Trans-Pacific Partnership | The Sierra Club is deeply concerned about the lack of transparency around the TPP and the deal's environmental implications.

The United States recently struck an expansive free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Eventually, every Pacific Rim nation may be included.

The Sierra Club is deeply concerned about the lack of transparency around the TPP and the deal's environmental implications. Here's why:

• Extreme Secrecy. The TPP negotiations took place in extreme secrecy. Still no drafts of TPP texts have been released. And public input has been drowned out by dominant corporate input; more than 600 corporate advisors have actively worked to shape the agreement while the public is being kept in the dark. 

• Threat to Forests, Wildlife, and Fish. While the TPP environment chapter should set strong and binding rules to address conservation challenges like illegal timber and wildlife trade, its rules will likely be too weak to have an impact on the ground and are unlikely to be enforced, rendering the chapter essentially meaningless. Read more here.

• Unfettered Rights to Corporations. The TPP will include provisions that give corporations the right to sue a government for unlimited cash compensation -- in private and non-transparent tribunals -- over nearly any law or policy that a corporation alleges will reduce its profits. Using similar rules in other free trade agreements, corporations such as Exxon Mobil and Dow Chemical have launched over 600 cases against more than 100 governments. Dozens of cases attack common-sense environmental laws and regulations, such as regulations to protect communities and the environment from harmful chemicals or mining practices. Read more here about how harmful investment rules included in other trade pacts have led to the attack of climate and environmental policies.

• Increase in Dirty Fracking. The TPP may allow for significantly increased exports of liquefied natural gas without the careful study or adequate protections necessary to safeguard the American public. This would mean an increase of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the dirty and violent process that dislodges gas deposits from shale rock formations. It would also likely cause an increase in natural gas and electricity prices, impacting consumers, manufacturers, workers, and increasing the use of dirty coal power. Read our factsheet on the TPP and natural gas exports here!

Learn more...

Trans-Pacific Partnership | Sierra Club

Lawsuit Seeks to Halt Offshore Fracking in California

For Immediate Release, February 19, 2015

Contact: Patrick Sullivan, (415) 517-9364, psullivan@biologicaldiversity.org   

Legal Action Could Also Affect Federally Permitted Fracking in Gulf of Mexico

SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Interior Department today for violating three federal laws by rubberstamping offshore fracking off California’s coast without analyzing fracking pollution’s threats to ocean ecosystems, coastal communities and marine wildlife, including sea otters, fish, sea turtles and whales.

Oil companies have fracked more than 200 wells in state and federal waters off California’s coast; today’s suit challenges the federal government for its permitting role. Offshore fracking blasts huge amounts of water mixed with dangerous chemicals into the earth, under extremely high pressure, to crack rock formations beneath the ocean floor.

The oil industry has federal permission to dump more than 9 billion gallons of wastewater, including chemical-laden fracking fluid, into the ocean off California’s coast every year.

“Every offshore frack increases the threat to our fragile ocean ecosystems,” said Miyoko Sakashita, an attorney and director of the Center’s oceans program. “The Interior Department is turning a blind eye while oil companies frack wells and dump chemicals into our oceans. If the federal government doesn’t halt this inherently dangerous practice, fracking chemicals or a disastrous oil spill could wreak havoc on marine wildlife and coastal communities.”

The Center’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in California, seeks to prohibit the federal government from issuing permits allowing fracking until it complies with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Coastal Zone Management Act.

The Center’s legal complaint points out that the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement have developed “a pattern and practice of rubberstamping permits to frack with no analysis of the environmental impacts, no determination of whether such activities are consistent with the plans governing oil development and production in the Pacific Region or California’s Coastal Management Program, and no public involvement.”

The federal government has also given oil companies permission to frack at least 100 wells in the Gulf of Mexico, including in the vicinity of the disastrous Deepwater Horizon spill. They’re also dumping vast quantities of wastewater into the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, fracking in the Gulf of Mexico has never had meaningful environmental review. The lawsuit in California could affect oversight of all federally permitted offshore fracking.

Fracking chemicals threaten water quality along both coasts. Dangerously high levels of cancer-causing benzene and chromium-6 are common in fracking flowback fluid from onshore wells in California, according to a recent Center analysis of tests conducted by oil companies. At least 10 fracking chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking in California could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including sea otters and fish, Center scientists have found.

