Monthly Archives: June 2020

Weekly News Check-In 6/26/20

WEYMOUTH COMPRESSOR STATION

Breathing Room for Weymouth: Compressor Station Air Permit Vacated by Federal Court
By Take Back The Grid, Blog Post
June 23, 2020

TakeBacktheGrid was thrilled to learn that on June 3, 2020, the First Circuit of the US Court of Appeals vacated the air quality permit for the fracked gas compressor station under construction in Weymouth, MA. The permit, originally granted by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), allowed the parent company Enbridge to begin construction. The vacatur of this air quality permit is a welcome victory following a long string of defeats and setbacks for the Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station (FRRACS) who have opposed the construction of this compressor station for over five years. The MA DEP has 75 days (beginning June 3rd) to re-evaluate the cost efficacy of various technologies considered in the air permit.

We decided to dig into the text of this vacatur to learn more about the judge’s decision and what the implications are for Weymouth and surrounding communities in the months ahead.
» Read article

» More about the Weymouth compressor station

COLUMBIA GAS DISASTER

Columbia Gas of Massachusetts ordered to pay $53M fine for explosions that killed The company has said it takes full responsibility for the disaster.
By Associated Press, in Boston.com
June 23, 2020

A utility company was ordered Tuesday to pay a $53 million criminal fine for causing a series of natural gas explosions in Massachusetts that killed one person and damaged dozens of homes.

Columbia Gas of Massachusetts was sentenced more than three months after the company pleaded guilty in federal court to causing the blasts that rocked three communities north of Boston in September 2018.

As part of the plea agreement, Columbia Gas of Massachusetts will pay a $53 million fine for violating the Pipeline Safety Act. It’s the largest criminal fine ever imposed under the pipeline safety law.

The judge also sentenced the company to a three-year probation period during which its operations will be monitored to ensure its complying with safety regulations, authorities said.

Columbia Gas of Massachusetts has said it takes full responsibility for the disaster.
» Read article

» More about the Columbia Gas disaster

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

US climate activists charged with ‘terrorizing’ lobbyist over plastic pollution stunt
Anne Rolfes and Kate McIntosh face up to 15 years in prison after delivering box of plastic pellets found as pollution
By Emily Holden, The Guardian
June 25, 2020
» Read article

Across the U.S., Anti-Protest Laws Target Movements for Climate and Racial Justice
By Karen Sokol, Drilled News
June 19, 2020

As people nationwide are courageously fighting for Black lives by exercising their First Amendment rights to protest, even in the face of widespread police violence, 28 anti-protest bills are pending in 18 state legislatures and in Congress. Thirteen states have already enacted such legislation, with a total of 23 anti-protest laws currently in force. Indeed, these laws’ clear targeting of the exercise of free speech is so alarming that the rapid pace of their enactments all over the country led the International Center for Nonprofit Law to create a “U.S. Protest Law Tracker.”

The legislation has come in two waves, the first starting in 2016 in response to protests inspired by a police officer’s shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri and the creation of the Black Lives Matter Global Network.

The second wave of legislation began in 2017 and criminalizes protests near oil and gas pipelines and other fossil fuel industry infrastructure.The oil and gas industry began lobbying for such restrictions in response to the protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline….

These laws target protests of oil and gas pipelines and the polluting facilities they feed by declaring them “critical infrastructure” and making the unauthorized entry in or around them felony offenses subject to draconian penalties of imprisonment and fines. The oil and gas industry has been successful in its effort to silence protesters by criminalizing dissent essential to any just society: Since 2017, 11 states, including Louisiana and North Dakota, have enacted such legislation. Notably, three of those states enacted anti-protest “critical infrastructure” legislation under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic. Louisiana’s governor just vetoed a bill that would have made the penalties stiffer still. Meanwhile, a bill is currently pending at the federal level.
» Read article

» More about protests and actions

GREENING THE ECONOMY

Nature’s accounts show what the world does for us
People go on getting richer, and the planet pays a mounting price. There’s a better way to balance nature’s accounts.
By Tim Radford, Climate News Network
June 24, 2020

LONDON, 24 June, 2020 – It may take a while to catch on, but one day the financial pages of the daily newspaper could be quoting a new register of national wealth: called gross ecosystem product, this way of balancing nature’s accounts makes clear how much we really depend on the Earth.

