Professor Lawrence Buell of Harvard University

Article by Linda B. Glaser, Cornell Chronicle, April 3, 2018

Scholars in the new interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities argue that climate change, water security, environmental justice and other such challenges can’t be solved purely by economic and scientific solutions: Human culture is implicated in ecological conditions.

The Spring 2018 Environmental Humanities Lecture Series will bring to campus two leading scholars in the field. All talks in the series are free and open to the public.

Lawrence Buell, M.A. ’62, Ph.D. ’66, will speak Thursday, April 12 at 4:30 p.m. in HEC Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall, on “Remembering the Future to Keep It from Happening: Environmental Imagination in the Anthropocene.” Buell’s lecture is also the annual Wendy Rosenthal Gellman Lecture on Modern Literature, sponsored by the Department of English.

Buell is the Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. He has written extensively and lectured worldwide on the environmental humanities, and is considered a founder of contemporary ecocriticism. His books include “The Environmental Imagination,” “Writing for an Endangered World” and “The Future of Environmental Criticism.”

In 2007 he received the Modern Language Association’s Jay Hubbell Award for lifetime contributions to American Literature scholarship. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Buell’s current book project is titled “Environmental Memory in Art and Real Life.”

On Tuesday, May 1, Rob Nixon will speak on “Environmental Martyrdom and Defenders of the Forest” at 4:30 p.m. in Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall.

Nixon holds the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professorship in Humanities and the Environment at Princeton University. His books include “Dreambirds: The Natural History of a Fantasy,” and “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor,” which received the 2012 Sprout Prize for the best book in environmental studies.

Nixon writes frequently for the New York Times. His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Nation, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the London Review of Books and Critical Inquiry.

Stephanie Lemenager’s talk,“Skilling Up for the Anthropocene,” has been rescheduled from March 20 to Sept. 18.

The 2017-18 Environmental Humanities Lecture Series is sponsored by the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Society for the Humanities, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Departments of English, Comparative Literature, and Science and Technology Studies; the Newton C. Farr Chair of American Culture; and the American Studies Program.

>>> Linda B. Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

Climate Change is the Big Issue

Fossil fuel prospects are promoted by narrow-minded and irresponsible developers

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemist & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

 What are the prospects for oil and gas?  We are subject to an overload of happy talk about the subject with little reality to counter it.  It is jobs, jobs, jobs to a hungry working class, in spite of the fact hydrocarbons are the most capital intensive and low labor route to energy.  There are three times as many workers in the solar industry in the US as there are working in coal mines.  Better work, too. 

Natural gas for electrical generation is said to reduce pollution, in spite of the fact it continues to use the atmosphere as a dump. Nearly 5.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide are emitted by the U.S. presently each year.  

Very little money has been made by the development of fracking, as horizontal drilling and high pressure crushing of shale formations is called.  Over $74 billion has been lost in bankruptcy of oil fracking companies, according to Haynes and Boon a law firm that specializes in bankruptcy, and many other companies and support companies are in precarious condition. The method is an expensive way to get hydrocarbons with a breakeven of about  $50 a barrel for oil, and a similar high cost for natural gas.  Vaunted “improvements in technology” mean more from each well, which covers more ground, not decreased cost per unit of production.

The U. S. prohibited exporting oil forty years ago, due to exhausting original reserves, but began to export again in the summer of  2014. Nevertheless,  9.45 million barrels a day is imported and 4.74 million is exported, much of it having passed through refineries to make end products leaving a net import of 4.71 billion, mostly crude oil.  The fact is the “good stuff,” the easily obtainable oil in sandstone and cracked limestone, is waning rapidly.  That kind of deposit is still available in other parts of the world, which the U. S. either controls with difficulty, such as Saudi Arabia, or actively seeks to prevent production, such as Venezuela or Russia.  Look up “world oil reserves” and “world natural gas reserves.”  The truth is shocking. 

