Familiar sign in Penna. state forests, unfortunately

Letter of Protest by Ron Evans to Olean Times Herald, August 29, 2020

When Andrew Jackson disagreed with a decision of the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, he reportedly said, “John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.”

All three branches of Commonwealth government are saying the equivalent regarding a ruling the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made in June 2017. The court ruled in favor of the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (PEDF), which sued the governor for not executing the environmental amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution.

The amendment states: “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”

PEDF’s lawsuit specifically contended that the governor and legislature were ignoring the amendment in the management of state parks and forests. The state Supreme Court’s decision in PEDF’s case clearly stated that the amendment means state lands and resources are owned by the citizens of the Commonwealth in the form of a public trust. In addition, the trust includes any money gained from the sale of the resources.

The court ruled that the role of government at all levels is to act as a trustee of the public trust, not as proprietors, by conserving and maintaining public lands and resources.

Since the ruling, all three branches of state government have ignored the court. The governor, legislature and the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), the agency charged with conserving and maintain state parks and forests, abdicated their responsibilities as trustees, especially with the rush to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region of the state.

The governor and legislature have not permanently banned additional drilling on public lands, even though DCNR has stated that any additional drilling will endanger fragile ecologies. In fact, DCNR, in its most recent plan for state forests, determined that oil and gas extraction are legitimate uses of lands owned by the citizens. This is not “conserving and maintaining” public natural resources.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in its ruling, deemed the Oil and Gas Lease Fund can be used only to maintain and conserve public natural resources. Starting with the Rendell administration, approximately $1.2 billion has been taken out of the public trust and diverted to the general fund. Gov. Wolfe and the legislature continue to ignore the court decision by diverting $61 million from the Oil and Gas Lease Fund to the general fund for the 2020-21 budget.

Consequently, PEDF filed another lawsuit specific to the diversion of Oil and Gas Lease Fund money. After a two-year wait, Commonwealth Court has ignored the decision of the state Supreme Court by ruling that some of the Oil and Gas Lease Fund can be used to fund the operation of state departments and agencies. Now all three branches of state government are complicit in ignoring the state Supreme Court decision in the PEDF case.

PEDF’s appeal of the Commonwealth Court’s decision is under review by the Supreme Court.

In 1971, the legislature passed, the governor signed and the citizens ratified a visionary amendment to the Commonwealth’s Constitution. For almost 50 years, state government largely ignored its responsibility to conserve and maintain public lands and resources. In 2017 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court made an unambiguous ruling mandating that government fulfill its trustee responsibilities. However, all three branches continue to ignore the ruling.

As citizens who own the public trust, we cannot allow this undemocratic challenge to a state Supreme Court decision to persist.

>>> Ron Evans is president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation. For more information on PEDF’s legal actions, go to pedf.org or https://www.pedf.org/

Governor Justice signs natural gas bills dealing with owners’ rights

From an Article by Brad McElhinny, WV MetroNews, March 09, 2018

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gov. Jim Justice has signed HB-4268, a bill dealing with the rights of multiple owners on a single piece of property. “This co-tenancy law will allow for oil and gas development while protecting the rights of surface, mineral and landowners,” Justice stated in a news release.

Justice at one point a couple of weeks ago indicated he might veto the bill — hoping to consider co-tenancy and another more controversial lease practice known as joint development in a special session that would also consider an increased severance tax on natural gas. The governor quickly backed off that position, though, and indicated he would sign the co-tenancy bill.

The bill is meant to deal with situations in which property has been divided many times over generations. The bill would require 75 percent of those with rights on a single tract to approve drilling. Holdouts or those who can’t be located would still have some rights under the bill.

Non-consentors would have two options. They could receive a production royalty equal to the highest percentage royalty paid to one of the consenting parties. Or, they could opt to share in revenue and cost of development — essentially winding up as a participant.

The co-tenancy bill has been shepherded through the legislative process by both natural gas companies and a coalition of West Virginia land owners and mineral owners organizations.

The West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association expressed pleasure that the co-tenancy bill was signed, saying it represents years of work, negotiation, and compromise. “It will allow access to the enormous amounts of oil and gas that we are sitting upon, make us competitive with our surrounding states,” said Anne Blankenship, director of the association.

The West Virginia Land and Mineral Owners Association expressed appreciation for the coalition that shepherded the legislation through. “We know that it will bring additional economic development and tax revenues to our state,” said Jason Webb, a lobbyist for the association.