And it would be a real-world indicator of prosperity you could have confidence in: a measure in cash terms of the health of the forests, rivers, lakes and wildlife of both nations and regions and – more precisely – of the benefits heedless humans take for granted.

These include the insect pollination of crops; the control of insect pests by birds and bats; the supply of fresh, safe water from mountain streams, rivers, springs and lakes; the management of waste by scavengers and microbes; the recycling of nutrients; and all the myriad services provided by plants, animals and topography. This is sometimes called “natural capital.”

The measure has already formally been tested in one province in China and matched with the more familiar indicator: Gross Domestic Product, or GDP.
» Read article

Thousands of coal workers lost jobs. Where will they go?
As the long-shrinking coal industry hemorrhages jobs, states and local groups are seeking new ways to transition to a lower-carbon economy without leaving coal workers behind.
By Arianna Skibell, E&E News, in Energy News Network
Photo By Claudine Hellmuth / E&E News (illustration) / Cyndy Sims Parr / Wikipedia; ©b3d_ / Flickr
June 25, 2020

Dozens of coal workers stormed the Senate office building during the Maryland legislative session earlier this year to protest a plan that would phase out the state’s remaining six coal-fired power plants.

The bill in question included grant money for displaced workers and affected communities, but the local labor union dismissed the provision as inadequate.

“It was a non-starter,” said Jim Griffin, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1900. “Those bills were essentially written by the Sierra Club.”

David Smedick, a campaign representative with the Sierra Club who was active in supporting the measure, said Maryland’s transition away from coal should include support for affected workers, but he stressed the urgency of shutting the plants down.
» Read article

» More about greening the economy

CLIMATE

‘This Scares Me,’ Says Bill McKibben as Arctic Hits 100.4°F—Hottest Temperature on Record
“100°F about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle today in Siberia. That’s a first in all of recorded history. We are in a climate emergency.”
By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
June 22, 2020

A small Siberian town north of the Arctic Circle reached 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday, a figure that—if verified—would be the highest temperature reading in the region since record-keeping began in 1885.

“This scares me, I have to say,” environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben tweeted in response to news of the record-breaking reading in Verkhoyansk, where the average high temperature in June is 68°F.

Washington Post climate reporter Andrew Freedman noted Sunday that if the reading is confirmed, it “would be the northernmost 100-degree reading ever observed, and the highest temperature on record in the Arctic, a region that is warming at more than twice the rate of the rest of the globe.”
» Read article

‘Climate progressives’ fail on Paris carbon target
Even states seen as “climate progressives” are far from meeting their global commitments to avert dangerous climate change.
By Alex Kirby, Climate News Network
June 19, 2020

LONDON − Nations which pride themselves on their zeal in tackling climate change by cutting carbon dioxide emissions as they have promised, the so-called “climate progressives”, are a long way from living up to their promises, scientists say.

They say the annual rate that emissions are expected to be cut is less than half of that needed, and suggest the UK should reduce them by 10% each year, starting this year. It also needs to achieve a fully zero-carbon energy system by around 2035, they say, not 2050 as UK law requires.

The study was led by Kevin Anderson from the University of Manchester, and is published in the journal Climate Policy.

Professor Anderson said the study showed how experts had underestimated the difficulty of tackling the climate crisis: “Academics have done an excellent job in understanding and communicating climate science, but the same cannot be said in relation to reducing emissions.

