Fracking

Behind the Turmoil: Russia Provoked Oil Price Fall to Protect its Markets from US Frackers, which could now Collapse

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Last weekend, OPEC Plus, an expanded cartel of petroleum exporters, considered a plan for members to cut back on their oil production so as to support prices in the face of a slowing world economy owing to the novel coronavirus. The Russian Federation rejected the plan put forward by OPEC, […]

Climate Crisis

Methane Emissions Crisis and Rapid Global Heating: It is all Fossil Fuel Drilling and Fracking

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Many policy and scientific questions have the form of a Whodunnit. In what Umberto Eco called the “closed” mystery, the aftermath of a crime is described by the novelist but the identity and the motives of the killer are not known. A big mystery is where all the methane in […]

Fracking

Stop It! Fracking Can’t be Done in a way that doesn’t Threaten Human Life

OtherWords

By Barbara Gottlieb | – Over 1,500 reports show there’s simply no safe way to do it — and it’s harming us all every day it goes on. Science. Evidence. Facts. Do these even matter anymore in U.S. policy? They should — especially when it comes to issues that affect our health and environment, like […]

Fossil Fuels

Oklahoma’s Ominous Earthquakes: the Price of Fracking (Video)

Juan Cole

Hydraulic Fracturing implicated in severe seismic activity and plus it releases heat-trapping gas methane

Coal

Kurdish Independence: SecState Tillerson opposes, Sen Schumer Supports

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – According to the Kurdish news site Rudaw, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson weighed in on the Kurdistan referendum on independence from Iraq, held last Monday, saying it is illegitimate and the US does not recognize it. The statement of the Department of State said, “The vote […]

Donald Trump

Green France: Macron bans Fracking and welcomes US renewables Scientists fleeing Trump

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The French government wants to steal increasingly unemployed US green energy scientists, who are being systematically defunded by the Trump administration. After Trump pulled out of the Paris accords, Macron addressed US professionals: “To all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, responsible citizens who were disappointed by the decision […]

Climate Change

Trump’s 1984: Peace is War, Environment is Pollution, Health is Sickness

contributors

By Steven Harper | (BillMoyers.com) | – – “If you look at these Cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason. And that is for the deconstruction [of the administrative state].” At its best, government saves the environment from polluters, prevents companies from exploiting consumers, safeguards individuals against invidious discrimination and other forms of injustice, […]

Acidification of Oceans

Donald Trump: Global Ecocide

contributors

By John Feffer | ( Foreign Policy in Focus) | – – Can one determined and willfully ignorant man both stem the green tide and push the world over the brink into ecocide? In Pittsburgh, where I worked for two months in 1986, I breathed clean air. The steel mills along the rivers leading into […]

Climate Change

Study finds 6 600 spills from fracking in just four US states

contributors

The Watchers | – – Each year, 2 to 16 percent of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, chemical-laden water, hydraulic fracturing fluids and other substances, according to a study published yesterday in Environmental Science & Technology. The analysis, which appeared February 21 in Environmental Science & Technology, identified 6 648 spills reported across […]