Post-production expenses bill also now law

Justice also signed SB-360, a bill dealing with post-production expenses on drilling projects. The bill was a response to a state Supreme Court reversal last year on the policy.

The Supreme Court ruled last May that state law allows natural gas production companies to subtract “reasonable post-production expenses” from royalties it pays to people with royalties rights on drilling projects.

A ruling the prior year by the Court said a 1982 state law didn’t allow for the expenses to be subtracted. The court voted to rehear the question and came up with a different interpretation in the Leggett vs. EQT case.

The West Virginia Royalty Owners Association applauded the passage and signing of that bill and the co-tenancy bill. “These bills show that West Virginia is a leader in protecting landowners, mineral owners and economic development while updating our laws for the horizontal drilling era,” said Tom Huber, president of the royalty owners association.

Senator Charles Clements, R-Wetzel, was one of the first advocates for the bill on post-production expenses. “It wasn’t given much of a chance to pass. I worked that bill pretty hard and slowly started getting support for it. I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Senator Smith for getting that bill out of Mining and Energy Committee, and once it got out it started getting momentum,” Clements said.

“It was something we really needed. There were so many people in West Virginia who had these leases they were taking those post-production expenses on. They were just not getting the royalties they deserved.”

Aubrey McClendon (56) died in auto crash

COMMENTARY on Chesapeake Energy Corporation

From an Article by Andres Rueda, Seeking Alpha News, February 29, 2016

……. Summary

Chesapeake Energy’s management is engaged in muscular efforts to turn around the company, but the challenges ahead appear too great. The company announced $500 million in net asset sales and will slash capital expenditures 57% to conserve cash.

The recently released 4Q report was grim, as the company continues to bleed rivers of cash. Chesapeake Energy desperately needs the continuing good graces of its bankers, as its liquidity is ultimately dependent on a credit line.

To all appearances, gas and oil fracking giant Chesapeake Energy Corporation is a prime candidate for a bankruptcy restructuring. Its capital structure is wobbly, profoundly unsound. The losses are large and they flow with frustrating consistency each quarter. The cash pile keeps getting thinner. And yet, management appears determined to avoid a bankruptcy filing.

On February 8, 2016, the company’s common shares plunged approximately 40%, triggering a circuit breaker halt, on reports that the company had engaged a restructuring counsel. The company was forced to issue a clarifying press release that, while it had in fact engaged such counsel, it had no current plans to file for bankruptcy.

This in fact seems to be the case. Although a filing would be the easy way out, and bankruptcies are in fact often structured as insider-friendly affairs, the company’s management appears determined to avoid that outcome, even if the company has to cling from its fingernails through 2016 and into the next year. The management has a plan, which has been well-communicated to the market, and management has in fact had some success in its implementation.

Management insists that Chesapeake Energy has the liquidity to repay its near-term obligations, cut costs, sell off assets, dramatically decrease capital expenditures while more or less maintaining production, and thereby avoid a filing as the company rides out the downward cycle in the oil and gas extraction industry.

The common shareholders have taken up the faith. The market price of the common shares remains well above zero, closing at USD$2.70 per share on February 26, 2016. And yet, the challenges that the company faces are almost vertically steep. Absent a perfect execution, cooperation from its bankers and other creditors, and a long and uninterrupted streak of good luck, management may yet have to throw in the towel.

……. Conclusions

The management of Chesapeake Energy is engaged in a muscular effort to turn around the company in the context of a brutal industry environment. Its success in doing so largely depends on patience, considerable risk-taking, and other forms of cooperation from its creditors, and in particular the bank sponsoring its credit line, Wells Fargo.

The recently announced USD$500 million in net asset sales will give the company some breathing room. However, relief is likely to be brief. The company has a gigantic debt load balancing on a thin or nonexistent sliver of equity, and it is unfortunately not generating enough net operating cash to pay the bills. Under current conditions, and despite its hedge book, the company’s oil and gas fields are either uneconomical or marginally economical.

The company will be slashing capital expenditures. Even if production remains more or less the same despite this cut, net operating cash well into 2016 is likely to decrease as a result of relatively low realized prices. And so, the rivers of negative cashflow are likely to continue. Under the current environment, the company cannot turn to its business as a source of much needed cash. It will need to rely on asset sales and its USD$4 billion credit line.

Despite the recently announced divestiture, it remains to be seen whether management will be able to live up to its guidance of USD$500 million to USD$1 billion in additional deals for 2016. The company’s fields are currently uneconomical or marginally economical. If sold, they will be sold cheaply. This will hurt investors in the long run, if oil and gas prices recover. However, the company right now is in survival mode and this is unfortunately unavoidable.

