What The... Frack

The EPA found over 20 years ago that Horizontal Hydraulic Fracturing (Fracking) contaminates water. In 2005 President George W. Bush signed legislation exempting gas drillers that use fracking techniques from the Clean Water regulation. So much has been spoken, recorded and documented about how fracking is destroying water supplies by polluting them not just with methane (natural gas) but also with a cornucopia of toxic materials, that I am not going to focus on that in this blog. Suffice it to say that the EPA which is beholden to politicians who are beholden to the corporations will do to fracking what S&P did with CDO securities leading to the housing bubble. They will ignore it, down play it, defend it, until everyone gets hurt and then they will issue a no-brainer statement.


Watch actor Mark Ruffalo talk about this topic with Keith Olbermann on Current TV. Mark Ruffalo figured out that as a beneficiary of public goodwill through his art, he owed society something. And he figured he owed society a voice to defend the millions of us who are blinded and mislead by the pretty advertising by the Oil and Natural Gas companies and Industry Groups (lobbies).


Here are some take aways from this interview:

• Allowing Fracking as a trade-off to fazing off old Nuclear Power Facilities is trading one lousy form of energy for another.
• Fracturing sets off mini earthquakes which over time threaten the structural integrity of homes near fracking sites.
• USA Today said that today's highest paying jobs in the fastest growing sector of the ecomony is Green Energy Tech. 
• Gas is not the answer. Gas is the bridge to another 40 years of Carbon based fuels.
• A New York based fracking company got busted PUMPING IN 150,000 gallons of diesel fuel into the ground. They could pump in any toxic soup and they are not accountable.
• The water coming out of the fracked landscape cannot be recycled. Its laden with Radium, Uranium and all kinds of toxic substances. Its causing our sewage and water treatment facilities to shut down.
• Josh Fox's movie Gasland did more to bring this issue to light than anyone in the media or environmental activists could. He took a camera and went into Rural America. He discovered that rural communities after being destroyed turned to who else but the fracking companies for support, signing NDAs (Non Disclosure Agreements) in exchange for money and silence because now their homes and properties were worthless.

Will Obama Meet His Solar Deadline?

Source: 350.org

Will President Obama meet his self-imposed deadline to get solar panels back on the roof of the White House by the end of this spring? On October 5, 2010, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced that the Obama Administration would be returning solar panels to the White House roof. (President Carter installed solar panels on the roof in 1979 only to have them removed by President Reagan a few years later.) This after a lot of cajoling by the good folks at 350.org who found the exiled Carter Solar Panels in Maine and personally drove them down on a biofuel vehicle from Maine to the White House. They were rebuffed repeatedly by the White House until Secretary Chu made the surprise announcement.



The team at 350.org launched a campaign in 2010, “Put Solar On It,” challenging world leaders to install solar at their presidential residences and then follow up with real legislation. Some elected officials seized the opportunity. President Pratibha Devisingh Patil announced a new 50kw array for India’s presidential palace. In October, President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives took the challenge a step further, actually getting up his roof to help install the solar panels himself. President Obama made a promise but with Spring 2011 ending on June 21, a week from today, Will Obama Meet His Solar Deadline?

The  answer maybe NO given that the administration is delaying putting out rules for coal plant emissions, calling for expanding oil drilling through nothing less than the President's weekly web address, and increasing fracking.

Yet, we cannot be silent bystanders. We've got to keep putting pressure on the administration, and we know that that is something that the administration likes and believes is the best way to get results.

So take action here and here.

Hold President Obama's feet to the fire.