“Here we have collectively denied the necessary scale of mitigation, running scared of calling for fundamental changes to both our energy system and the lifestyles of high-energy users. Our paper brings this failure into sharp focus.”
» Read article
» Read the study

Forests are a solution to global warming. They’re also vulnerable to it.
By Liz Kimbrough, Mongabay
June 25, 2020

Investing in forests to fight climate change seems like a sure bet. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, pump out oxygen, and live for decades. What could go wrong?

The answer, according to a newly published paper in Science, is: a lot. Fires, rising temperatures, disease, pests and humans all pose threats to forests, and as climate change escalates, so too do these threats. While forest-based solutions need to play an important role in addressing climate change, the risks to forests from climate change must also be considered.

“Current risks are not carefully considered and accounted for, much less these increased risks that forests are going to face in a warming climate,” William Anderegg, a biologist at the University of Utah and first author of the new paper, told Mongabay.
» Read article
» Read the paper

Pandemic’s Cleaner Air Could Reshape What We Know About the Atmosphere
Coronavirus shutdowns have cut pollution, and that’s opened the door to a “giant, global environmental experiment” with potentially far-reaching consequences.
By Coral Davenport, New York Times
June 25, 2020

WASHINGTON — In the crystalline air of the pandemic economy, climate change researchers have been flying a small plane over Route I-95, from Boston to Washington, measuring carbon dioxide levels. Scientists have mounted air quality monitors on Salt Lake City’s light rail system to create intersection-by-intersection atmospheric profiles.

And government scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have started a Covid air quality study to gather and analyze samples of an atmosphere in which industrial soot, tailpipe emissions and greenhouse gases have plummeted to levels not seen in decades.

The data, from Manhattan to Milan to Mumbai, will inform scientists’ understanding of atmospheric chemistry, air pollution and public health for decades to come, while giving policymakers information to fine-tune air quality and climate change laws and regulations in hopes of maintaining at least some of the gains seen in the global shutdown as cars return to the roads and factories reopen.

Policy experts say the new data could even bolster legal fights against the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back major air pollution regulations. Early studies appear to show that even as the coronavirus took more than 100,000 American lives, deaths related to more typical respiratory illnesses like asthma and lung disease fell in the clean air, boosting the case that Mr. Trump’s environmental rollbacks will contribute to thousands of deaths.
» Read article

» More about climate

CLEAN ENERGY

US demand for clean energy destroying Canada’s environment, indigenous peoples say
Push is inadvertently causing long-term environmental damage to the traditional hunting grounds on Inuit public lands
By Matt Hongoltz-Hetling, The Guardian
June 22, 2020
» Read article

$50 Million Prime Impact Fund Launches to Invest in Early-Stage Cleantech
The fund screens startups for gigaton-level carbon-reduction potential.
By Julian Spector, GreenTech Media
June 22, 2020

A new fund is channeling philanthropic dollars into early-stage clean technology investments in the hopes of catalyzing major climate-change impacts.

The Prime Impact Fund closed a $50 million raise in recent weeks and has already made eight investments. The fund uses an unusual structure: It screens prospective investments for their carbon-reduction potential in order to direct investment to high-impact technology companies that might struggle to find funding through conventional means.

The investment team is professionally trained in hard sciences; it is looking to cut checks up to around $5 million for the sort of hard-technology startup that would scare the Patagonia vest off a typical Silicon Valley investor.
» Read article

German hydrogen economy to spark traded market for imports: consultants
By Vera Eckert, Reuters
June 22, 2020

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany’s push to increase the use of hydrogen as a clean fuel to meet climate targets will require imports and a traded market to supplement home-produced supplies, a consultancy close to protagonists in the emerging industry said.

“There will have to be a mix of domestic and foreign hydrogen volumes, depending on where the cheaper source is,” said Andreas Schwenzer, principal consultant at Horvath & Partners, which advises the gas network Open Grid Europe.

“The energy market is already discussing how a euro-denominated wholesale market can emerge,” he said in an interview.