Although the company likely will meet all major bond repayments due in 2016, unless oil and gas prices significantly improve over the year the company is likely to burn prodigious amounts of cash and eat well into its credit line, with seemingly no other realistic source of cash. It will then just be a matter of time before Wells Fargo and other creditors pull the plug on the company and push it into bankruptcy.

It should also be kept in mind that the company faces a borrowing base redetermination in April 2016. If Chesapeake Energy loses the support of Wells Fargo, management’s efforts will hit a brick wall and the company will simply have to file for bankruptcy.

The market however remains cautiously optimistic on Chesapeake Energy. Management appears committed to avoiding bankruptcy, and has not cut a separate deal to the detriment of the company’s much besieged common shareholders. This institutional support is all-important in the present context.

The challenges faced are however in my opinion too large. I do not believe that in the end management will pull its carefully orchestrated ballet. Too many things could go wrong. My target price for the common shares is consistent with their current book value: USD$0.

>>>>>>>>>>>

Federal grand jury indicts former Chesapeake Energy CEO

From an Article by Robert Mclean, CNN-Money News, March 2, 2016

A federal grand jury has indicted the former CEO of Chesapeake Energy for allegedly conspiring to rig the price of oil and natural gas leases in Oklahoma. The Department of Justice believes that Aubrey McClendon, who served as Chesapeake’s CEO for nearly 25 years, orchestrated a conspiracy between two large oil and gas companies between December 2007 and March 2012.

McClendon said that the charges against him are “wrong and unprecedented.”

“I have been singled out as the only person in the oil and gas industry in over 110 years since the Sherman Act became law to have been accused of this crime in relation to joint bidding on leasehold,” he said in a statement. “Anyone who knows me, my business record and the industry in which I have worked for 35 years knows that I could not be guilty of violating any antitrust laws.”

The indictment alleges that two large energy firms would decide ahead of time who would be the top bidder on leases in northwest Oklahoma. The winner would then allocate an interest in the lease to the other company.

The Justice Department said McClendon “instructed his subordinates to execute the conspiratorial agreement,” which kept prices low and “put company profits ahead of the interests of leaseholders.”

Chesapeake spokesman Gordon Pennoyer said the company “has been actively cooperating for some time” with the Justice Department and “does not expect to face criminal prosecution or fines relating to this matter.”

McClendon left Chesapeake in 2013 after Reuters reported that he had taken out more than $1 billion in loans against his personal stakes in the company’s wells. Chesapeake subsequently revealed that it was the subject of an inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission, and announced that the program through which McClendon acquired his stakes would be terminated.

>>>>>>>>>>>

Energy pioneer McClendon dies in Oklahoma car crash a day after indictment

From an Article by Heidi Brandes, Reuters News Service, March 3, 2016

Aubrey McClendon, a brash risk-taker who led Chesapeake Energy Corp to become one of the world’s biggest natural gas producers, died in a single-car crash on Wednesday, a day after being charged with breaking federal antitrust laws, police said. He was 56.

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday announced that McClendon had been indicted for allegedly colluding to rig bids for oil and gas acreage while he was at Chesapeake, a central player in the U.S. fracking revolution of the past decade. He denied the charges.

Police said they were investigating the cause of the crash, which occurred when McClendon was driving his 2013 Chevy Tahoe on a sparsely populated, two-lane road. The crash occurred about 8 miles (13 km) from American Energy Partners, which McClendon had founded and where he was the chairman and chief executive. He was not wearing a seat belt.

McClendon, who was revered in oil and gas circles as a visionary, resigned from Chesapeake in 2013 after a corporate governance crisis and investor concerns over his heavy spending. After leaving Chesapeake, McClendon went on to start American Energy Partners and, with the help of private equity funds, made billions of dollars in bets on vast tracts of oil and gas land around the United States and Australia.

Tuesday’s indictment followed a nearly four-year federal antitrust probe that began after a 2012 Reuters investigation found that Chesapeake had discussed with a rival how to suppress land lease prices in Michigan during a shale-drilling boom. Although the Michigan case was subsequently closed, investigators uncovered evidence of alleged bid-rigging in Oklahoma. (reut.rs/1TPxUVy)

A native of Oklahoma, McClendon attended Duke University before starting Chesapeake with his friend Tom Ward, who went on to lead SandRidge Energy Inc for a time.

