We are being watched

Adam Federman at Earth Island Journal has just come out with his investigative report on the status of state-corporate surveillance of environmental activist groups. DAG is mentioned in the piece.

Here are some highlights:
The mere possibility of surveillance could handicap environmental groups' ability to achieve their political goals. "You are painting the political opposition as supporters of terrorism to discredit them and cripple their ability to remain politically viable," says Mike German, an FBI special agent for 16 years who now works with the ACLU.

In public, corporations have amplified the threat of eco-terrorism to influence legislation, such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. In private, meanwhile, they have hired firms to spy on environmental groups.

The blurring of public and private spying is what Dutch scholar Bob Hoogenboom calls "grey intelligence." In a 2006 paper of the same name, Hoogenboom noted that in addition to well-known spy agencies like MI6 and the CIA, hundreds of private organizations involved in intelligence gathering have entered the market to meet corporate demand. "The idea was to do for industry what we had done for the government," Christopher James, a former MI6 officer who founded Hakluyt, a private intelligence company whose clients have included Shell and BP, told the Financial Times. Many corporations now have their own private intelligence networks, or "para-CIAs," to gather information on consumers, critics, and even their own shareholders.

Visualizing Vulnerability

Denton is working on an interactive map of its gas wells. This would be good for so many reasons, including helping us to prioritize our monitoring efforts. Here is a map a friend made for me that is rough but indicates drug free zones (schools and parks, mostly) with red buffers 1,000 feet around them and gas wells (the little circle icons with six short lines around them, look like little bugs).

Dryden Wins!

This decision just came out: http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/Dryden-Decision.pdf

http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2013/fracking-ban-stands-in-new-york-town-victory-for-local-communities

The New York Town of Dryden has their ban on fracking upheld by a state appeals court.

Anti-fracking, but Pro-development? On The Limits of Idealism

How should we think about – and what should we vote on – the proposed city-owned gas utility? Here is the language on the ballot:

“Shall the City of Denton be allowed to own, acquire, construct, maintain, and operate a gas utility in order to provide gas utility services to non-residential customers in that area of the City near the Airport Industrial Park.”

Essentially, voters have a chance to approve that the city run a combined heat and power plant (CHP) and related commercial natural gas infrastructure (including a pipeline) to foster industrial development near the airport. It seems like nearly everyone in-the-know is in favor of this one – from Richard Hayes to Kevin Roden. There’s a lot to like about it for people placed along a wide swath of the political spectrum – jobs, diversified tax base, and state-of-the-art technology that is relatively efficient and thus more environmentally friendly compared to traditional alternatives.

But this project is bound to stick in the craw of those who fall on the extremes of the political spectrum. Those on the far right might decry government meddling where the free market knows best. But I want to focus on the far, call it green, left: Why are we committing to fossil-fuel-based development given how toxic the extractive practices are and given the closing window on our chances to avert climate disaster?

Those who have been seeking stricter drilling and fracking regulations may be able to consistently support this CHP project, because their position is not necessarily an anti-fossil fuel one. But those who have called for a ban on fracking seem committed to opposing this project as well. After all, if natural gas is the problem, this proposal will sink us deeper into the problem.

So here is my question: Where are the voices in opposition to this CHP plant? Why were they so loud about fracking but silent on this?

I know plenty of folks who opposed the way City Council initially went about the project (by-passing the Charter and all). But who opposes not just the method but the goal, not just the means but the end?

This is a sticky one, because we do so utterly depend on fossil fuels to keep the economy humming along. And we depend on the economy for jobs and we depend on jobs for bread and butter. Thus, the question about the proper scope of idealism - in this case, opposition to fossil fuels. Yes, I want us to kick the fossil fuel habit...but a project like this seems so irrefutably practical and beneficial. But how can one stick to ideals if all along the way exceptions are made for practicality's sake?

It reminds me of Robert Kaplan's new piece in the Atlantic on Henry Kissinger. He defends great leaders as those who know when to violate ideals - even basic Judeo-Christian morality - when the times demand it. Indeed, he speaks of the MORALITY of this leadership...someone has got to save civilization (in Kissinger's case) or in this case, someone has got to make sure Denton provides jobs and a sustainable tax base.

Kaplan slings an arrow intended to wound us 'intellectuals':
"The rare individuals who have recognized the necessity of violating such morality, acted accordingly, and taken responsibility for their actions are among the most necessary leaders for their countries, even as they have caused great unease among generations of well-meaning intellectuals who, free of the burden of real-world bureaucratic responsibility, make choices in the abstract and treat morality as an inflexible absolute."

Josh Fox's Tech-fix Fixation

Josh Fox has recently been making splashes as his new film Gasland Part II gets set to hit HBO this summer. One placed he showed up was on the Daily Dish, where he answers a question about whether fracking and natural gas are lesser evils compared with coal.

It's about a five-minute video and worth a look. I think he gives a very thoughtful answer about coal and natural gas as pretty comparable in terms of negative impacts. I also agree that we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. Yes, they are 'toxic fuels.' 

I have a hard time, though, swallowing his technological optimism. Coal vs. Gas is a false dilemma, he says, because we have Wind! So what do we need to do about the quiet crisis we face? We DON'T need to change our ways. Consume less. Reinvent local economies. Redesign cities. Reduce our needs. No, we just need to switch to renewables!

My first reaction was: I don't buy it. Wind and solar simply cannot provide the baseload for electricity generation that we 'need' (if we go along with him and hold our needs unimpeachable). And that says nothing about the transportation sector....solar and wind cars, airplanes?! Not even on the horizon.

To me, this is the folly of the tech-fix fixation of many mainstream greens.

BUT...maybe I am wrong. In researching this post, I discovered lots about the 'baseload fallacy'. There are some intriguing sites out there making the case that renewables could supply our electricity needs on a large scale if we just made some adjustments to the grid. Interestingly, Texas stands out as an example of this, as it can accomodate 24% of its load (at times) with wind power.

So...am I too quick to write off the technological solutionism here?