How the TPP could increase fracking
In order for the United States to export natural gas to another country, the Department of Energy (DOE) must first conduct a public analysis to determine whether those exports are consistent with the public interest. This analysis is critical to understanding the environmental and economic impacts associated with natural gas exports and to building a deliberate energy policy that protects the interests of the American public.
Unfortunately, the DOE loses its authority to regulate exports of natural gas to countries with which the United States has a free trade agreement that includes so-called ―national treatment for trade in gas. The TPP, therefore, would mean automatic approval of LNG export permits—without any review or analysis—to TPP countries. And many TPP countries would likely be quite interested in importing LNG from the United States. This is particularly true of Japan—the word’s single largest LNG importer—which is one of the 12 TPP countries.
Already, the DOE is considering applications to export approximately 45% of the total U.S. domestic gas production. Exporting this volume of U.S. LNG would in turn mean increased 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—up to three times their current price by some estimates—impacting consumers, manufacturers, and workers, while increasing the use of dirty coal power.
There would be a huuuuuuuge and disturbing environmental impact:
Environmental impacts of natural gas exports
Exporting this volume of U.S. LNG would in turn mean increased 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—up to three times their current price by some estimates—impacting consumers, manufacturers, and workers, while increasing the use of dirty coal power. Exporting natural gas is polluting at every stage of its life cycle. The process begins with extracting the gas, the vast majority of which will come from fracking. A dangerous and intrusive process, fracking involves pumping millions of gallons of a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals underground to create pressure which forces out natural gas.1 The fracking process can spew large amounts of hazardous, smog-forming, and climate-disrupting air pollutants into our air, and is also linked to serious threats to our water supply.
Fracking operations also pollute and fragment forests, parks, and communities across the country as they spread across the landscape.
But the environmental impacts associated with natural gas exports don’t stop here.
please continue reading at the link below:
www.sierraclub.org/…
President Obama, I voted for you twice. I volunteered for you and caucused for you in Houston where I was a Democratic precinct chair and election judge at the time.
I trusted you.
A majority of Americans, 51%, now oppose fracking, up from 40% a year ago.
www.gallup.com/…
President Obama, you and the Congress are not paying attention to your constituency:
As of January 16, 2015:
Poll: Voters Want Pretty Much The Opposite Of What Congress Is Doing
A majority of U.S. voters think the government should be advancing policies that promote the growth of renewable energy, protect public lands, and strengthen protections against pollution of drinking water and air, according to a poll released Thursday by the Center for American Progress.
Conducted by national research firm Hart Research Associates, the poll of 1,101 American voters found that 72 percent strongly support more pollution controls, 70 percent strongly support protecting public lands like monuments and wildlife refuge areas, and 66 percent support the expansion of wind, solar, and renewable energy development. Sixty percent of voters surveyed also said they strongly supported setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — a number that rose to 82 percent when including voters who said they somewhat support that proposal.
As noted by the Center in its press release accompanying the survey results, these opinions differ greatly from the policies being proposed and advanced by the Republican leaders of the new 114th Congress. Those include efforts to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed limits on greenhouse gases from power plants; efforts to increase the amount of Canadian tar sands oil entering the United States via approval of the Keystone XL pipeline; and a bill to lengthen and complicatethe process for designating national monuments.
Emily Atkin
thinkprogress.org/…
I know that your administration has paid some attention to renewable projects, but I’m not sure you are spending taxpayer money wisely.
For example, the Department of Energy provided $1.6 billion in loan guarantees for a $2.2 billion estimated cost to the huuuuuge Ivanpah Solar Energy Power Plant near the Mojave desert on 4000 acres that was developed by Brightsource and Bechtel.
The project has also received an investment of $168 million from Google,[28] but in November 2011, Google announced that they would no longer invest in CSP due to the rapid price decline of photovoltaic systems, and stopped its research on the project.[29][30][10]
Why didn’t you, instead, consider loans to homeowners to install solar panels that don’t need natural gas to start them up and don’t emit tons of carbon dioxide like this monster Ivanpah Plant?
In 2014, the plant burned 867,740 million BTU of natural gas emitting 46,084 metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is nearly twice the pollution threshold at which power plants and factories in California are required to participate in the state’s cap and tradeprogram to reduce carbon emissions.[35]
It seems like this too big to fail plant is having problems:
In November 2014, Associated Press reported that the plant was producing only "about half of its expected annual output". The California Energy Commission issued a statement blaming this on "clouds, jet contrails and weather".[13] Performance improved considerably in 2015 — to about 650 GW·h, but ownership partner NRG Energy said in its November quarterly report that Ivanpah would likely not meet its contractual obligations to provide power to PG&E during the year, raising the risk of default on its Power Purchase Agreement.[14
In June 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported: "15 months after starting up, the plant is producing just 40% of [its expected more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity each year], according to data from the U.S. Energy Department.[43]"
en.wikipedia.org/...