“Aubrey’s tremendous leadership, vision and passion for the energy industry had an impact on the community, the country and the world,” American Energy Partners said in a statement.

McClendon was known for his high tolerance for risk and debt and for his lavish lifestyle, which included the purchase of high-end homes, antique boats and an extensive wine cellar. (reut.rs/1QUfnHp) On his watch, Chesapeake leased a fleet of planes that shuttled executives to oil and gas fields – and the McClendon family to far-off holiday destinations.

Closer to home, McClendon pursued other passions, including the Oklahoma City Thunder, the National Basketball Association franchise in which he had a minority stake. “I think in situations like this the best thing you can do is just pray, pray for the family and pray for the people involved,” Thunder coach Billy Donovan told reporters at a game on Wednesday in Los Angeles.

McClendon was one of the foremost leaders of a U.S. energy boom that lifted output to the highest levels in years, reduced reliance on foreign oil and mobilized new pools of investment capital for wildcat drillers.

“I’ve known Aubrey McClendon for nearly 25 years. He was a major player in leading the stunning energy renaissance in America,” Texas energy investor T. Boone Pickens said in a statement. “He was charismatic and a true American entrepreneur,” he said.

Chesapeake, which had recently sued McClendon’s AEP on accusations of stealing trade secrets, offered condolences. “Chesapeake is deeply saddened by the news that we have heard today and our thoughts and prayers are with the McClendon family,” the company said in a statement. McClendon is survived by his wife, Katie, and their three children, Jack, Callie and Will.

Has Forced Pooling Been Laid to Rest?

Forced Pooling Bill Delayed Again in West Virginia Legislature

From an Article by Casey Junkins, Wheeling Intelligencer, March 1, 2016

Wheeling, WV — For the fifth time in six years, a bill to allow forced pooling of Marcellus Shale natural gas rights has stalled in the West Virginia Legislature. Wednesday is “crossover day” – the day on which a bill must advance from its house of origin to be considered in the opposite chamber. Delegate Pat McGeehan, R-Hancock, a staunch opponent of forced pooling, said this is not going to happen.

“This is not going to be on the agenda. They knew there would have been stiff opposition to this,” McGeehan said. “To me, this is just government price-fixing and eminent domain.”

Forced pooling, also termed “lease integration,” would allow drillers to pull gas from beneath unleased land in cases when a mineral owner cannot be located or refuses to sign a lease. Under the proposed West Virginia bill, forced pooling would be allowed if a driller leases at least 80 percent of the acreage in a proposed unit.

Corky DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association, said, “I do not think there is an appetite for it,” DeMarco said Monday regarding the legislation’s prospects. “I don’t want to speculate why, but it is an election year. There is no sense in running the bill if the leadership does not think it can pass.”

DeMarco blames a lack of understanding about how the proposal would actually work. He admits there likely would not be enough time for that now. During the 2015 regular session, a bill to allow the practice failed to pass after 49-49 tie vote on the final day.
DeMarco said the issue is much more of a problem in the northern portion of the state because there are so many small parcels of land. Some lease agreements on record in Northern Panhandle courthouses are for tracts smaller than 0.1 acre.

Delegate Shawn Fluharty, D-Ohio, said he was glad to work with McGeehan in a bipartisan manner to halt the pooling legislation. ”For far too long, our state has been bought and sold to the highest bidder with the best lobbyists. This issue was bigger than political parties. It was about the people of West Virginia,” Fluharty said.

…………………

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has approved coal and natural gas tax breaks. He signed a bill Monday dropping severance surtaxes of 56 cents per ton of coal and 4.7 cents per thousand cubic feet of natural gas. They’ve helped pay a workers’ compensation debt for years.

Tomblin proposed dropping them July 1, or earlier at his discretion. The Legislature has passed Tomblin’s bill. Until July 1, the money can help cover this year’s $384 million budget gap.

The administration expects the cut to reduce coal revenue by $51.5 million and natural gas revenue by $58.1 million for the 2017 budget.

A Senate panel gave initial approval Monday to dropping coal’s overall severance tax from 5 to 4 percent in July 2018, and 3 percent in July 2019.

The Senate has voted down a bill that would have let surveyors for natural gas pipelines enter people’s private property without permission. Senators voted 23-11 to kill a bill Monday that says letting surveyors for natural gas companies on people’s property is in the public interest.

The legislation would have required trying to get consent to go on someone’s property. Companies would also have to send a notice of their intent to perform studies on someone’s property.

The bill would not have required or prevented landowners from being present when surveyors were on site. The bill was one of several aiming to help natural gas companies in West Virginia.

