environment

The problem with electing Republicans to office is that even though they claim to be godly people they don’t vote their religion, they vote their pocketbook. There is a big difference there. The tenets of faith and the needs of the pocketbook are not the same. And their pocketbook speaks to them strongly. They may claim all pocketbooks are the same but they are not, and filling up their’s does not mean yours gets filled up, too. Their pocketbook has a lot more in it than your pocketbook does and they don’t care to share.

Shared by a friend in Asheville for those in other parts of NC:

The Western North Carolina Alliance is urging action against a proposed 472 acre logging project below Devil's Courthouse in the headwaters of the French Broad River. The area is adjacent to the popular Art Loeb Trail and in the view-shed of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, according to the nonprofit environmental advocacy group...

A three-year study by the award-winning, investigative on-line journal ProPublica indicates that strict comprehensive regulations of oil and gas drilling and, in particular, of hydraulic fracturing would not be enough to protect the drinking water, the health, and the public and private property of many Americans. The main reason is that the powerful oil and natural gas industry resists regulations by egregiously eroding them through the influence of well-paid lobbyists on state and federal politicians and agencies.

A significant case in point involves Class 2 injection wells, which the industry in order to save money and increase its profits has been using for many decades to dispose of toxic fluid wastes. According to ProPublica, “There are now more than 150,000 Class 2 wells in 33 states, into which oil and gas drillers have injected at least 10 trillion gallons of fluid.” The journal examined records summarizing tens of thousands of Class 2 well inspections. ProPublica examined also “federal audits of state oversight programs, interviewed dozens of experts and explored court documents, case files, and the evolution of underground disposal law over the past 30 years.”

The North Carolina League of Conservation Voters has announced that they are taking back the "Rising Star" award they gave Rep. Suzie Hamilton just a couple of weeks ago. Last night she cast the deciding vote that overrode the Governor's veto of the awful fracking bill. She apparently thought tax credits for the film industry is more important than the future of the environment in North Carolina.

As Dan Crawford, director of governmental relations for NCLCV, put it:

"Last night Captain America prevailed over clean drinking water and the property rights of North Carolinians. We found out that even this Green Tie Award winner has her price."

Pop planted the American Elm tree in the front meadow, next to the curved edge of the corn field, so he could see it as he sat in the front porch swing. He planted it as a memorial to Mom who loved trees as much as he did. He planted it because he remembered when the street where he learned to walk in Wilmington DE and the central campus of the University of Delaware, where he went to college, were lined with the magnificent arches of the trees overhead.

Hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as fracking, has been in the news a lot lately. It's now widely accepted that the increase in seismic activity (earthquakes), especially from in the eastern U.S. is caused by fracking. Drinking water in places close to fracking operations has been documented over and over again as contaminated with carcinogens, even to the point of water from household taps being ignited (yes, water on fire).

Now the state of North Carolina want to join the chorus of drill-baby-drill and get on the fracking bandwagon.

Keep in mind that the very politicians who want to do this are mostly Republicans (though our Democratic Governor ha come out in favor as well, proving that both parties are corrupt as Hell). These same politicians who say fracking, if properly regulated, are the same ones who repeatedly and at every opportunity vote to deregulate and cut funding to regulatory agencies. Does anyone else see a major problem looming up on our horizon?

Thank you so much for the your wonderful support and comments on my story about trying to stop the runaway fracking train in North Carolina. The need for clear evidence-based comments is urgent because the east coast Triassic Basins could be the most dangerous shale-gas plays in the America. These shallow ancient lakebed shale gas deposits, located near several North Carolina's most important rivers for water supply, are riddled with near vertical faults and basaltic (diabase) dikes. These vertical geologic structures and the shallow depth make the potential for accidental vertical transport of gas and drilling fluids much higher in these basins than for deep shale deposits like the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and New York.

That's the question in the minds of many observers of environmental policy-making this week, as a wave of the greenest legislators in North Carolina decline to stand for re-election in the face of radically re-engineered district lines.

The latest worrisome retirement announcement came last week from former House Speaker Joe Hackney, long considered the leading environmental champion in the N.C. General Assembly. Redistricting had gerrymandered Hackney into a "double-bunking" of incumbents with fellow legislator Rep. Verla Insko (D-Orange).

After months of waiting for the Legislature to officially end the 2011 Long Session, the NC League of Conservation Voters released its annual Conservation Scorecard. NCLCV has been scoring NC Legislators on environmental issues since 1999 and this year’s scores are the lowest they have ever been. The Scorecard is a valuable tool voters can use to evaluate which legislators best represent their environmental values. The Conservation Scorecard gives each state legislator a score of 0 to 100 based on his or her votes on key environmental bills in the recent session of the General Assembly.