Memo to Joe Nocera (and the People Who Hired Him): Try Harder!

Some of you may have noticed that The New York Times has added a new columnist to its editorial page. His name is Joe Nocera and, as a long time correspondent for business periodicals, he seems now to be the official mouthpiece for corporate insanity at The Times.

To date Nocera has published not one but two columns trumpeting the virtues of hydraulic-fracturing as a way of extracting natural gas. I have posted here several times about the stupidity of that process. Nocera seems not to have read my posts. I suppose that is excusable. But he also seems not to have bothered reading this series of articles that his own newspaper published last month on the lunacy of "fracking." And he seems to have missed the stories running in The Times today on (1) the actual practice of (as opposed to the imagined oh-so-nice-and-clean industry propaganda about) drilling for natural gas and (2) the campaign from the right to subvert state-level environmental regulations.

What is wrong with this sort of oversight? Well, there is the obvious problem is that it makes Nocera look exactly like a shill for industry. But there are a couple of other reasons. The first is that Nocera simply is dismissive of those who raise well-founded objections to natural gas drilling. His standard retort is that skeptics are somehow "biased" or self-interested. The second is that his own position depends and depends crucially on the good-will of industry and the competence of regulators. Unfortunately, there is no basis for either of those presumptions.

In his first column Nocera announced that his thinking on the "fracking" issue specifically and on natural gas drilling more generally owed a large debt to his friend T. Boone Pickens. Talk about a credibility deflating admission.* Of course, good ole T Boone is unconcerned with the money. Ask him and he'll say as much. And as for the safety of natural gas extraction here is Nocera: " In Texas and Oklahoma, it has been used for decades, with nobody complaining much about environmental degradation." You know, those two southwestern states who've built a well-deserved reputation for environmental stewardship!

This is reasoned argument? Yet Nocera has the temerity to attack the credibility of the Cornell University scientist who - as The Times reported - published research findings suggesting that just maybe natural gas is no panacea. Here is a simple asymmetry to ponder. The Cornell scientist might just possibly have come to his policy conclusions on the basis of his research; spokesmen for the extractive industries in Texas came to their policy views on the basis of the profits they have made or stand to make. We are supposed to think of the common good, the national welfare and so forth; they are allowed to speak for their economic self interest. Of course, many property owners in Pennsylvania and "upstate" New York are concerned about their property values. They might also be concerned about the water pollution and other environmental degradation that follows on gas drilling ('fracking' or otherwise). They may also be worried that the Northeast will turn into Texas or Oklahoma (and I mean that in the best of all possible ways!). Nocera never countenances either possibility.

Instead, Nocera promises us nirvana: "The truth is, every problem associated with drilling for natural gas is solvable. The technology exists to prevent most methane from escaping, for instance. Strong state regulation will help ensure environmentally safe wells. And so on." All we have to do is set aside all the reporting, all the research. Or perhaps, like Nocera, we simply need to place our faith in a world in which vigorous regulators and virtuous energy companies will take great care and avoid the incompetence and venality we've come to expect from them. Any takers? How about all those city dwellers in NYC who get their water from reservoirs upstate?

If you cannot muster the faith, Nocera will invite you on the guilt trip. The one that meanders through the corpses of American military personnel dying for oil in the middle east. There is a leap! Basically, Nocera's "argument" amounts to non-sequitors, ad hominem attacks, cozy-ing up to gas industry billionaires, leaps of faith in industry and regulators, and a plea to believe him (as opposed to reporters and researchers) that natural gas exploration is clean and safe. All this in the first few weeks of his residency on the op-ed columns. What a joke. The Times cannot be that desperate for columnists.
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* Memo to Joe: Simply admitting that you are working as a mouthpiece for the rich and financially involved does not excuse sloppy thinking or make otherwise incredible statements believable.

Stop Drilling

Over the past week or so, The New York Times has run this series of articles on the dangers of natural gas drilling generally and particular techniques called "hydro-fracking" in particular. The reports also suggest that neither state nor federal regulators are doing a terribly good job at dealing with the dangers. I take it as a sign that the reports from The Times are relatively even-handed that both the industry mouthpieces and the government officials formerly charged with regulating them both wrote letters complaining that they are one-sided.

Natural gas typically is depicted as a "clean" energy source but (as is the case with Coal and uranium mining), the extraction processes are highly toxic. They produce millions of gallons of waste water contaminated with chemicals and radioactivity. in unsurprising statement, the reporter from The Times writes: "Industry officials say they are not concerned."And government regulators are busily seeking to so narrow the scope of their inquiries that the conclusions of any investigations are foregone. Everything is just fine!

I've posted here several times recently on this topic. These reports reinforce my view that this sort of drilling is simply a disaster. The surest way to avert it is to stop the drilling now. There are better, cleaner - not perfect, but better and cleaner - ways to generate energy. Why aren't we pursuing them more vigorously?