U. S. production is about 9.4 million barrels a day.  So we import roughly the same amount of oil, then export roughly half of that, much of it in refined form.  “Energy independence” is not likely as a result of fracking.  This is what Anthony Ingraffea, Ph.D., P.E. and Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering Emeritus and Weiss Presidential Teaching Fellow at Cornell University, had to say about the recent announcement of a new field in Texas, “OK, here we go again: another “BIG” find. Read the fine print under those HUGE numbers.  20 billion barrels of oil = a 3 year supply for the US at current consumption rate.  16 trillion cubic feet of gas = 9 month supply for the US at current consumption rate.  A few more finds like this and we could be fossil-fuel set for life, or at least a decade or so…”

The greatest issue now faced by civilization is dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in almost unbelievable quantities.  Other drawbacks are also connected with the same processes.

There are powerful incursions against the earth’s living systems, in the form of surface damage such as result from stripping coal, fracking for oil and gas, with it’s attendant roads, pipelines and water diversion onto areas where the vegetation is not able to resist additional fast flows.  A well pad with approach roads requires 10 to as much as 20 acres rocked with several inches of stone. The attendant pipeline requires eight to ten acres and stays cleared for the life time of the well pad and takes 70 years to regrow to forest under ideal conditions beyond that.

Another issue is the virtual theft of property from the stewards of the earth by archaic laws made in a time when it was not possible to foresee the demand for land services rising to meet the needs of so many billions of people as we can now see on earth a few decades down the road.   When the wealth is accumulated to few people it goes for yachts, million dollar weddings, multiple mansions, and other non-productive life style accouterments.

Renewables sometimes get a bad rap.  They don’t account for a large part of the energy yet.  However they are on an exponential increase, more and more rapidly as the base increases.  And they did account for half the new electrical generation capacity, worldwide, last year.

There are complaints about subsidies for hydrocarbon companies. One of these is the depletion allowance, worth perhaps $1 billion a year.  In U. S. tax law this is an allowance claimable by anyone with an economic interest in a mineral deposit.   One of the two methods of claiming the allowance makes it possible to write off more than the whole capital cost of the asset.  Without getting into the details, others include: Master Limited Partnerships, a kind of business arrangement; royalty reduction payment on federal lands; intangible drilling costs worth $3.5 billion and the domestic manufacturing production subsidy.

In addition they are allowed to keep money in tax havens offshore, deduct “transportation costs” and other expenses from royalty owners, and various other subterfuges to avoid payment of the 12.5% royalty minimum allowed by law in West Virginia.  In Pennsylvania, they pay no extraction tax and leave the public to pay for road damage and landowners to pay for water loss, sickness and property value reduction.  In short, oil and gas are hugely subsidized.  And coal is not far behind.

Competition in the form of renewables is coming on in an ever rising curve.  The efficiency of solar is increasing.  Big chains like Walmart, FedEx, IKEA, and General Motors are using it.  In fact this use has increased by 183% in the last year.  In a few years Kansas will be generating more electricity by wind power than it uses.  Some 38 states have commercial installations.  Technology is in the developing stage, and if you read general scientific literature, you find improvement of solar continues constantly.  Originally, only one wavelength could be changed by solar to energy conversion, now three can be.

We must stop the increasing incursions against the natural world, which are caused by pursuit of energy requiring vast tracts of land and dumping carbon dioxide and methane as always, which affects the atmosphere.

The greatest thing the oil & gas companies have in their favor is political inertia.  They have custom, a favorable body of established law, and surplus cash to push their interest against what is known by science and in the interest of society.  Exxon determined the road for the whole industry, when they acted against the public interest, when they were in the forefront of discovery.  So what will it be?   Disaster or needed change?  The next several decades will be very interesting indeed!

The most beautiful gift is an environment worth living in

Article by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

The title of one subsection of a communication from the German speaking part of Europe recently received was “Das schönste Geschenk ist eine lebenswerte Umwelt!” which translates into the title of this short piece. What a great thought for our time! It is so hard for many people to understand, but we are on the verge of a new way of thinking, much like the transition that took place when people began to understand the earth was a ball, not flat, the intuitive way of thinking since people began to think of what lay beyond the next hill.

