The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (18 page)

Dirty Energy

February 17, 2010

Obama’s Nuclear Option

President Barack Obama is going nuclear. He announced the initial $8 billion in loan guarantees for construction of the first new nuclear power plants in the United States in close to three decades. Obama is making good on a campaign pledge, like his promises to escalate the war in Afghanistan and to unilaterally attack in Pakistan. And like his “Af-Pak” war strategy, Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.

Opponents of the plan, which includes a tripling of existing nuclear plant construction-loan guarantees to $54.5 billion, span the ideological spectrum. On its most basic level, the economics of nuclear power generation simply doesn’t make sense. The cost to construct these behemoths is so huge, and the risks are so great, that no sensible investor, no banks, no hedge funds will invest in their construction.

No one will loan a power company the money to build a power plant, and the power companies refuse to spend their own money. Obama himself professes a passion for the free market, telling
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
, “We are fierce advocates for a thriving, dynamic free market.” Well, the free market long ago abandoned nuclear power. The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation remarked, “Expansive loan guarantee programs . . . are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment, and distort capital markets.”

Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a longtime critic of the nuclear power industry, told me, “If you buy more nuclear plants, you’re going to get about two to 10 times less climate solution per dollar, and you’ll get it about 20 to 40 times slower, than if you buy instead the cheaper, faster stuff that is walloping nuclear and coal and gas.”

In his 2008 report “The Nuclear Illusion,” Lovins writes, “Nuclear power is continuing its decades-long collapse in the global marketplace because it’s grossly uncompetitive, unneeded, and obsolete—so hopelessly uneconomic that one needn’t debate whether it’s clean and safe; it weakens electric reliability and national security; and it worsens climate change compared with devoting the same money and time to more effective options.”

The White House Office of Management and Budget, in the same statement announcing the $54.5 billion for nuclear power, also listed a “credit subsidy funding of $500 million to support $3 [billion] to $5 billion of loan guarantees for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.” Thus, just one-tenth the amount for nuclear is being dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. At the same time, the Obama administration plans to cancel funding for the hugely unpopular Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the
Christian Science Monitor
the Obama administration “doesn’t have a plan for [storing] radioactive waste from a new generation of nuclear power plants. That is irresponsible.”

The waste from nuclear power plants is not only an ecological nightmare, but also increases the threats of nuclear proliferation. Obama said in his recent State of the Union address, “We’re also confronting perhaps the greatest danger to the American people—the threat of nuclear weapons.” Despite this, plans that accompany what Obama has proposed, his “new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” include increased commercial “nuclear fuel reprocessing,” which the Union of Concerned Scientists calls “dangerous, dirty and expensive,” and which it says would increase the global risks of both nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism.

Both Lovins and the Union of Concerned Scientists debunk the myth that nuclear energy is essential to combat global warming. Lovins writes, “Every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar.” Obama said that this first tranche of public funding, which will benefit the energy giant Southern Co., “will create thousands of construction jobs in the next few years, and some 800 permanent jobs.” Yet investment in solar, wind, and cogeneration technologies could do the same thing, quickly creating industries here in the U.S. that are thriving in Europe. What’s more, the risks of failure of a windmill or a solar panel are minute when compared with nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

From economics to the environment to the prevention of nuclear threats, Obama’s nuclear loan guarantees fail on all counts.

February 24, 2010

Cracking Down on Fracking

Mike Markham of Colorado has an explosive problem: His tap water catches fire. Markham demonstrates this in a new documentary,
Gasland
, which just won the Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize. Director Josh Fox films Markham as he runs his kitchen faucet, holding a cigarette lighter up to the running water. After a few seconds, a ball of fire erupts out of the sink, almost enveloping Markham’s head.

The source of the flammable water, and the subject of
Gasland
, is the mining process called hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

Fracking is used to access natural gas and oil reserves buried thousands of feet below the ground. Companies like Halliburton drill down vertically, then send the shaft horizontally, crossing many small, trapped veins of gas and oil. Explosive charges are then set off at various points in the drill shaft, causing what Fox calls “mini-earthquakes.” These fractures spread underground, allowing the gas to flow back into the shaft to be extracted. To force open the fractures, millions of gallons of liquid are forced into the shaft at very high pressure.

The high-pressure liquids are a combination of water, sand, and a secret mix of chemicals. Each well requires between 1 million and 7 million gallons of the fluid every time gas is extracted. Drillers do not have to reveal the chemical cocktail, thanks to a slew of exemptions given to the industry, most notably in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which actually granted the fracking industry a specific exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act. California Congressman Henry Waxman, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has just announced an investigation into the composition of the proprietary chemicals used in fracking. In a February 18 letter, Waxman commented on the Safe Drinking Water Act exemption: “Many dubbed this provision the ‘Halliburton loophole’ because of Halliburton’s ties to then Vice President Cheney and its role as one of the largest providers of hydraulic fracturing services.” Before he was vice president, Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton.

In an earlier investigation, Waxman learned that Halliburton had violated a 2003 nonbinding agreement with the government in which the company promised not to use diesel fuel in the mix when extracting from certain wells. Halliburton pumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic, diesel-containing liquids into the ground, potentially contaminating drinking water.

