* Will Penn's Woods become new "Gasland"? (video) 11-8-10
EDITORIAL ESSAY 11-8-10
Click!
Obama clicks into gas industry talking points
All over the land, environmentalists and their detractors alike heard the same sound effect when President Obama at his post-election news conference praised the “terrific natural gas resources in this country. Are we doing everything we can to develop them?” That historic moment amplified every syllable of his words and even the one syllable he didn’t say: coal. It was the sound effect of Obama’s falling into line with natural gas talking points: “Click!”
The “click” was heard not only from Obama’s quarter but from so-called “environmentalists” who skipped not a beat, as one news report shows which we take apart here par by par, in the drumbeat of industry PR (“Obama’s Enthusiasm for Gas Drilling Raises Eyebrows,” NYT 11-4-10, emphasis ours):
“Environmentalists are careful to say they do not flat-out oppose drilling for natural gas, which burns twice as cleanly as coal. Some see it as a "bridge fuel" to replace coal and oil while the nation transitions to renewable sources of energy."Also see Nora Eisenberg’s strong piece on AlterNet, “Why Is Obama Cuddling Up to Karl Rove and His Gas Drilling Friends?” with subtitle “Rove pronounced the movement for clean energy ‘gone’ at a natural gas drilling conference. But a massive protest outside reveals just the opposite” describing the Nov 3 Pittsburgh march across the Rachel Carson Bridge.
In the days following Tuesday’s election, President Obama’s first peace offering to hardliners across the aisle was telling: “We’ve got, I think, broad agreement that we’ve got terrific natural gas resources in this country,” he said. At the same time he was giving the thumbs-up for natural gas drilling, Karl Rove was doing the same, appearing as the keynote speaker at the DUG (Developing Unconventional Gas) conference on hydraulic fracturing.
Half truths
The above are two key gas industry propaganda points that construct the same delusion: The first suggests that natural gas as a whole energy system is clean as a whistle because it burns cleanly, leaving little soot residue. However, this fails to mention how dirty natural gas actually is (made up mostly of methane) when it escapes into the atmosphere where the greenhouse effect, per Robert Howarth of Cornell, could make gas almost as bad as coal if not worse because of all the leaks and ventings along the entire shale gas production lifecycle. Methane is far more potent than CO2 in trapping heat in the atmosphere, thus worsening global warming and climate change.
Republican operative Karl Rove told the Marcellus Shale conference in early Nov that the sweeping Republican victory would put an end to most of the industry's legislative threats including the FRAC Act requiring disclosure of fracking chemicals and bringing hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act from which it was conveniently exempted at the request of former (at the time) Halliburton CEO (and then as well as now stockholder) Richard Cheney. “Climate bills like the Waxman-Markey legislation will be dropped . . . You can bet on Markey’s special committee being disbanded,” Rove declared. The new House under GOP control would be supportive of the energy industry and "sure as heck" would not pass fracking and climate change legislation. "Climate is gone," said Rove.
There you have it.
In the second component of the phantom, gas industry spokesmen, including some but not all environmentalists who are not paying attention, promote gas as an ideal “bridge fuel” to get beyond coal, even “clean coal” (a misleading term).
Examine natural gas “media” and study its own promulgations of truth disseminated on slickly designed websites such as “Shale Country” run by a foundation with the Orwellian name of 'Clean Skies' owned and operated by Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest shale gas producers in the nation today, and we discover an industry rich enough to buy the best marketing minds in the world and put them to work shaping their image and message. From Chesapeake's perspective we see that by promoting NG as a "bridge fuel" their intent is never to get off the bridge until all shale runs out of gas, which could be many decades. It is not a functional bridge getting us from the carbon side here to the green side over there but a cunning way to stay on the carbon bank longer. A trick.
We painted some of this picture in “Fracturing the Talking Points,” PC’s 8-16-10 inaugural essay. Since Obama has “clicked in” to the gas industry PR scheme, we now return to the theme because we want to pay attention to how these threads are sewn together by gas industry talking point manufacturers who feed the public as well as business and government leaders, and obviously Mr. Obama. This is a skillful propaganda sham full of half-truths that seldom wavers off message: Not only is natural gas the “clean dream” of energy planners, the gas industry has crafted an impression of natural gas as part of the “green” energy spectrum, sensed to be "sort of green." It's "greenwashing."
This is quite a trick but in the minds of many Americans, the cleanness of gas equals its greenness. The natural gas flame is warm and cozy in the kitchen on a cold morning when we cook our oatmeal, and many cooks prefers natural gas to electric stoves so it has a household appeal. It’s all kind of vague and soft-edged, nothing carved in stone. But the impression is conveyed by industry that we needn’t bother banging our heads against the wall trying to get the public interested in green energy solutions because, “Aw, gee,” looking down and toeing the floor, “we’ve got the ideal clean energy here, a sorta green type fuel right here in the Marcellus and other shale plays in 34 states. It doesn't pollute the air and besides, it's natural, right? Natural gas is what it's called. Why look elsewhere?”
Such assertions have a dark side, partly because methane is invisible, like its greenhouse footprint which is an abstract concept in itself, so the gas industry can get away with this soft thinking. Such is the general impression of natural gas harbored by many Americans.
Chevron Oil Company has just announced a major buy of shale gas production capability in the Marcellus Shale. Chevron also recently launched a media-wide publicity campaign to improve its image similar to the Shale Country fantasy (which we examined in our prior essay) created by the Clean Skies Foundation (Chesapeake Gas Company). It's called the Chevron "We Agree" campaign and projects a "human face" on Chevron Corporation just as Shale Country painted an appealing picture of the world of shale gas drilling on behalf of Chesapeake Gas Corporation (never naming itself directly Cheaspeake but hiding behind foundation name "Clean Skies"). See the activist environmentalist push-back on Chevron's "We Agree" campaign by dissenting public citizens in the form of counter-posters being plastered on all sorts of surfaces around towns. It's a propaganda battle and the enemy (portrayed as friend) is us.
The gas industry, by portraying NG as clean, non-polluting, community-friendly, jobs generating, nearly green and good for us, has taken a lot of wind out of the sails of green energy initiatives in terms of public perception. It has distracted American consumers and political leaders from a concerted drive to move forward toward alternative energy, and persuaded the public we needn’t look much further into the ethereal realms of renewables and sustainables as long as the shale plays are in play, estimated to be at least several more decades.
This amounts to a PR coup in the struggle between energy forms of carbon vs. non-carbon, with the latter losing the PR battle, if not yet the whole war.
Not to be too dramatic about it, but if we lie back and accept the shale gas bonanza as "the future of energy" as it is being touted or even as just a very long "energy bridge" of several decades, we will regret it. If it proves true (as we suspect it will) that methane leaks and ventings in the shale gas production lifecycle gravely aggravate the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change, and with virtually no leadership we slip casually off track from developing true green energy solutions and focus instead on faux-green natural gas, it may take us on a course toward massive self-destruction.
This will make the drinking water dimension of the shale gas debate look like child's play. If a series of fracking disasters happen with drinking water in a major river watershed (like the Delaware River providing drinking water for 15 million people including New York City and Philadelphia), non-shale areas will still have drinking water we can have shipped or piped in. It will be horrible but survivable. But if the worldwide craze in shale gas drilling causes precipitous worsening of greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change, it will adversely affect the entire earth and all her species.
(READ MORE OF 'CLICK!" Don't be confused when continuation takes you to a previous page dated Oct 14 -- didn't know where else to continue and it's a long essay).
