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Well, here we are again. Another year older and (hopefully) wiser. As we prepare for the transition to 2013, it’s time to strengthen our resolve to do better, and not just as individuals.
More than one important environmental battle was pushed to the back burner during this election year. After the inauguration in January, however, it’s time to get back to work. Multiple assessments say that it was the President’s stance on climate change that was the tipping point for many Americans. Now it’s time to demand that he make good on the promise to develop a national policy that addresses human-accelerated climate change at its source: the dirty energy industry.
Here are three issues that were put on hold during the campaign season, despite the fact that they directly threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans. Moving forward, it’s time to suit up and join the fight in 2013.
TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline
The Keystone XL pipeline has sparked national protests, petitions and lawsuits throughout 2012. By the oil industry’s own admission, such a massive oil transportation project will have spills, and they WILL put farms, drinking water supplies and Federally protected wildlife at risk. Since the Keystone XL will be carrying tar sands oil from Canada, as opposed to the regular old crude, when this oil spills, it will be a whole new monster the likes of which America has never seen.
Even more troubling, the leak detection technology that will be used on the Keystone XL, for instance, is standard for the nation’s crude oil pipelines and almost never detects leaks smaller than 1 percent of the pipeline’s flow. Since the Keystone will have a capacity of 29 million gallons per day, a spill would have to reach 294,000 gallons per day to trigger its leak detection technology.
Although the Keystone XL decision was put on hold in January 2012, TransCanada has every intention of holding the U.S. government to its promise of a Q1 2013 judgement. The oil industry is up to its usual tricks in an attempt to circumvent a thorough environmental impact assessment. How the Obama administration handles this decision will set the precedent for America’s energy future.
Want to take action? Join 350.0rg’s Keystone XL action in Washington D.C. on February 17th, 2o13. You can also take action by signing this petition.
Hydraulic Fracturing
Frustrated by the Federal government’s inability to pump the brakes on the natural gas industry’s quest to frack the entire nation, activists have moved the fight to the local level. In May 2012, Vermont became the very first state to ban natural gas fracking outright. Previously, New York and New Jersey enacted temporary fracking bans, both of which were extended through 2012. In November 2012, Longmont, Colo., made national headlines when gas industry lobbyists failed to defeat a grassroots effort to ban fracking in the city limits. Although the ban’s passage was a victory for local activists, the gas industry has already filed a lawsuit to overturn it. Meanwhile, multiple fights to slow or ban the spread of hydraulic fracturing continue to be waged in states across the country.
As new research linking fracking to earthquakes, contaminated drinking water supplies, poisoned air and stricken cattle emerges, it’s important to keep the pressure on government and industry to clean up its act. No temporary source of dirty fuel is worth the lives and health of future generations.
Want to take action? Check out the national and regional news at NoFracking.com, and check out the local fracking action center at FoodandWaterWatch.org. You can also sign the petition here.
Oil and Gas Subsidies
To his credit, Obama has remained fairly steadfast in his opinion that an end to oil and gas subsidies is long overdue. Back in March 2012, the President called upon Congress to choose the American people over the financial interests of oil and gas companies. They didn’t. During the Presidential debates, Obama reiterated this idea in frank language: “The oil industry gets $4 billion a year in corporate welfare.” And later, “It’s time to end it.”
Well Mr. President, 2013 seems like a great year to make good on that campaign train assertion. We’re facing what alarmists like to call the fiscal cliff, an economic disaster that could be avoided almost completely by pushing bloated oil and gas companies out of the corporate welfare line. At the very least, when it comes time to make the 2014 budget we want to see those subsidies slashed, or even better, eliminated completely.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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