Germany this month agreed a national hydrogen strategy, which in July will be embedded in a wider European Union plan for a fossil-free future for the bloc’s industries.

Germany, one of Europe’s biggest gas markets, consumes 55 terawatt hours annually of CO2-intensive hydrogen from natural gas.

But it lacks land and offshore resources to produce sufficient carbon-free hydrogen from renewable energy to meet the EU goal to reduce net emissions to zero by 2050.
» Read article

» More about clean energy

ENERGY STORAGE

Battery makers face looming shortages of high-quality lithium
By Guy Burdick, Utility Dive
June 25, 2020

Battery makers are facing a shortage of lithium, and ongoing financial problems in markets suppressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to industry insiders at an Atlantic Council panel on Wednesday.

Despite material shortages, lithium-ion markets are taking off and supply problems will not result from a shortage of lithium raw materials, panelists said.

“What matters is the production of a high-purity, high-quality chemical that can be used in battery manufacturing,” Kumar said. “The number of companies that can produce a large volume of these high-purity chemicals is very small and they are constantly capital-constrained.”
» Read article

» More about energy storage

CLEAN TRANSPORTATION

Clean ships needed now to cut polluting emissions
The vessels plying the world’s oceans release huge volumes of polluting emissions. Existing fleets badly need a clean-up.
By Kieran Cooke, Climate News Network
June 25th, 2020

LONDON, 25 June, 2020 − The shipping industry is in urgent need of a makeover: while limited attempts are being made to lessen polluting emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases in the road transport and aviation sectors, shipping lags even further behind in the clean-up stakes.

Maritime traffic is a major source of emissions, each year belching out thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other pollutants. “If the sector were a country, it would be the 6th highest emitter [of GHGs] in the world, ranked between Germany and Japan”, says a study in the journal BMC Energy.

Involving researchers at the Tyndall Centre and the University of Manchester in the UK, the study says reducing emissions in the shipping industry has tended to focus on the introduction of new, low-carbon vessels.

The researchers point out that ships have a comparatively long life span: in 2018 the average age of a ship being scrapped was 28 years.

The study says ageing ships are a major source of pollution: in order to cut global emissions of CO2 and other gases and meet the targets set in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, the world’s existing shipping fleet must undergo a substantial revamp.

Dr John Broderick, a climate change specialist at the University of Manchester, says time is of the essence.

“Unlike in aviation, there are many different ways to decarbonise the shipping sector, but there must be much greater attention paid to retrofitting the existing fleet, before it’s too late to deliver on the net-zero target.”
» Read article
» Read the study on maritime traffic emissions

New Rule in California Will Require Zero-Emissions Trucks
More than half of trucks sold in the state must be zero-emissions by 2035, and all of them by 2045.
By Hiroko Tabuchi, New York Times
June 25, 2020

Rebuffing strong opposition from industry, California on Thursday adopted a landmark rule requiring more than half of all trucks sold in the state to be zero-emissions by 2035, a move that is expected to improve local air quality, rein in greenhouse gas emissions and sharply curtail the state’s dependence on oil.

The rule, the first in the United States, represents a victory for communities that have long suffered from truck emissions — particularly pollution from the diesel trucks that feed the sprawling hubs that serve the state’s booming e-commerce industry. On one freeway in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, near the nation’s largest concentration of Amazon warehouses, a community group recently counted almost 1,200 delivery trucks passing in one hour.

Oil companies, together with farming and other industries, opposed the measure, calling it unrealistic, expensive and an example of regulatory overreach. Truck and engine manufacturers also opposed the rule, and began a last-ditch effort in March to delay it, saying companies were already suffering from the effects of the Covid-19 crisis.
» Read article
» Read California Air Resources Board (CARB) fact sheet

» More about clean transportation

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY

State AG Shapiro: Grand jury report reveals Pa.’s systemic failure to regulate shale gas industry
By Don Hopey and Laura Legere, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
June 25, 2020

A statewide grand jury investigating the operations and regulation of the shale gas drilling industry has issued a scathing report detailing the systemic failure of the state environment and health departments in regulating the industry and protecting public health.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who released the 235-page report on the grand jury’s two-year investigation Thursday morning, said it uncovers the “initial failure” more than a dozen years ago of the state Department of Environmental Protection to respond to and regulate the shale gas industry and the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”

And, while the Wolf administration has made improvements at the agency, the grand jury said, there remains room for improvement.

