by controllable biogas facilities.

If there is too much surplus energy then the power can also be used to create and store thermal energy to be used later.

Kasper Knorr, the project manager for the scheme, which is known as the Combined Power Plant2 research project, says the idea is to ensure that the consumer is supplied reliably with 230 volts at a frequency of 50 Hertz.

The current system of supplying the grid with electricity is geared to a few large producers. In the new system, with dozens of small producers, there will need to be extra facilities at intervals on the system to stabilize voltage. Part of the project is designed to find out how many of these the country will need.

The project has the backing of Germany’s large and increasingly important renewable companies and industrial giants like Siemans.  Researchers will be demonstrating the system at the Hanover Trade Fair from April 8 to 13.

Economy, Green Jobs, Infrastructure, unemployment

Filling the ‘Green Jobs’ Bucket Needs More Than a Slow Dribble…

Leave a comment

Monongahela locks and dams would get $2 million from spending plan

By Len Boselovic

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

April 12, 2013 – President Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget proposal calls for imposing annual per-vessel fees on the barge industry to pay for an $8 billion backlog in delayed and over-budget projects, including replacing aging locks and dams on the Monongahela River.

The White House proposal comes as a measure by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., to bolster funding for the work and shift more of the costs to taxpayers could be taken up by the U.S. Senate as early as next week.

The budget proposal Mr. Obama submitted Wednesday includes $4.7 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works program, which includes operating, maintaining and replacing more than 200 locks and related dams on the nation’s rivers. That is nearly 6 percent less than was called for in the last budget Congress approved for the fiscal year that ended in September.

The $4.7 billion includes $2 million for replacing locks and dams on the Monongahela River at Braddock, Charleroi and Elizabeth, a project that typifies the delays and cost overruns plaguing the nation’s deteriorating locks and dams.

Continue reading Filling the ‘Green Jobs’ Bucket Needs More Than a Slow Dribble… →

elections

House Democrats Reject President’s Social Security Cuts

Leave a comment

The Hill Newspaper

House Dem leaders balk at Obama’s plan to cut Social Security
By Mike Lillis – 04/11/13 05:55 PM ET

House Democratic leaders pushed back Thursday against President Obama’s decision to include Social Security cuts as part of his 2014 budget request.

Several top-ranking Democrats — including Reps. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Steny Hoyer (Md.), James Clyburn (S.C.) and Xavier Becerra (Calif.) — questioned the wisdom of altering popular seniors benefits in the context of deficit reduction.

“I think there was general consensus that all of that discussion should be something for the table on which we preserve Social Security and not really part of this budget,” Pelosi said following a meeting Democrats held with budget experts on the White House plan to reduce future Social Security benefits by adopting a new way of calculating inflation.

Obama’s budget proposal has infuriated liberals for including the chained CPI proposal, which would change the formula used to calculate Social Security benefits and lower payments over the long term.

Most of pushback from rank-and-file members, she said, stemmed from concerns that the Social Security cut appeared to be “subsidizing … lesser priorities” rather than bolstering the program itself. That could have negative consequences on future efforts to strengthen the program, Pelosi lamented.

“What may happen, because of this debate, is that lines may be so drawn on this subject as part of the budget, that it might prejudice people as an approach,” she added. “It’s too bad it’s in the budget.”

Continue reading House Democrats Reject President’s Social Security Cuts →