“Fracking has caused terrible damage on land, and it clearly has no place in our oceans,” Sakashita said. “If federal officials follow the law and take a hard look at the risks, they’ll have to conclude that offshore fracking is far too big of a gamble with our oceans’ life-support systems.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 825,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/fracking-02-19-2015.html

Benny Zable - activist performance artist [FOTOS]

photo by Wanagi Zable-Andrews, who posts: "I'm honoured to have been accepted into the semi finals of the #moranprize with this photo of #bennyzable at the #bentleyblockade"

from Australia to New York City...

  

...and cheers to Kezia Geddes, who came up with the idea and got this exhibition Protest Songs: Artful Actions together. — at Lismore Regional Gallery.

photos are from Benny's facebook

facebook.com/benny.zable

• photos by/via Indigo Bay Photography, Wanagi Zable-Andrews, Megan Jack, Harsha Prabhu, D'un Renard, Sandra Nilsen, Scott Vidler, Hisashi Isogai, Kate Ausburn, Carly Woodstock, Tedi Davis, Greg Wilson, Andrea Kalkstein Lieberman, Diane Beeny

• with OWLS, Ena Okino, Pete Seeger 

• at Nimbin Enviro Center, People's Climate March (NYC), first anniversary of the Fukushima disaster via The Greens NSW, Lizard's Revenge, shut indian point (NRC?), #floodwallstreet, Woodstock Museum, #BentleyBlockade, Lismore Regional Gallery

Inspector General Finds EPA Justified in Intervening to Protect Drinking Water from Fracking | EcoWatch

 December 24, 2013

Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Inspector General found EPA Region 6 was justified in legally intervening to protect Parker County, TX residents’ drinking water from drilling impacts. At Sen. Inhofe’s (R-OK) request, the Inspector General investigated to determine if Region 6’s intervention against Range Resources was due to political influence by the Obama administration.

Steve Lipsky, who lives near a fracking operation in Weatherford, TX with his flammable water. Photo credit: Gasland Part II.

“The EPA’s internal watchdog has confirmed that the EPA was justified in stepping in to protect residents who were and still are in imminent danger,” said Sharon Wilson, Gulf regional organizer of Earthworks. “Now we need an investigation as to whether political corruption caused EPA to withdraw that protection.”

The EPA invoked its power to protect drinking water in 2010, prompting Oklahoma Sen. Inhofe to request the Inspector General’s investigation in 2011. The EPA withdrew its legal complaint against Range Resources in 2012 despite having a report from an independent scientist showing that a gas well drilled by Range likely polluted nearby water supplies.

The EPA’s withdrawal from Parker County appears to be part of a larger pattern, in which the Obama administration has blocked or abandoned investigations of whether drilling or hydraulic fracturing polluted drinking water. In addition to the case in Parker County, reports in major news outlets indicate that the Obama administration caused the EPA to abandon studies of potential drilling or fracking pollution in Pavillion, WYand Dimock, PA despite evidence of drilling-related harm.

“The Obama administration appears to be more concerned about protecting corporate interests, not the public interest,” said Steve Lipsky, a Weatherford, TX homeowner who sued Range Resources after the EPA named the company the party responsible for contaminating his drinking water well. “President Obama promised that hydraulic fracturing would occur safely. With this IG report, it now seems clear that he is determined to squash any evidence to the contrary.”

Just prior to the release of the Inspector General report, the Texas Railroad Commission (regulator of oil and gas, not railroads) opened an investigation into the case. The EPA intervened in 2010 to protect area drinking water only after the commission refused to do so. The Commission’s new investigation prevents the EPA from legally intervening now as it did in 2010.

“Regulators shouldn’t have to be pressured into doing their job to protect people like me from drilling impacts,” said Shelly Perdue, a Parker County resident with drilling-polluted drinking water. “If what has happened to me is happening to others, I completely understand why communities across the country are voting to ban fracking and drilling.”

“Releasing this report at noon on Christmas Eve shows the Obama administration is obviously embarrassed by its findings,” said Earthworks energy program director Bruce Baizel. “As they should be. The withdrawal of Obama’s EPA is an abject failure of its mission to protect Americans’ health and environment.”

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.

Inspector General Finds EPA Justified in Intervening to Protect Drinking Water from Fracking | EcoWatch

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California -

#NoFracking #FRACKING :: Gov. Brown, Be a true climate champ: Ban Fracking Now.

Jerry Brown talks a big game on #climate, but actions speak louder than words. Take action to join our latest campaign: www.BigOilBrown.org

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> Timeline Photos - Oil Change International

Californians Against Fracking | The statewide coalition to ban fracking in California.