Photographer Documents Marcellus Shale's Impact on Farmscapes

Natural gas drilling site on mountainside, Tioga County.
Photograph © Jack Preston/Terry Wild Stock.

My google alerts turned up this brief interesting notice from Lancaster Farming which I assume is a local publication in rural Pennsylvania. It is a review of sorts of a little photography exhibit "at Julie’s Coffee, a shop in downtown Williamsport, Pa"; the work being exhibited is by Terry Wild who, in his spare time, has been documenting the impact of gas drilling industry on the local landscape. You can find this "sideline" work here.

The changes ot the landscape may seem innocuous, but they are, as Wild establishes, pretty pervasive. And the drilling process, as I've noted here before, threatens the water supply in frightening ways. New York State currently has a moratorium on the drilling process (through July 1st) and I hope the legislature will make it permanent. Virtually everything we know about fossil fules and how they are extracted (or nuclear energy and how the fuel is extracted and the waste stored) makes supporting wind and solar energy it seem like a no-brainer.

"Just Plain Dumb" ~ Where the Burdens of Regulation Actually Fall

The other day Obama ventured onto the opinion page at The Wall Street Journal to, as the mainstream press put it, extend an olive branch to "the business community." He offered up this lecture about the need to adopt grown up approach to regulation. It never occurred to me that Obama needed to mend fences with business, in large measure because on virtually every issue he has been supine in that respect already. Think about how he approached health care reform by accommodating industry demands before the legislative process commenced. That is why we got an incoherent effort at health insurance reform instead of a reform of health care system. So, now what will happen is that administrative agencies will spend their time navel gazing (reassessing existing rules) instead of applying them. And industry lobbyists - and here is where the money really counts in politics - will spend their time and effort defining for regulators which rules are especially burdensome.

Coincidentally, last night Susan and I watched Gasland a film that raises serious questions about the natural gas industry, their access to government officials, the ways they have been exempted from environmental regulations, and the consequences of all that for the lives of regular people. The tale is not a pretty one. And the problems the film documents are coming to a town or village near you as the industry aggressively pushes to deploy dangerous drilling techniques in more and more areas. Watching the film made me wonder why it was that the EPA, Bureau of Land Management and various State level agencies were not doing even a minimally good job at protecting us from industry. Obama has nothing to say about that.

J. Henry Fair ~ The Difference Venue Makes

Crime and Punishment, 2010 (Oil from BP Deepwater Horizon spill
on the Gulf of Mexico.) Photograph © J. Henry Fair.

Roberta Smith published this smart review in The New York Times the other day of work by J. Henry Fair. I especially appreciate the contrast she draws between the works shown in the gallery and those that appear in Fair's forthcoming book.* Smith looked closely and did her job well. Fair is clearly a remarkable photographer and his work seems interesting. It fits into an emerging "genre" of work relying on aerial views to create forceful views of environmental mayhem. (I've posted here several time before about photographers working on similar projects.) But the selectivity that Smith notes is telling.
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* J. Henry Fair. 2011. The Day After Tomorrow: Images of Our Earth in Crisis. New York: powerHouse Books.

An Immodest Proposal ~ Thank Some Non-Veteran for Their Service

My oldest son Douglas is a college senior majoring in biology and environmental sciences. We spent the afternoon working out some of the material infrastructure for his senior research project - which has something to do with the feeding habits of local birds (of which there are, here in our neck of Western NY, a remarkable variety of species - look here and here, for instance). It was fun spending time and witnessing him thinking the project through a bit.

Once Doug headed back to his apartment I came across this post - "Dying for Discovery" - at The New York Times. It recounts the risks and sacrifices that naturalists have made studying things like birds over the years. The author than remarks:

"We go to great lengths commemorating soldiers who have died fighting wars for their countries. Why not do the same for the naturalists who still sometimes give up everything in the effort to understand life?"

He goes on ". . . it also occurs to me that they might prefer to be remembered some other way than on a stone monument, or on paper" and suggests that some of the research done by naturalists (who happened to lose their lives on a research trip) in Amazonia prompted Peru and Bolivia to establish large national Parks to protect wild habitats and species.

I often complain that we disproportionately honor those who have gone off to kill or who have been killed in war. I think this post is important for reminding us that there surely are other domains of endeavor in which individuals risk their lives and who deserve our gratitude and admiration.

I find it obsequious and cloying to hear the radio show hosts and politicians offering a "Thank you for your service" whenever they encounter a veteran or military personnel. What about the social workers and parole officers and teachers and, yes, scientists and artists, who work in underpaid professions for years and decades in order to contribute to a better world? After all, they could be out there peddling sub-prime mortgages (or some other form of snake oil) and making real money. When was the last time you heard someone - anyone - publicly thank those folks for their service? No, instead we are taking aim at them (the teachers and parole officers are, after all members of those dastardly public sector unions) in the misguided quest for fiscal responsibility.

There is an interview with Margaret Atwood . . .

Margaret Atwood. Photograph © Lluis Gene / AFP / Getty.

