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Wendy Lynne Lee

When the Roots Aren’t Made of Grass, the Solutions Save the System, and the Only Thing Hotter than the Planet is the Bacon

March 18, 2015
When the Roots Aren't Made of Grass, the Solutions Save the System, and the Only Thing Hotter than the Planet is the Bacon

About two thirds of the way into Josh Fox’ Solutions Grassroots Tour performance at Clarke Chapel, Lycoming College, Pennsylvania, I got up and walked out. I wasn’t noisy-but I was definitive. I could say that Fox’ gig just wasn’t very well put together (it wasn’t), or that it seemed pretty cheesy on the side of a pitch for his new installment in the Gasland documentary series (it was). I could say that the “theater” promised in the trailer was wholly MIA, and that it wasn’t much of a concert-but the surprise musical guests were really really great.   Nope, I got up and walked out because the Progressive Democrat brand of politics being sold to an audience mostly made up of all the usual anti-fracking movement suspects-and no one really […]

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Thanking the Gas Wolf Governor for “Saving” a Few Acres From the Frack is like Thanking the Armed Robber for Leaving the Curtains After He Guts Your House

January 30, 2015
Thanking the Gas Wolf Governor for "Saving" a Few Acres From the Frack is like Thanking the Armed Robber for Leaving the Curtains After He Guts Your House

Fresh out the inaugural gate, Pennsylvania’s Governor Gas Wolf wasted no time signing 22 permits to continue the conversion of the state into a giganto-frack-gas factory. At the direction of the new governor, (reported by Energy Justice), the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP),”permitted 22 shale gas wells for five counties in just three days from January 21-23. One of those well permits, Chief Oil’s Teel 4H, is within a mile of a cluster of 19 water wells in Dimock, PA that were spoiled by gas drilling in 2008″ (Bad Call: PA Governor Wolf Pursues Drilling on 700,000 Acres of State Land | Energy Justice: Shale Initiative). The report continues: The 22 new well permits last week were granted to operators including Chevron, Rex Energy, Cabot Oil & Gas, Chesapeake […]

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When USA Means “United (Frack) Shills of America”: The Marcellus Shale Coalition’s Big Gas Parade, May 6th 2014, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

May 3, 2014
When USA Means "United (Frack) Shills of America": The Marcellus Shale Coalition's Big Gas Parade, May 6th 2014, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Originally posted at The Wrench: THE WRENCH: When USA Means “United (Frack) Shills of America”: The Marcellus Shale Coalition’s Big Gas Parade, May 6th 2014, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania I remember a time-not all that long ago- when the Marcellus Shale Coalition promoted itself as a largely neutral coalition of interests connected to the the Marcellus Shale formation under the farms and forests of Pennsylvania and New York. When I look back on that brief moment -when we didn’t quite yet surmise the tsunami coming (we could call it BG-Before the Gas), I now realize just how naive we were with respect to the motives of MSC and their well-funded advertising agency analogues. Now we live in the AG-After the Gas-and even the most cursory gander at MSC’s sponsoring corporations makes quite […]

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WHEN THE GAS INDUSTRY USES THE STATE POLICE AND THE FBI JOINT TERRORISM TASK FORCE TO SILENCE A CITIZEN: INTELLIGENCE OFFICER AT MY DOOR, 2.14.14.

February 16, 2014
WHEN THE GAS INDUSTRY USES THE STATE POLICE AND THE FBI JOINT TERRORISM TASK FORCE TO SILENCE A CITIZEN: INTELLIGENCE OFFICER AT MY DOOR, 2.14.14.

Originally posted at: THE WRENCH: WHEN THE GAS INDUSTRY USES THE STATE POLICE AND THE FBI JOINT TERRORISM TASK FORCE TO SILENCE A CITIZEN: INTELLIGENCE OFFICER AT MY DOOR, 2.14.14. I was brushing my teeth, and getting kidney meds into my cat, Switch, when I heard my three dogs going nuts downstairs. I jostled down the stairs, wiping toothpaste off my face to attend to the rapping, and the doggies. There was a man at the door. I thought it was a Jehovah Witness, so I was wondering whether to make coffee. I arrived at the door, signaled to the fellow-who I could now see was holding out a badge-that I needed to get my dogs outside. ‘Barky, not bitey,” I believe I said. The man’s name is MIKE HUTSON, […]

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CADAVER COSMETICS: Penn State’s “Marcellus by Design,” MCOR, and the Edu-Green-Washing of Big Gas

December 18, 2013
CADAVER COSMETICS: Penn State's "Marcellus by Design," MCOR, and the Edu-Green-Washing of Big Gas