“This report is about preventing the failures of our past from continuing into our future,” Mr. Shapiro said. “It’s about the big fights we must take on to protect Pennsylvanians — to ensure that their voices are not drowned out by those with bigger wallets and better connections. There remains a profound gap between our constitutional mandate for clean air and pure water, and the realities facing Pennsylvanians who live in the shadow of fracking giants and their investors.”
» Read article
» Read the grand jury report

Alleging Consumer Fraud, Minnesota Sues Exxon, Koch, and API for Climate Change Deception
By Amy Westervelt, Drilled News
June 24, 2020

Minnesota on Wednesday joined the growing number of states and municipalities seeking damages from the fossil fuel industry for knowingly deceiving consumers about climate change and its impacts. But Attorney General Keith Ellison is charting a different and potentially groundbreaking legal course from those lawsuits, by suing ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute under state laws that prohibit lying to consumers.

To date the majority of this generation of climate suits are nuisance cases. They allege that fossil fuel companies’ efforts to misinform the public on climate change successfully delayed for decades any regulations and other actions to slow or stop it, creating the need for billions of dollars in mitigation costs that municipal and state governments could otherwise have avoided. In those cases, which include among others suits filed by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, Calif., and Boulder, Colo.,, the plaintiffs are seeking damages: They want fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share of the cost of climate adaptation.

The Minnesota case is different in a few key ways:
» Read article
» Read the complaint
» Read Attorney General Ellison’s press release

Fossil Fuel Companies and Their Supporters Ask Supreme Court to Intervene in Climate Lawsuits
By Dana Drugmand, DeSmog Blog
June 23, 2020

California communities last month got an important procedural win in their efforts to get fossil fuel companies to pay for climate-related impacts. On May 26, a federal appeals court ruled that their lawsuits could go ahead in state court, which is their preferred venue, rather than federal court.

Similar lawsuits filed by Colorado communities, Baltimore, and Rhode Island are also marching on in state courts following unsuccessful attempts by fossil fuel companies to have the cases heard in federal courts, where they are more likely to be dismissed. Overall, the communities lodging these legal battles seem to be gaining momentum.

However, some of the companies facing those lawsuits appear to be gearing up for a larger battle, looking to the Supreme Court to weigh in and using their network of promoters to continue attacking these lawsuits outside the courtroom.

One such supporter of fossil fuel companies is the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP). An initiative of the trade group the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), it’s designed to push back against climate litigation targeting NAM members such as ExxonMobil and Chevron. Since the project launched in November 2017, MAP has been fiercely criticizing climate liability lawsuits like those in California.

In the wake of the recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, MAP Special Counsel Phil Goldberg issued a statement calling on the Supreme Court to take a definitive stance on these climate cases.
» Read article
» Read the MAP statement

Support grows for taxpayer-funded oil well cleanup as an economic stimulus
Democrats leading the push say their plan has no real downside, while critics say it gives the industry a pass.
By Mark Olalde, Energy News Network
June 23, 2020

When the U.S. was fighting to emerge from the Great Depression in the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched ambitious public works projects to put people back on the job. Now, with the country in the midst of another crushing economic slowdown, can cleaning up oil and gas wells fill in as a similar stimulus?

Environmental groups have generally supported the plan if it focuses on orphan wells and comes with the possibility of bonding reform. “We strongly urge you to take steps to ensure this orphaned well problem does not reoccur due to insufficient bonding standards,” Sara Kendall, program director with the Western Organization of Resource Councils, which advocates for landowners and the environment, said during the June 1 forum.