WVU Extension Service Educational Programs:  July 7 and July 8, 2015

Public Meetings — Understanding Unitization of Interests or “Forced Pooling”

What is pooling? Who benefits? What does it mean to be “forced”?
What was in House Bill 2688 (Providing for the unitization of interests in drilling units in connection with all horizontal oil or gas wells)? What are the concerns with Forced Pooling? What were the concerns with House Bill 2688? What and when will new legislation be proposed?

Presenters: Joshua Fershee, Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development and Professor of Law, WVU College of Law; Delegate Lynwood “Woody” Ireland (R-Ritchie, 07); *Delegate Pat McGeehan (R-Hancock, 01); and **Senator Mike Romano (D-Harrison, 12). [Delegate McGeehan will attend the July 7 meeting only. Senator Romano will attend the July 8 meeting only.]

July 7 – Blaskovich Community Center, 4453 National Road, Triadelphia, WV (Ohio County)
July 8 – Doddridge County Park, Snowbird Road (County Rt. 50/16), West Union, WV (Doddridge County)

Both programs start at 6:00 p.m. For more information and directions, click here to download the flyer .  For questions, contact Georgette Plaugher, WVU Extension Service Natural Gas Team Coordinator at 304-329-1391 or via email at Georgy.Plaugher@mail.wvu.edu.

More information on forced pooling and SORO’s position can be found in the newsletter and on our website, www.wvsoro.org.

July 13: Not Your Grandparent’s Oil & Gas Industry, Meeting Two

About 200 folks showed up for a recent meeting hosted by our friends at the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) titled “Not Your Grandparent’s Oil & Gas Industry.”

At that meeting, we heard from lawyers, including WV-SORO’s Dave McMahon and activists like Bill Hughes who have been dealing with shale-fracking issues in other parts of the state. Now OVEC is having a second meeting where folks can share, in a moderated discussion, stories of what is already happening in Wayne and surrounding counties.

Please plan to join us at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, July 13 at First Congregational UCC, 701 5th Ave, Huntington, WV.

WV-SORO will not have a speaking role at this meeting, but will have a representative present and available to help answer questions.

>>> Source: Julie Archer, WV Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, 1500 Dixie Street, Charleston, WV 25311

WV-SORO Phone: (304) 346-5891,  Internet: www.wvsoro.org

Hundreds of Miles of Land are Being Disturbed

We should not forfeit the future for the sake of energy today

Letter from S. Tom Bond, Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram, June 7, 2015

The fossil fuel industry is finding more and more opposition as time goes by. The reasons are many. The list of new pipelines is amazing — for example, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, the Momentum Pipeline, the Rover Pipeline — on and on it goes.

These are no babies; some of them are as large as 42 inches, and they operate at up to 100 times the pressure of the atmosphere — at 1440 pounds per square inch. They will be among the largest ever built in the United States.

Literally thousands of miles of pipelines are being built to transport gas at a time when fossil fuels face a political and technological storm of a variety of problems hardly meeting public attention a decade ago.

Recently the International Monetary Fund published in a white paper that fossil fuels get a worldwide subsidy of $5.7 trillion, which amounts to 6.5 percent of the world gross domestic production, mostly due to environmental costs and damage to health — with coal the primary culprit.

The worldwide annual subsidy to renewables, which the fossil fuel industry likes to complain about, is only $77 billion, meaning fossil fuels get 66 times as much! The fossil fuel companies simply take the money while putting costs off on the public, the World Bank says.

This will encourage world leaders to impose a “carbon tax,” bringing cost of energy so provided more in line with its true economic worth. Things are so serious in China that the Communist Party is afraid it will lose its grasp if it does not do something about its smog. The chief U.S. climate negotiator, Todd Stern, claims nations representing 60 percent of the carbon dioxide emission are already on board for a deal which will limit CO2 to 450 parts per million.

The Bank of England has launched an inquiry to determine how much of the $5.5 trillion invested in fossil fuel exploration and development over the last six years is really viable, and whether it could become the new “subprime” for the global financial system. In other words, could it cause another big bank crash like the one from which we are now recovering?

Both solar and wind are making great progress, as is electrical storage. By 2020, Denmark will be completely powered by wind. Spain is moving toward solar.

Bill Wyant, a friend, recently traveled through Spain, and says the effort is quite conspicuous to everyone. Utility-scale solar is being built all over the world. Companies in the United Arab Emirates have contracts to deliver solar power for as little as $59 per megawatt hour, as cheap as hydroelectricity.