Penn State just doesn’t seem to be able to figure out how to be a university-as opposed to a corporate-sponsored research hub, job training program center, and now green-washing “reclamation” aesthetics authority-for the natural gas industry. It’s old news that Penn State epitomizes Frackademia. As reported by Reid R. Frazier of The Allegheny Front and Olivia Garber of PublicSource in 2011, “the school does not give out the information because companies do not want their competitors to know what research they’re doing — or that they’re sponsoring university research at all.” Moreover, “[i]n 2007, Penn State President Graham Spanier lobbied the state legislature to not include {Penn State] under the state’s revamped “Right-to-Know” law… Mr. Spanier said the schools should not have to disclose donor gifts, vendor contracts, intellectual property […]

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Sustainable Shale Development: The “Middle Ground” That’s Newspeak for Fraud

October 1, 2013
Sustainable Shale Development: The “Middle Ground” That’s Newspeak for Fraud

The Fraudulent “Logic” of the “Middle Ground” Among the most pernicious and calculative strategies for extorting consent currently in fashion with the natural gas industry and their public relations agents—particularly the Center for Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD)—is what I’ll call the “argument for the middle ground.” There are several varieties of this brand of rhetorical extortion, but the basic structure of such an “argument” goes like this: The truth can be counted on to lay somewhere in “the middle,” where “the middle” is invariably some “compromise” between opposing factions, and where “everyone” can feel good that their interests have been met more or less in that “middle.” This “truth” via consensus can then be promoted as “reasonable,” and “just” and anyone who seeks to counter it with opposing facts or a challenge […]

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Education Matters More Than Money: The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty Anti-Extraction Resolution

September 24, 2013
Education Matters More Than Money: The Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty Anti-Extraction Resolution

After considerable protracted debate over a long Summer, the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty—APSCUF—decisively passed by a vote of 68-31 a position statement with respect to SB 367—the PA Frack U Bill—and more generally the state university union’s position with respect to hydraulic fracturing—fracking—on state university properties. Wendy Lee - APSCUF Anti-Fracking Resolution - YouTube It had been nearly a year since the “indigenous mineral resource development” bill had been debated and passed as Act 147 investing university presidents with the authority to decide whether a fracking—or coal, or oil—mining operation can proceed on Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) campuses—including campus quads, outside classroom windows, next to sports fields, or wherever else the industry determines is the most expeditious location for a drill head, a compressor station, a […]

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John Hanger–Right off the Rack

September 12, 2013
John Hanger–Right off the Rack

The following captures a likely dialogue between myself, Wendy Lynne Lee, and Kevin Heatley, both of Shale Justice. The event is democratic gubernatorial candidate, John Hanger’s, visit to a Shale Justice sponsored meeting at Bloomsburg University on September 3rd organized by Shale Justice Executive Committee member, John Trallo. The piece may be very fruitfully read in correspondence with the amazingly mangled announcement of the event in Marcellus Drilling News (Shale Justice Coalition Plans to Gate-Crash John Hanger Appearance | Marcellus Drilling News), and the excellent analysis of both the MDN total botch and the Hanger event itself by Dory Hippauf (HANGER AND THE UGLY CHOICES | Shale Justice). Heatley’s essay appears as primary text in bold, and mine appears in the quotation marks, italicized. Another evening event in Shale Gas country. Instead of relaxing […]

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Of Aristotle and Anadarko: Why “Better Laws” Will Never be Enough

July 18, 2013
Of Aristotle and Anadarko: Why “Better Laws” Will Never be Enough

“Good luck with that!” Ain’t Help 1.3.12: I was running laps at the Bloomsburg University track when I somehow tripped over my I-pod cord and—in a heroic effort to spare my recently re-habilitated right knee—crashed full force onto my right ankle, ripping every ligament from the bone, wrenching and tearing the muscles half way up my leg, and pulling my ankle bones away from my leg bone. Awesome. And Whoa! Nelly! Ouch! A gentleman walking the track nearby could not have failed to see me fall—or for that matter hear my ligaments blowing off my ankle bones. He came over while I was gaining some semblance of comprehension about what had happened, and said “Wow! You better get that looked at.” And then he continued walking. Several minutes later, still […]

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Obama’s Big Fake Climate Change Speech and the Big Fake Greens Who Loved It

June 30, 2013
Obama’s Big Fake Climate Change Speech and the Big Fake Greens Who Loved It

Delivered at Georgetown University to a crowd of students whose own futures hang in the balance, President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated speech on climate change certainly sounded like a clarion call to real and measurable action.   Except that it wasn’t. For despite the fact that he does seem get the message about coal and greenhouse gas emissions, he has bought wholesale into the absurd, debunked industry manufactured hornswaggle transition argument for “clean burning natural gas”: “The bottom line is natural gas is creating jobs,” Obama said. “It’s lowering many families’ heat and power bills. And it’s the transition fuel that can power our economy with less carbon pollution even as our businesses work to develop and then deploy more of the technology required for the even cleaner energy economy […]

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