Those folk, long ago, used local resources and could anticipate more of the same beyond their limited domain. In other words, there was no constraint to expansion that they could see.

The change came for most people during the age European countries sent out to dominate the world in the search for rare and valuable materials not available at home – certain kinds of timber, indigo, spices, tobacco, bananas, gems, and additional food supplies, particularly rice and wheat. However, wise men had known the earth was a sphere at least as far back as the classical Greeks, Plato, Archimedes. And Eratosthenes actually “lucked out” and got a fairly accurate estimate of the diameter of the earth 200 years BCE.

But for most people awareness came somewhere along in the beginning of the era of sailing ships. Funny thing is that there is still a Flat Earth Society. If you have the resources (are reading this while on the net), please look at this reference. The reason? Doesn’t this have an eerie resemblance to climate change denials, particularly the “Fighting the ‘Evidence’” section and the evangelical flavor? The Huffington Post puts it this way, ” Members of the Flat Earth Society claim to believe the Earth is flat. Walking around on the planet’s surface, it looks and feels flat, so they deem all evidence to the contrary, such as satellite photos of Earth as a sphere, to be fabrications of a “round Earth conspiracy” orchestrated by NASA and other government agencies.” Also, ” According to the Flat Earth Society’s leadership, its ranks have grown by 200 people (mostly Americans and Britons) per year since 2009.”

One wonders to what degree is it serious and to what degree it is a grand “hoot.”

The arguments can be seen as an echo of the arguments heard about the current paradigm change in understanding the earth. A lot of people see the earth as being so large a puny human can’t effect it. They are right, it is large compared to one individual, or even a whole city of them. They forget there are 7,000,000,000 (billion) of us and soon to be 9,000,000,000. It is hard to imagine how many of us there is! Our needs and our waste is up to the task of changing even the earth itself.

So what evidence is there, and how much do we know? Everybody is aware that species die-off is faster than ever before. Not everyone is aware it is 1000 times the “normal” long term rate, however. Here are some facts you come across frequently:

Humans annually absorb 42 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial net primary productivity, 30 percent of its marine net primary productivity, and 50 percent of its fresh water.

Forty percent of the planet’s land is devoted to human food production, up from 7 percent in 1700.

Fifty percent of the planet’s land mass has been transformed for human use.

More atmospheric nitrogen is now fixed by humans than all the natural processes combined.

(Further discussion and academic references are given here.)

There is a problem with soil degradation we cannot go into here, which is generally not as well known now as 70 years ago. Most have heard about the rising ocean acidity (lower pH values) which threatens to prevent coral growth and shell formation and the pollution with plastics and compounds used in plastic.

The most famous problem with the future earth is global warming, which the mass media mentions less and less. There are think tanks and numerous organizations (many connected with production of oil and gas and coal) set up to deny it. And why do you suppose they do it and where does the money come from? This article is quite convincing. The author claims “The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks.”

The article is based on research by Robert Brulle, a Drexel University Sociologist. Many famous names appear, such as Searle Freedom Trust (see Source Watch here), the John William Pope Foundation (Wikipedia, here), the Howard and the Sarah Scaife Charitable Foundation (at Foundation Directory here).

Much of the money comes from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, an organization designed to prevent identification of big donors to conservative causes.

Think of it this way: They are trying to save the high finance version of free enterprise, continuing things as they are going now, to benefit themselves. We are trying to save for our children what science and reason tell us is going to happen to the earth, considering the carbon dioxide entering the air, the disappearing glaciers and Arctic ice, the methane escaping from methane hydrates and permafrost, the northward migration of the growing season, the warming of the ocean, and all the other signs.

More carbon burning is just not going to cut it! The best gift  to give our descendants is an earth worth living on.

Some 24 Salem WV Area Residents File Suit Over Fracking Operations

From the Article by Matt Harvey, Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram, October 11, 2013

CLARKSBURG — Twenty-four Salem area residents have sued Antero Resources Corp. and a leasing partner, claiming the Denver energy company’s operations have substantially hindered their quality of life.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the residents by the Hill, Peterson, Carper, Bee & Deitzler law firm of Charleston. Defendants are Antero Resources, Antero Resources Blueston and Hall Drilling LLC.