Solar panels give homeowners some control over their own power source, instead of putting them at the mercy of a Bechtel.
I suspect the taxpayer is on the hook for some portion of this plant given the loan guarantees that were provided by the energy Dept. and I’m a bit distressed to learn how many birds it fries since it’s in their glide path. the workers call these birds “streamers”. Here’s the estimate of how many birds get fried per year:
Annual estimates range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.
www.nbcnews.com/...
Here’s BrightSource’s explanation of their technology:
https://youtu.be/Flg7wT6x8ZQ
President Obama, Wouldn’t it have been cheaper and simpler and more environmentally sound to have helped people add solar panels to their own homes? give ‘em a tax credit or a loan instead of giving $1.6 Billion guaranteed loans to these mega companies?
just saying……...
And now, President Obama, back to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership trade deals that you are working so hard to push past the American people, even though one of our most trusted environmental organisations, the Sierra Club, is warning us that hidden away in the deal, are rules that may unleash huuuuuge increases in our fracking for export to Asia.
But that’s not the only consideration that will impact peoples’ lives. It is terrible to learn that the coup in process in Brazil — a coup against the current president, a woman who was a torture victim of the last coup in Brazil in 1964 that the U.S. also helped plan and execute and that lasted 21 years — this coup has to do with these trade deals too.
Hillary Clinton and The Neoliberal Agenda in Latin America
There is no doubt that one of the targets in Latin America remains raw materials and commodities: both Brazil and Argentina are recognized as major sources for energy and other commodities, while Venezuela remains one of the world’s leading oil producers. So from that perspective alone, these countries are obviously highly prized by the Wall Street jackals. But it goes much deeper than that as Latin America is now seen as a focal point of the broader drive to extend U.S.-Wall Street-London hegemony both economically and politically.
Perhaps the centerpieces of this push are the much-discussed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which would create a corporate supranational trade infrastructure that would essentially subordinate individual nations to the hegemony of corporations and capital. Naturally, the left-progressive forces in Latin America, and their allies, have been the major stumbling block to implementing the TPP and TTIP. But that is now set to change.
Macri has signaled his desire to use Mercosur as a vehicle for entering into TTIP, the massive free trade agreement that would open up participants to European and U.S. capital. He has equally indicated his desire to move closer to the Pacific Alliance countries, three of which (Chile, Peru, and Mexico) are already on board with the TPP. Such moves are made possible by two important factors.
First is the removal of the Rousseff government which, though willing to engage in dialogue on TTIP, has been unwilling to subordinate itself to the interests of Washington and London capital.
Second is the looming election of Hillary Clinton, who remains the principal representative of Wall Street in the U.S. presidential race. Though herlong-standing ties to Goldman-Sachs and other powerful banks are well documented, her reverence for free trade in the service of U.S. policy, despite her vacuous campaign rhetoric, is equally well known.
Clinton unabashedly lied during Democratic national debates on the issue of the TPP, saying that she now opposes it, despite having been in favor of it as late as 2012 while Secretary of State when Clinton saidthe TPP “sets the gold standard in trade agreements.” While she now masquerades as a protectionist opposing a deal that would be bad for working people, she has demonstrated her unflagging support for this type of so called free trade in the past.
Conversely Donald Trump has actually indicated his opposition to the TPP,
Perhaps this is why Charles Koch, of the infamous Koch Brothers right wing billionaire tag team, recently admitted that he might support Hillary Clinton in the face of a Donald Trump nomination.
www.counterpunch.org/…
Glenn Greenwald explains what’s going on in Brazil. Why a woman who is president and who was tortured in prison during the 1960’s the last time this country meddled on behalf of the big banks and multinational “jackals” and fomented a coup there, is now being threatened not because she is not willing to discuss the (TPP) — sorry this should have been TTIP — Transatlantic Trade Investment Partnership -— but because she does not wish to abdicate her government to the corporations that intend to move in and exploit the natural resources and the people of Brazil if the trade deal that impacts them (TTIP) is signed.
www.democracynow.org/…
shades of Honduras 2009:
www.dailykos.com/…
President Obama. Please. this is not what I expected from you. And, by the way, is this — the furtherance of the TPP, the real reason that you have put your finger on the scale for Secretary Clinton in the Democratic primary?
Are you really willing to throw the people of this country and the people of Brazil under the bus for the transnationals?
For Fracking
For the TPP
For the TTIP