Biblio
A television commercial about global warming from Environmental Defense and the Ad Council.
Roselle—cofounder of the Rainforest Action Network and Earth First!—offers a memoir of his career in radical activism—from teenage Yippie to career environmentalist, who admits he shares his generation's complicity in creating the mess we are in today and is now fighting against mountaintop-removal coal mining in Appalachia.
Video excerpt from interview by Michael C O'Connell (hawriverfilms) of Mike Roselle, from a jail cell in West Virginia. Mr. Roselle has protested mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. Interview shot for upcoming project by Haw River Films.
Non-Violent Civil Disobedience has been an option for citizens to attempt to change laws that are considered unfair or are not being enforced by government regulatory agencies.
See: Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres Of Wilderness For Oil & Gas Drilling.
See: U.S. Fines Mine Owner $20 Million for Pollution
See: Gas Drillers Plead Guilty to Felony Dumping Violations
In the class-action Tawney case (2009), in West Virginia, people who sold natural gas to Chesapeake and its predecessors — Triana Energy, NiSource Inc. and Columbia Natural Resources — alleged they were cheated out of some of their royalty payments, and the jury agreed.
Morgan Stanley PE committed funding to Henry Harmon’s Marcellus-shale-focused start-up Triana Energy LLC roughly a year ago, shortly before Kohlberg Kravis Roberts invested $350 million in Terrence Pegula’s Marcellus-focused East Resources.
Triana Energy is involved in the ongoing development of new energy resources in the Appalachian Basin.
Triana Energy and Marathon Oil Corporation Join Forces to Develop Marcellus Acreage
CHARLESTON, WV, February 3, 2011 Triana Energy, LLC and Marathon Oil Corporation (NYSE: MRO), through a wholly owned subsidiary, have joined forces to develop approximately 82,000 acres of Marcellus prospects in Fayette County, Pennsylvania and several counties in northern West Virginia.
Triana Energy Investments, LLC is an independent, privately held oil and gas exploration and production company headquartered in Charleston, West Virginia. Marathon is an integrated international energy company engaged in exploration and production; oil sands; integrated gas; and refining, marketing and transportation operations. Marathon, which is based in Houston, has principal operations in the United States, Angola, Canada, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iraqi Kurdistan Region, Libya, Norway, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
See: Jim Balow. "Doth Chesapeake protest too much?". The Charleston Gazette. March 12, 2009.
See: Ken Ward Jr. "Roane Gas Royalties Deal OKd, NiSource, Chesapeake to Pay $380 Million, Drop Federal Appeals." IStockAnalyst.com. Oct. 25, 2008.
A call to reduce the exorbitant bail set for non-violent civil disobedience.
Madison, W.Va. – EmmaKate Martin and Benjamin Bryant were arrested this morning while blockading the driveway to Massey Energy’s regional headquarters in Boone county, W.Va. Magistrate Snodgrass set their bails at $100,000 each for misdemeanor charges of trespassing, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, obstructing an officer, and littering.
Source: Climate Ground Zero
Andrew works for the Student Environmental Action Coalition's as administrative coordinator. As a student, he organized for the Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition. There are not many things he loves more than movement building.
May 17, 2010: Climate Ground Zero Activists Blockade Massey Energy Headquarters
On the morning of May 17, 2010 two activists associated with Climate Ground Zero erected a tripod tent on the driveway of Massey Energy's regional headquarters in Boone county, West Virginia. The two activists, EmmaKate Martin and Benjamin Bryant, locked themselves to the base of one of the poles. Both were arrested and charged with misdemeanor offenses of trespassing, conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor, obstructing an officer and littering. Their bails were set for $100,000 each by West Virgina Magistrate Snodgrass.
The banner they hung from the tripod read “Massey, Profits Before People & Mountains, Fight Back!” The bail was the largest ever set against any activists conducting non-violent actions against mountaintop removal in West Virginia.[56]
The Gates of Hell
This pit of fire that has been burning for 40 years looks more like something out or Mordor than Turkmenistan. But the burning crater of natural gas began shortly after a Russian drilling rig collapsed into the Underworld and no one knew what to do.
Having opened this huge poisonous gas cavern up, the atmosphere and the nearby residents in the village of Derweze decided the next logical move would be to set this huge crater on fire, and it has been burning ever since.
Here’s video of some tourists enjoying the incredible, football-field-wide hole to hell (not literally).
The Centralia Underground Coal Fire
Our former publisher and Pennsylvanian Bill Coffin used to talk about this one all the time, so I have been familiar with its existence for some time. Nevertheless, it’s completely nuts. Like the Gates of Hell, it has been burning for decades — since 1962 in fact. But unlike the Turkmenistan fire, its genesis is not so clear.
It is suspected to be a blunder by the local fire department in 1962 which had been tasked with cleaning up the local landfill, which itself sat on top of an abandoned strip mine. To accomplish this, they set the landfill on fire, apparently not an unheard of method at the time. However, the theory goes that the fire was not put out properly, and heated up veins of coal underneath the landfill, which began to smolder over time.
Eventually the reaction lit an underground fire which continued to burn, which caused little concern from local authorities until almost two decades later when in 1981, a 12-year-old boy fell into a 150-foot sinkhole which suddenly opened up in the backyard underneath his feet.
An actual sign in Centralia, PA.