And a report published Thursday by CarbonTracker found the industry is facing hundreds of billions of dollars of cleanup costs, most of which it will be unable to fund.

A federal program would come with precedent. Canada recently unveiled a very similar push, which included CA$1.7 billion for orphan well cleanup, nearly all that money as a grant that wouldn’t need to be paid back.

Regan Boychuk is a Canadian environmentalist and expert on well decommissioning costs with the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project, a coalition of landowners, former regulators and other stakeholders. He said that it’s “wonderful to put people back to work, wonderful to get this stuff cleaned up. But if the wrong people are paying for it, we’re moving in the wrong direction.”

In America, some green groups agree with Boychuk and oppose the centrist approach of paying for — some say subsidizing — the oil and gas industry’s cleanup with potentially minimal strings attached.
» Read article
» Read the Carbon Tracker report

» More about fossil fuel

BIOMASS

British Columbia poised to lose ‘white rhino of old growth forests’
By Justin Catanoso, Mongabay
June 22, 2020

The lush, green interior of British Columbia, Canada, is renowned as the home of one of the last-remaining inland temperate rainforests on earth. BC’s towering, centuries-old red cedar, western hemlock, spruce and subalpine fir make up a wet, complex ecosystem brimming with wildlife, ranging from endangered woodland caribou, grizzlies, diverse birdlife and tiny lichens.

But the province’s rare old-growth forests are shrinking dramatically due to encroaching timber harvesting, especially for wood-pellets used to fuel the industrial biomass-burning industry, now fast replacing coal-fired electrical power plants around the globe.

British Columbia’s old-growth is in desperate need of protection, according to the stark findings of two recent studies prepared for the Victoria-based provincial government, which for the first time in a generation is considering a new old-growth forest management plan that could permanently save what’s left from chainsaws, sawmills and wood pelletizing plants.

“Almost every productive ecosystem across BC has very low levels of old forest remaining, and in many areas of BC, this remaining productive old growth is at risk of being logged in the next five years,” said Rachel Holt, a forest ecologist and co-author of one of the studies. “Current provincial policies are inadequate to protect old-growth ecosystems. And without immediate change to both the policy and how it is implemented, BC is on a path to losing these irreplaceable forests forever.”

“We want to stop the harvesting of primary forests here, and we think the forest industry should start focusing on second-growth forests,” said Michelle Connolly, a forest ecologist with the environmental advocacy group Conservation North, which provided research for a second study. “With the advent of bioenergy [wood pellets for export], we have to extend our area of immediate concern to all primary forests. None of it is safe now.”
» Read article

» More about biomass

Subscribe to Blog via Email

» Learn more about Pipeline projects
» Learn more about other proposed energy infrastructure
» Sign up for the NFGiM Newsletter for events, news and actions you can take
» DONATE to help keep our efforts going!

Weekly News Check-In 6/19/20

WEYMOUTH COMPRESSOR STATION

With Air Permit Vacated, Senators Call For Construction To Stop On Weymouth Compressor
By Barbara Moran, WBUR
June 19, 2020

On Thursday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey wrote to federal regulators asking to halt construction of a controversial natural gas compressor station in Weymouth. The letter comes after a federal court vacated the compressor’s air permit earlier this month.

“Given the invalidation of the facility’s air quality permit, construction must stop immediately,” the senators wrote in a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate gas transmission.

The state Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) granted the air quality permit after contentious hearings last May, during which MassDEP admitted that the project’s provisional air permit was based on incomplete data. On June 3, the First Circuit Court of Appeals found that MassDEP did not follow its own established procedures, and vacated the permit.
» Read article
» Read the First Circuit Court of Appeals decision

» More about the Weymouth compressor station

COLUMBIA GAS DISASTER

Gas disaster settlement fees in question
By Jill Harmacinski, Eagle Tribune
June 13, 2020

A total of $26.1 million of the $143 million Merrimack Valley gas explosion class-action settlement was earmarked for payment of legal fees and administrative costs.

