Youths Protest Fracking and Mountain Top Removal in Pittsburgh

Duane Nichols — Sat, 19 Oct 2013 15:12:57 +0000

PowerShift 2013 Comes to Pittsburgh Advocating Clean Energy

From an Article by Kaitlynn Riely / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette / October 19, 2013

Power Shift 2013 has come to Pittsburgh this year with a “fracking protest” today and a “mountain top removal protest” on Monday. “We will be marching to call for a green economy,” said Whit Jones, campaign director at the Energy Action Coalition, the convention’s organizers.

About 7,000 people registered to attend the conference, which started Friday at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, and Mr. Jones expects about 3,000 to 4,000 people to participate in the outdoor events Monday.

A rally, featuring speakers and performers, will start at 10 a.m. at Allegheny Landing on the North Side.

The march is scheduled to begin at 11:30 a.m. and will result in some street closures and parking restrictions Downtown. According to Pittsburgh police, participants will proceed from Allegheny Landing onto Federal Street, then cross the Clemente Bridge, turn left onto Fort Duquesne Boulevard, then right onto Ninth Street, right onto Liberty Avenue, right onto Sixth Street, then back across the Clemente Bridge to Allegheny Landing by about 1 p.m.

Pittsburgh police will be present for the march, and police spokeswoman Diane Richard said the bureau anticipates the rally and march will be “peaceful and without incident.”

The Power Shift summit typically ends with a rally and a march, Mr. Jones said, but usually it’s happening in Washington, D.C., where the every-other-year gathering has been held since 2007. This year, they decided to come to Pittsburgh.

“We’re taking it out of Washington, D.C., and bringing it to Pittsburgh because we really want to focus more on grassroots strategies” on climate change, Mr. Jones said. The city’s status as one of the first to ban fracking within its limits also appealed to the group’s message.

“Our main message is that we need folks to join us in building a strong green economy and to stop financing fossil fuels and permitting fracking,” Mr. Jones said. The four-day conference includes panel discussions, political organizing training and concerts. It is open to the public, with registration starting at $80.

A smaller march to demand NO FRACKING in Allegheny County parks will depart from the convention center at 2 p.m. today, Saturday, bound for the Allegheny County Courthouse, Downtown, and is expected to include Power Shift attendees.

But the main march will be Monday, and one of the main targets of the protesters is PNC Bank, with its headquarters Downtown.

Mr. Jones said marchers want PNC to “stop financing” mountaintop removal mining. A spokeswoman for PNC declined to comment on the planned march, instead pointing to its 2013 corporate responsibility report, which says “PNC does not extend credit to individual MTR mining projects or to a coal producer that receives a majority of its production from MTR mining.”

The larger message of people attending Power Shift, most of whom are ages 17 to 23, is to urge the United States to move to “clean energy,” primarily wind and solar, Mr. Jones said.

CMU Symposium on Marcellus Shale Gas in Regional Economy

Duane Nichols — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:25:54 +0000

: Carnegie Mellon University

Bias Among Industrial and Educational Leaders?

From the Article by Deanna Garcia, WESA public radio, April 4, 2013

The Department of Energy estimates that gas from shale is expected to account for roughly half of the country’s natural gas supply by 2040. A symposium at Carnegie Mellon University on April 4th examined the role of shale gas in manufacturing, transportation and the environment.

“Shale gas extraction does have impacts,” said CMU President Jared Cohon. “It’s simply wrong to say it doesn’t or to minimize them. They’re obvious — if nothing else they disturb the land. There are also clearly water impacts, air impacts, and we have to acknowledge that and do something about that.”

But Cohon went on to say that developers and those in the industry have the best intentions.“It’s simply not the case that any corporate CEO I know wakes up in the morning and says, ‘How can I despoil the environment today?’ That’s not the way they operate,” he said.

The symposium began with a panel discussion on the manufacturing side of the gas boom. “Today we’re celebrating a manufacturing renaissance enabled by this amazing gift of affordable natural gas, a phenomenon all but unimaginable five short years ago,” said panelist Peter Molinaro, a VP for the Dow Chemical.

The panel laid out some of the benefits of the gas boom, including an increase in jobs in the region. Panelist Gerald Holder, US Steel dean of engineering, said jobs go beyond the gas fields. “One of the real opportunities is not just to the exploration and production companies that produce gas, but to the companies that contribute to the infrastructure required to produce the gas,” Holder said. “Last year the Marcellus Shale industry created about 50,000 jobs here and is expected to create about 1 million jobs in the mature manufacturing industry.”

But the panel members said that while growth is expected to continue, it can be stifled. “Bans and excessive regulation on fracking can be a problem,” Molinaro said. “Early, excessive retirement of coal-fired power plants and the prospect of exporting large amounts of natural gas in the form of LNG (liquefied natural gas) – you could create a recipe that disconnects demand from supply and may return us to some of the volatility we experienced in the last decade.”

CMU President Cohon said a balance needs to be struck between development and environmental protection, but added regulation is absolutely needed in the industry. CMU recently released a policy maker’s guide which outlines the need for a government-university-industry research initiative focused on shale gas development and the environment.

The other panels focused on the role of natural gas in transportation and environmental impacts from development and production. While panel members focused on issues relating to southwestern Pennsylvania, they said as shale gas production spreads across the U.S., the region will be seen as a model.

NOTE on CMU Reference Database: Carnegie Mellon University students have compiled a searchable “bibliography” of more than 1,000 documents online. Professor Robert Strauss enlisted a pair of graduate students to compile the database (click here) over the course of a year. It is searchable by keyword, category, geographic region, source, year or author affiliation, and it includes links such as testimony before legislatures, academic studies, maps compiled by regulators and industry sources, and explanatory materials provided by drilling companies on the “fracking” process.”

Frack Check WV » Fracking Database

Youths Protest Fracking and Mountain Top Removal in Pittsburgh

CMU Symposium on Marcellus Shale Gas in Regional Economy