“Since living in Harrison County, the Plaintiffs had come to expect and enjoy the quiet, fresh air, fresh water, privacy, darkness of night and overall peacefulness of the area,” the lawsuit contends.

Antero’s hydraulic fracturing ventures have ruined water wells, damaged roads and homes (the latter through vibration) and created excessive traffic, light, noise and diesel fumes, the lawsuit alleges. Additionally, some of the defendants’ employees have harassed or menaced the residents, the lawsuit alleges.

The plaintiffs live on Stillhouse Road, Cherry Camp Road, Rainbow Ranch Road and Haymond Woods Road. They are requesting a jury trial seeking damages.

A call to Antero Resources’ Denver headquarters went into an answering service late Thursday afternoon. A message left with an Antero employee at the company’s Bridgeport office wasn’t immediately returned.

The case has been assigned to Harrison Chief Judge James A. Matish.

Book Review: “Downriver” by K. G. Waite

By Rev. Leah D. Schade, EcoWatch, May 20, 2013

Waite’s e-book, Downriver, is a series of six vignettes that give us brief yet compelling glimpses of life in America moving between rural and suburban landscapes and communities. I have lived in both places and found myself nodding in recognition of the details in these tiny portraits. Waite beautifully captures a child’s perspective on a farmer-neighbor’s death, the twang of conversation between two old friends reminiscing and the humorous family drama of a canoeing trip.

The opening piece, “Fractured,” is a taut short story about friendships, farms, communities and cows negatively affected by the shale gas industry. While the story is realistic fiction not based on actual events, the circumstances of a farmer faced with the decision to lease his land to drilling or face the demise of his farm is all too common in Pennsylvania and Ohio. The tragic irony is that his decision results in more loss than he, his wife or his friends could have ever anticipated.

The piece “On Target” is a wry, rueful essay contrasting a big-box store with a country store, and a Main Street town with the pre-fabbed “community” going up on the outskirts. As a pastor, I was reminded of Jesus’s parable of the rich man storing up his wealth when I read Waite’s poignant words: “In the end, when the builder is dead and gone and the piles of money are spent and lost forever, the destruction of that beautiful farmland will remain. And still, there will be no community.”

Waite wields her words like a fine-bristled paintbrush: “She remembers standing at the window, staring at the holsteins dotting the field, wrapping thick muscular tongues around patches of grass.” Her descriptions of fields and farms, plants and animals are vivid: “Notice the way the shoots of those corn stalks grab at the soil and hold on tight, like two rows of fingers trying to maintain a grip on time fleeting.” Yet some of the portraits are quite sparse, and you may have to go back and re-read to fill in the white spaces meant to engage imagination. I believe this is part of Waite’s technique, intended to draw in the reader and have them complete the picture in their own minds.

My only complaint is that there was not more. The book can be read in one sitting and is a bit like pulling up to a table of appetizers that tease us with a taste of the chef’s talents, but leave us hungry for more. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Small-plate reading, like fine dining, affords you small bites of intense flavors that stay in your memory and give you a glimpse of what is possible when a well-trained writer focuses her lens on glimpses of life that really matter.

And what matters to Waite? Small town communities. Stewardship of land and beauty. Honesty. Neighbors with relationships that go beyond a wave at the mailbox. And a willingness to reveal one’s regretful, but unavoidable complicity with an economy that cares nothing about the aforementioned values.

For a miniscule investment of time and money, the reader will be treated to a finely-crafted work by an author whose writing reminds us to slow down and pay attention to those fleeting moments and disappearing places. Sadly, as we watch family farms ruined by fracking and rural communities collapsing under the pressures of consumerism and dispersed industrialization, little gems such as Waite’s recollections may be all that remain of our most important resources—land cherished for its intrinsic value, people cherished for their humanity and communities cherished for their commitment to protecting both.

Note:  Rev. Leah Schade is at the Reformation Lutheran Church, Media, Pennsylvania.

See also other Articles in FrackCheckWV