Climate Challenges

First an Update on the WNY Pipe-lie that National Fuel is building. In today's (11.27.2015) Buffalo News, in Section C, page 5 we finally have a public admission (first to my knowledge) that the proposed pipe-lie will be carrying fracked gas from Pennsylvania to Canada. That alone is a good enough reason to oppose the pipe-lie.

Second problem with the pipe-lie: It needs to cross wetlands. National Fuel ( I refuse to give the subsidiary's name – National Fuel own the company.  The subsidiary is a way for Nat Fuel to distract people from who is behind the project & who stands to profit from it.) claims that it intends to purchase the land for market value (but if that fails, it will use the power of the state via eminent domain to seize the land for a pittance) and leave the wetlands area alone and use only 5-8 acres of land and leave the remaining 12-15 acres as wetlands under a restrictive covenant. If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. They will need more than 5-8 acres to safely build a 22,000 horsepower compressor station and needed parking space and needed buildings. This is only the foot in the door.

Third: This section of the pipe-lie will be underground. If the EPA is serious about this situation, and I doubt it is given how much it kowtows to corporate demands, no pipeline should be built anywhere near wetlands. Above or below ground. The detection of leaks is hard enough on pipelines as it is. And we only have to look at the disaster that happened up in Michigan and how difficult that mess was to clean up to know that wetlands need to be left alone.

Why not pin this as an update onto the original article? Because tomorrow, November 28^th are the scheduled climate protests that 350.org is overseeing. This is the type of regional issue that the people need to know about and need to act upon. Fracked gas is bad in so many ways – air, water, and land pollution ; the various cancers and health issues that people living around fracked sites suffer from, and the methane leaks that are four (that is 4) times as dangerous to climate warming as other greenhouse gases are.

Furthermore, this pipe-lie is skirting the urban areas and will affect rural areas almost exclusively. City people don't even know about this project. It is being set up in such a way as to keep it out of and away from the people who are most likely to protest it. I have seen little about it in the Buffalo News and nothing about it in the broadcast media (television and radio).

The meeting in Buffalo tomorrow is at Temple Beth Zion on Delaware Ave. It is being sponsored by the Rise Up For Climate Justice Campaign.  This issue needs to be brought up and we need to oppose it. All the reasons above, and so many more discussed in other articles and else where, are reason enough to oppose this project.

Socialists demand that the pipe-lie be exposed for what it is and scrapped.

Keep the oil in the soil, the tar sands in the land, and keep the frack out of my neighborhood.

I know it is the day after Thanksgiving and everyone (hopefully) enjoyed a good meal yesterday, but there is some gas that should not pass.