According to the Department of Energy, there were more than 418,000 gas wells in the U.S. as of 2006. Since the Environmental Protection Agency lacks authority to investigate and regulate fracking, the extent of the pollution is unknown. Yet, as Josh Fox traveled the country, becoming increasingly engrossed in the vastness of the domestic drilling industry and the problems it creates, he documented how people living near gas wells are suffering water contamination, air pollution, and numerous health problems that crop up after fracking. It’s personal for Fox: He lives in Pennsylvania, on a stream that feeds into the Delaware River, atop the “Marcellus Shale,” a subterranean region from New York to Tennessee with extensive natural gas reserves. Fracking in the Marcellus Shale could potentially contaminate the water supplies of both New York City and Philadelphia. Fox was offered almost $100,000 for the gas rights to his nineteen acres, which led him to investigate the industry, and ultimately to produce his award-winning documentary.

There is virtually no federal oversight of fracking, leaving the budget-strapped states to do the job with a patchwork of disparate regulations. They are no match for the major, multinational drilling and energy companies that are exploiting the political goal of “energy independence.” The nonprofit news website ProPublica.org found that, out of thirty-one states examined, twenty-one have no regulations specific to hydraulic fracturing, and none requires the companies to report the amount of the toxic fluid remaining underground.

Reports indicate that almost 600 different chemicals are used in fracking, including diesel fuel and the “BTEX” chemicals: benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, which include known carcinogens.

Dr. Theo Colborn, zoologist and expert on chemical pollution from fracking, appears in
Gasland
, saying, “Every environmental law we wrote to protect public health is ignored. . . . We can’t monitor until we know what they’re using.”

Fox ends
Gasland
with an excerpt of a congressional hearing. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., and Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., aggressively question gas industry executives about water contamination. The two have submitted a bill, the proposed FRAC Act, which would remove the “Halliburton loophole,” forcing drillers to reveal the chemical components used in fracking. It’s time to close the door on the Cheney energy policy and take immediate steps to protect clean water.

April 14, 2010

Massey Disaster Not Just Tragic, but Criminal

Massey Energy runs the Upper Big Branch (UBB) mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, where twenty-nine miners were killed last week. The loss of life is tragic, but the UBB explosion is more than tragic; it is criminal. When corporations are guilty of crimes, however, they don’t go to prison, they don’t forfeit their freedom—they just get fined, which often amounts to a slap on the wrist, the cost of doing business. No one makes this clearer than the CEO of Massey Energy, Don Blankenship. He has been the bane of climate-change activists and mine safety advocates for years. This latest mine disaster, if nothing else, will surely bring needed attention to this poster boy for malevolent big business trampling on communities, the environment, and workers’ rights.

Days after the Massey explosion, Blankenship admitted in a radio interview: “Violations are, you know, unfortunately, a normal part of the mining process . . . there are violations at every coal mine in America. And UBB was a mine that had violations.” The
Charleston
Gazette
of West Virginia has consistently reported critically on Massey Energy and Blankenship, prompting him to attack its editors in a November 2008 speech, saying: “It is as great a pleasure to me to be criticized by the communists and the atheists of the
Gazette
. . . would we be upset if Osama bin Laden were to be critical of us? I don’t think so.”

Initial speculation on the cause of the explosion is methane in the mine. The Massey UBB mine has received thousands of citations for violations, including many for failing to remove the methane with ventilation. Another cause may be the mine’s proximity to Massey mountaintop removal operations. Mountaintop removal involves the massive blasting away of mountaintops, providing access to seams of coal, but causing widespread destruction of the environment. The
Wall Street Journal
reported Monday that a West Virginia state investigation into the explosion will include possible impact of nearby mountaintop mining operations. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson issued new rules restricting mountaintop removal on April 1, just days before the Massey explosion. Massey is the principal target of a growing grassroots campaign against mountaintop removal. Among those arrested at protests have been renowned climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and actress Daryl Hannah.

Sixteen miners died in Massey mines between the years 2000 and 2007. Elvis Hatfield, forty-six, and Don Bragg, thirty-three, were killed in January 2006 in the Aracoma mine fire. Their widows sued Massey Energy and Blankenship. At the trial, their lawyers presented a memo written by Blankenship months before the fatal fire, instructing his deep-mine superintendents to focus on extracting coal over safety projects: “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e. build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.”

Coal pays the bills. And pays Blankenship’s salary, which, estimated by the Associated Press at $19.7 million, is the highest in the coal industry. Blankenship, who is a board member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is a fierce opponent of organized labor, a relentless denier of climate change, and a staunch opponent of regulation. He said of government regulators, last Labor Day at an anti-union rally, “The very idea that they care more about coal-miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming.”

Blankenship poured $3 million into the election campaign of a candidate for the West Virginia Supreme Court, in order to replace a sitting judge whom he feared would rule against Massey in an appeal against a $50 million judgment. The candidate he backed, Brent Benjamin, won the seat and voted to overturn the judgment. (The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision, citing Blankenship’s funding of the election, and the case served as the basis of John Grisham’s 2008 legal thriller,
The Appeal
.)