And yet, some victims are being asked to pay an 11% fee to get their checks, which are compensation for everything from spoiled food and property damage, to lodging costs, mental anguish and other fallout from the Sept. 13, 2018 gas disaster.

The first round of checks was recently issued with an average settlement payment of $8,000. Eleven percent of that payment is $880.

As of Friday, a spokesperson for Attorney General Maura Healey said the office had heard from eight recipients about the fee being assessed by attorney David Raimondo of the Raimondo Law Firm. Healey’s office is looking into this.
» Read article

» More about Columbia Gas / Merrimack Valley disaster

PROTESTS AND ACTIONS

From the Streets to the Courts, Fossil Fuel Is Trying to Outlaw Climate Accountability
By Amy Westervelt, Drilled News
June 12, 2020

There are a couple ways so-called “average” Americans can try to hold the powerful to account: We can take to the streets or take to the courts. But for decades, powerful industries and their allies in state houses nationwide have been slowly, surgically narrowing those options.

Now, with an alarming number of states moving to criminalize protest, and a renewed effort to push “tort reform,” a euphemism for eroding the public’s ability to hold companies legally and financially liable for the harms they cause, these two key tools are very much in danger.

The social movements of the 1960s and 1970s brought big wins for civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and environmental and consumer protections. In a lot of ways, efforts to roll back those wins over the last several few decades have been one long counter-reaction to those initial reforms.
» Read article

Louisiana’s Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Imposed Harsh Penalties for Trespassing on Industrial Land
Activists had argued that the law, if enacted, would intimidate opponents of pipelines and chemical plants by threatening prison sentences for minor infractions.
By Nicholas Kusnetz, InsideClimate News
June 13, 2020

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Friday vetoed a bill that would have stiffened penalties for trespassing on pipelines, levees and a long list of other facilities in the state. The veto handed a victory to civil liberties advocates and local organizers, who said the bill would have trampled on their right to protest industrial development.

The legislation would have imposed a mandatory minimum three-year sentence for stepping onto “critical infrastructure” during a state of emergency and expanded the list of what falls under that definition, to include flood control structures, which criss-cross the state.

Advocates said the bill would have extended the reach of an already vague law that imposes harsh penalties for trespassing on oil and gas industry land and other sites.
» Read article

A Powerful Petrochemical Lobbying Group Advanced Anti-Protest Legislation in the Midst of the Pandemic
By Alleen Brown, The Intercept
June 7 2020

One day after West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s shelter-in-place orders went into effect, the governor quietly signed into law the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the law created new felony penalties for protest actions targeting oil and gas facilities, as the state continues to confront opposition to two massive natural gas pipelines designed to cut through delicate forests, streams, and farmland.

If construction is completed, the Mountain Valley and Atlantic Coast pipelines would transport gas extracted via fracking in West Virginia to markets in Virginia and North Carolina, passing through the crumbly limestone landscapes known as karst that underly much of the mountainous region. Such projects are key to keeping fracking companies operating at a time when gas prices are at historic lows and allowing a booming petrochemical industry to continue its expansion. Local landowners and residents concerned with environmental issues have attempted to stop construction by locking themselves to equipment and camping out in trees in the pipelines’ paths. Along with more conventional actions such as lawsuits, the protest efforts have cost the projects’ backers billions of dollars in delays.

Now, a person who trespasses on a West Virginia property containing “critical infrastructure” with the intention of defacing or inhibiting operations could face up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine. The law creates a new felony and fines of up to $20,000 for any person who conspires to deface or vandalize such properties if the resulting damage is more than $2,500. “Critical infrastructure” is defined as an array of oil and gas facilities including petroleum refineries, compressor stations, liquid natural gas terminals, and pipelines.
» Read article