Exxon Confronts Nuns, Calpers Over Global Warming Plans, Boskin
Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest oil company, faces growing criticism from investors who say it's lagging behind competitors in addressing global warming.
The Sisters of Saint Dominic, a Roman Catholic order in New Jersey, want shareholders at today's annual meeting to approve a proposal for setting targets on greenhouse-gas reductions. The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the biggest U.S. public pension fund, seeks to oust Michael Boskin, the Exxon director who runs the board committee responsible for environmental issues.
...``Exxon's the industry laggard when it comes to climate change,'' said Laura Shaffer, manager of shareholder activities at the New York-based Nathan Cummings Foundation, which oversees $535 million.
``Given their market capitalization and their earnings, they shouldn't be lagging anybody on this issue.''
The foundation is part of an investor group that backs a proposal to force Exxon to boost spending on ethanol and other non-petroleum fuels.
Shareholders who attend the meeting at the Symphony Center in Dallas will also vote on a measure that seeks to rein in share buybacks, which have tripled in the past three years, in favor of a one-time dividend. Another would limit compensation for the company's top five executives, including Tillerson, to $500,000 a year.
Tempers and dangers are ramping up in the gas field we call home.
"Ah, for the good old days in the springtime of the Barnett Shale boom, when the words “royalty check” were enough to get homeowners to sign away their mineral rights and everyone still thought the 3 a.m. screech of drilling equipment was just the sound of money.
When no one thought that wells could possibly send property values tumbling or turn well water brown, before drilling sites and pipelines had started leaking, burping, and blowing up. When there were no neighborhood groups ganging up to demand higher royalties, tighter controls, or — say it ain’t so — trying to stop wells outright...
...Even gas company officials admit that the boom is drawing more and more inexperienced workers to drilling sites. “Veteran crews are being divided up and filled with people who have no experience whatsoever working rigs, laying pipe, and such,” said pipeline company manager Jerry Holsworth.
And so accidents are increasing. At least two people have been killed in Barnett Shale operations thus far.
1976 video clip of M King Hubbert speaking about world oil depletion and explaining the concept of peak oil.
See article on the Energy Policy Act (2005).
Michael C. O'Connell reveals how strip-mining in West Virginia is impacting local communities in the heart of coal-mining country.
While the demolition of the ancient mountain tops alters the state's natural landscape, the transportation of the mountain debris to adjacent valleys is creeping into natural resources used by area residents.
Filmed over a two-year period, Mountain Top Removal features citizen activists, such as Ed Wiley, Larry Gibson, Julia Bonds, Maria Gunnoe, and Mountain Justice Summer volunteers, in their efforts to stop the destruction of Southern Appalachia's natural landscape.
The film also includes commentary from Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, geologists Dr. William Schlesinger and Dr. Peter Taft from Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, and also Bill Raney, President of the West Virginia Coal Association.
See: Mike Roselle clip 2-from the Southern Regional Jail West Virginia
See: Code Black: Coal’s Assault on America’s Health Campaign | PSR
See: Marsh Fork Elementary: Journey Up Coal River | A Community and Strip Mining
Fredericks, Carrie. 2007. Natural gas. Fueling the future. Detroit [Mich.]: Greenhaven Press. Discusses advantages and disadvantages of using natural gas as an energy supplier.
Using the latest in satellite imagery, aerial photography, and Google Earth technology, this ten minute SkyTruth video explores the environmental impacts of gas and oil drilling in the Upper Green River Valley, an ecologically sensitve area of western Wyoming.
See the view of the Upper Green Valley in Wyoming from the air and the effect of hundreds of gas drilling well pads. According to SkyTruth, 10,000 well pads have been proposed.
U.S. Senate. Committee on Environment and Public Works. Health Risks to Children and Communities From Recent EPA Proposals and Decisions on Air and Water Quality.
Submitted in Writing to Hearings before the Committee on Environment and Public Works,on February 6, 2007. Statement of Gina M. Solomon, M.D., M.P.H., Senior Scientist Natural Resources Defense Council, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine University of California, San Francisco. 19 pages.