Battery storage cost is falling fast. The IEA estimates that the cost of a lithium-ion battery for grid-scale storage has fallen by more than three-quarters since 2008. The batteries last over three times as long.

Research continues. At Harvard, a project to develop a large battery promises to cut costs two-thirds in three years and avoid use of rare earth minerals — a huge operational improvement.

The science papers on effects of fracking have been doubling yearly. The press and scientific experts no longer ignore health effects of fracking, long accepted by physicians. Drilling companies are big advertisers and generous donors to higher ed, but the evidence is too strong to counter. Campaigns for divestment from carbon energy are underway everywhere, even far from operations.

Banks don’t want drilling on mortgaged property because of loss of value, and insurance companies don’t want to pay for losses due to drilling contamination or accidents on one’s property. As I write this, an email comes from a person whose realtor said his house and land would be worth 75 percent less if a pipeline came on the lot. Day before yesterday, I had lunch with a man who had lost seven cows and a $20,000 horse since fracking began on his farm. Individual stories can be ignored, but when they are institutionalized by realtors, lending agencies and insurance companies, the reality is too powerful to ignore. They are a huge subsidy from the poorest property owners to the industry.

Disposal of huge quantities of waste is a growing problem, since people are coming to understand its properties. Once it was dumped in streams and on roads to keep the dust down. It is “brine,” but not simply table salt dissolved in water. Pumping brine underground is controversial, because in a place or two it has caused earthquakes. In dry California, it has been used to irrigate crops, but this is quite controversial, too.

Liability is a constant problem. A jury awarded the Parr family $3 million in damages for the fracking-related impacts caused by Aruba Petroleum’s operations near their home in Texas. Public Broadcasting estimates 100 claimants have filed in West Virginia alone. These are nuisance and negligence largely, although at least one multimillion-dollar suit in Central West Virginia has been for retained royalty. The rest involve 50 suits in Harrison and Doddridge primarily, but also in Pleasants, Kanawha, Ritchie, Marion and Monongalia.

Religious considerations are entering the arguments about extreme extraction. Numerous religious groups have come out to say ethics require consideration of effects on people and the environment — this is the only planet we can live on; we must protect it.

A few claim humanity has the right to “dominion over the earth,” but most claim it is a garden for us to cultivate and protect. Pope Francis, leader of the largest organized religious group on earth, has said causing climate change is a “sin” — the word he used.

There are other problems, such as traffic congestion, beauty of the landscape is altered, noise, odors, lights at night and other quality-of-life issues. The community must provide housing and meals for people who come in very dirty after work, who have irregular hours — workers with money living away from family.

Of course, the white elephant in the room is the carbon dioxide that comes from burning carbon-containing compounds for energy. Also, the emission of methane, a far more serious greenhouse gas, resulting from use of natural gas.

There is an active denial campaign, financed by those who have a lot to lose from keeping hydrocarbons in the ground, but practically all of the scientific community who have studied it are quite unified.

Much of the evidence is easily understood, such as the ability of carbon dioxide and methane to retain infrared heat, known for over 100 years; melting of glaciers, since there are plenty of historical photographs; changing temperatures of air and sea waters; movement of flowering to earlier dates; and change of migration of birds. The monsoon rains in Asia are coming later and later.

On the other hand, some evidence is not subject to common-sense argument, because it involves airflows from equator to the poles, currents circulating in the sea, and why more water evaporates from a warm sea. These things are known to those who study these phenomena, but not to the general public.

No one expects extraction of hydrocarbons to completely stop; they are important inputs for the chemical industry. Coal and oil are needed to make many things from plastics to pharmaceuticals. Gas is the source of nitrogen fertilizer and hydrogen. I remember Dr. Lazzell, who taught my organic chemistry class at WVU, saying, “You can make such valuable things from hydrocarbons, it is a shame to burn them.” That was about 1962, over 50 years ago.

But we must stop using the atmosphere as a dump for byproducts of making energy. More and more realize this as time passes.

The organization against extreme energy extraction is growing. I have a list of over 250 organizations opposed to fracking. Real progress is being made on the level of local government. Even Wisconsin, which provides the sand, has organizations against fracking

We humans have 10,000 years of civilized past. There is no reason we should forfeit an even longer future if we can listen to the wisest among us and choose a new rational path, as we humans have often had to do before. For the sake of the future of mankind, we cannot continue to spoil the surface and use the atmosphere as a dump — it is not infinite.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net