. . . here at The Guardian. In the course of the conversation Atwood nicely notes the central role of creativity and imagination in both art and science. She seems to have a clear-eyed view of political leaders, but it is perplexing to think about the opposition she seems to see between environmentalism and political protections for humans.

"It's become a race against time and we are not doing well. The trouble with politicians [at events like the Copenhagen summit of 2009] is that no one wants to go first, go skinny dipping and take the plunge. Oh, and then you have people arguing about fatuous things like the environment and human rights. Go three days without water and you don't have any human right. Why? Because you're dead. Physics and chemistry are things you just can't negotiate with. These, . . . these are the laws of the physical world."

The opposition cannot be anywhere near that stark, and Atwood herself knows it. Here is her view of the environmental problem:

"We shouldn't be saying 'Save the planet'; we should be saying: 'Save viable conditions in which people can live.' That's what we're dealing with here."

Just so. And the "viable conditions" necessary for human flourishing include matters like robust, enforceable rights and principles, claims that people can make - that they can use - in the face of feckless or predatory political leaders or of exploitative, oppressive political-economic conditions. It seems to me that the task of implementing (institutionalizing) such claims requires just the same sorts of imagination and creativity. Only this time the domain is politics. The fix that Atwood rightly calls for is not, in other words, going to be technological in the narrow sense. We don't need to save "viable conditions," we need to create and sustain them.

Oil from the Air

Oil Spill #10, June 24, 2010. Photograph © Edward Burtynsky.

Oil Spill #13, Mississippi Delta, June 24, 2010.
Photograph © Edward Burtynsky.

Recording Climate Change (2)

Photographs of East Rongbuk Glacier, 1921 (left) versus 2008.
Images © Major E.O. Wheeler, Royal Geographic Society and
David Breashears respectively.

A little over a year ago I put up this post on the transformation of glaciers in the Himalayas under the assault of climate change. At the photo blog at The New York Times you can find this announcement for an exhibition of similar work by David Breashears.

Oh, the Outrage at BP!

I found this entry at Huff Post pretty unenlightening. Why should we be surprised that the Oil Companies put out virtually identical and consistently banal PR about their readiness for this or that emergency? After all, politicians put out virtually identical and consistently banal PR about their various plans and promises. I did find the visuals interesting - oil rigs taking the place of official government buildings (like, say, the U.S. Capitol or the White House or 10 Downing Street or Buckingham Palace or whatever). I also found it a stitch that all the petro companies apparently gave the phone number of a dead man - the same dead man! - as a contact on matters of emergency preparedness. I suppose that gives new meaning to the notion of keeping cool under pressure. Then again, I spent many years in Chicago where, notoriously, the dead have been known to vote.

Drill Baby, Drill? (2)

This is a follow up on my post from a couple days back. Point #1: I lifted the map above from The New York Times it nicely illustrates the calamity being created by a single well. Point #2: when you are told that expanding off-shore drilling will create 'real jobs right here in America' you should reply: 'Yeah, What Kind of Jobs you Talkn' About?' ... You can find a gesture toward an answer here. The analogy to miners in Appalachia is telling - no options, incredibly dangerous work, and parents who really, really don't want their kids to follow in their footsteps.
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P.S.: And before you think 'there goes Jim, that wacky pinko, being alarmist about the environment again,' consider the damage that this 100 mile long slick will do to the economy of the area, which relies on tourism and fishing.

Drill Baby, Drill?

Fire boats try to put out the Deepwater Horizon before it sank.
Photograph © KPA/Zuma/Rex Features.

Does anyone remember the Republicans chanting "Drill Baby, Drill" during the 2008 presidential election campaign? We dodged the McCain/Palin bullet and got a fistful of "hope" instead. Does anyone recall that Obama insists on expanded offshore drilling as a key component of what passes for his energy policy? "Change" anyone? This rig has collapsed into the sea. A dozen or so workers died, many others were injured. The industry is dirty and dangerous and does nothing what-so-ever to wean the U.S. off of fossil fuels. At the moment the well head is pushing in excess of 40,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day. I'd say that Obama's policy is a joke, but that would make light of what is an ongoing calamity.

Expansive and Up-Close, Photographic Environmentalism

I recently confessed to being the owner of an Apple laptop. I therefore found this report on the newly established relationship between Apple and photographer Richard Misrach pretty interesting. Apple has made one of Misrach's remarkable images the default wall paper for their new iPad device. You can find the image here. I guess this makes Misrach's work the visual equivalent of Muzak?

More seriously, Misrach is an environmentalist. Rebecca Solnit has typically smart things to say about the politics of his work in her recent Storming the Gates of Paradise where she suggests of his beautifully expansive landscapes that they "challenged us to feel the conflicts of being fully present in a complicated world." I think she is right in that assessment. The irony, I suppose, is to imagine Ed Burtynsky or Chris Jordan making one of their disconcertingly tightly focused close-ups of discarded high-tech devices only this time using defunct iPads.