"Unfortunately, EPA is taking several major steps to eliminate information and decrease health protection from environmental hazards. Six recent draft or final EPA rules will each significantly limit critical information available to scientists, health care providers, communities, and ironically to EPA itself. As a result, children and communities will be left less protected and less able to protect themselves."
"The American West at Risk emphasizes the need for genuine concern for our precious soils, freshwater, and other environmental resources. As the authors document, we should be making every effort to conserve and protect all our vital natural resources, which indeed support human life."--David Pimentel, Cornell University
"If you wish to be informed, enraged, enlightened, and appalled about the American west, this is the book to read."--Journal of Environmental Quality
See: Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site.
The Gasbuggy Nuclear Test Site is the location of a 1967 underground nuclear explosion, conducted to test the viability of using a nuclear device to aid in natural gas extraction. It was part of the Plowshare Program, the program to develop peaceful uses of nuclear weapons, and was the first use of a nuclear explosion for industrial purposes.
See: Google-eye view of a nuclear test site - Boing Boing
See: Appendix 7, p. 399.
Plowshare can help mankind reshape the earth into a Garden of Eden by overcoming the forces of nature.
-Glenn Seaborg, Man and Atom (1971)
Description
The American West at Risk summarizes the dominant human-generated environmental challenges in the 11 contiguous arid western United States - America's legendary, even mythical, frontier. When discovered by European explorers and later settlers, the west boasted rich soils, bountiful fisheries, immense, dense forests, sparkling streams, untapped ore deposits, and oil bonanzas. It now faces depletion of many of these resources, and potentially serious threats to its few "renewable" resources.
See: Fracking for Natural Gas | The American West at Risk Blog.
See: Environment: Project Dubious (1973). Time.
See: Adam Lederer. Project Wagon Wheel.
Brown, C. F. “A history of the development of the Pictured Cliffs Sandstone in the San Juan basin of northwestern New Mexico.” Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks of the southern Colorado Plateau: Four Corners Geological Society Memoir (1973): 178–184.
Schneider, Keith. New York Times. Aug. 26, 1990. "In the Trail of the Nuclear Arms Industry."
"In the Trail of the Nuclear Arms Industry; What's Left Behind." Listing of sites. Contaminated processing plants, laboratories, nuclear reactors and testing grounds that were part of the nuclear weapons industry.
Jones, S. “Elimination Report: Project Rio Blanco.” U.S. Department of Energy | Office of Legacy Management, October 15, 1985.
Heiss, K. P. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Speical Report. Aug. 31, 1967. “The Economic Potentials of Natural Gas Production Stimulation by Nuclear Explosions.” Princeton: Mathematica Inc. (1967). (PDF, 8MB).
Chedd, Graham. “Plowshare's death rattle at Rio Blanco.” New Scientist 8, no. 1973. New Scientist (March 8, 1973): 544-545.
Download: Bombs for Peace Moratorium Ends- Testing Begins (2.5 MB)
The American West at Risk chronicles the road our nation has taken to its current catastrophic environmental state. The authors tour the U.S. to discuss challenges our nation faces & examine viable solutions.
Digital landscape of the pristine Upper Delaware Watershed - before and after gas drilling.
A slow quiet simulated time lapse on what can happen to the scenic Delaware watershed as gas drilling proceeds in Pennsylvania.
Bruce Baizel. Testimony presented to the Committee on Environmental Protection, James F. Gennaro, Chair, Council of the City of New York, September 10, 2008. Earthworks Publications. Durango, CO.
"My testimony will first address the three main risks to water posed by gas development: well drilling and production, hydraulic fracturing and transportation of fluids to and from the wellsite. I will then briefly describe some specific incidents that illustrate these risks in a number of different states. Then, I will briefly discuss the current New York regulations most applicable to the risks associated with gas development. Finally, I will present some of the approaches that other municipalities and states have developed to try to address these risks."
Bruce Baizel is Senior Staff Attorney for the The Oil and Gas Accountability Project, a program of Earthworks, P.O. Box 1102, Durango, Colorado 81302.
See: Lustgarten (2009) "Buried Secrets: Gas Drilling’s Environmental Threat - ProPublica"
