From Ted Glick, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, February 5, 2014

For those of you in the Marcellus Shale region, this is an urgent request that you mark your calendar for Thursday, February 20th and make plans to get to Baltimore and bring as many people with you as you can.

Why? Because fracking fighters like you from across the Mid-Atlantic are converging on February 20th to take a stand against the biggest single gas drilling threat we face: Cove Point.

This proposed $3.8 billion export terminal would take fracked gas from throughout the Marcellus Shale, liquefy it on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, and ship it to Asia. If Cove Point gets built by mega-polluter Dominion Resources, then the increased pressure to frack throughout your state will be ENORMOUS. As will the pulse of new planet-heating pollution that wrecks our climate. Bill McKibben calls Cove Point “one of the most important fossil fuel fights in America.”

Whether you’re retired, you’re a student, or you have any flexibility at your job – you’re needed in Baltimore at noon on February 20th.

Please join us for a lunchtime rally Feb. 20th in downtown Baltimore to say “NO” to Cove Point and “NO” to fracked-gas exports from your state to Maryland and off to Asia. February 20th is a critical date to join this growing fight in Maryland, and draw a region-wide line in the sand. That’s when the state Public Service Commission, headquartered in Baltimore, will begin its official deliberations over key permits for Cove Point.

We’ll rally downtown with unforgettable speakers like Rev. Lennox Yearwood of the Hip Hop Caucus, Mike Tidwell of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Maya van Rossum of Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Karen Feridun of Berks Gas Truth. Then, with music, drumming, and lots of noise, we’ll march to the Public Service Commission, urging them to reject Dominion’s dirty permit. Since Governor O’Malley’s Baltimore offices in are in the same building, our voices will reach him, too!

Dominion’s plan is radical: to pipe fracked gas from across the Marcellus to the Chesapeake Bay in southern Maryland, liquefy it to minus 260 F, and pour it onto tanker ships for the 6,000-mile journey to India and Japan. The “life cycle” greenhouse gas emissions make exported fracked gas worse than coal. Plus the pressure to frack in your state surges.

Please make plans to join the lunchtime rally February 20th in downtown Baltimore to say “NO” to Cove Point and “NO” to fracked-gas exports from your state to Maryland and off to Asia.  And help us forward this alert far and wide to everyone you know who’s concerned about fracking where you live.

We can stop Cove Point. But to take on Dominion — and their slick ads and political influence — we need to act fast and get big. We need a grassroots movement that reaches as far and wide as the potential fracking wells, pipelines, compressor stations and “liquefaction” plants this export project would trigger.

Hope to see you in Baltimore!

>>> Ted Glick is the national policy director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.