Dear Senator Edwards & the entire Western MD Delegation*:
For my framing of the issues before us with Fracking in Western, MD, which should be banned statewide in Annapolis this coming session, I keep going back to Governor Hogan’s Inaugural and State of the State addresses from early 2015.
If it is true that Maryland is a “Middle Temperament State,” and that Governor Hogan wants to govern that way, then he ought to ban fracking for good. Fracking isn’t a “Middle Temperament” process. It originated in the volcanic process called “creative destruction,” the same one that brought us mortgage backed derivatives, a product of the private sector, governmental and academic research and science, which is to say, under today’s reigning philosophy of Neoliberalism, it is dominated by the private sector, not the government or unpurchased science driven research, much less the wishes of citizens. In its nature it is closer to a violent water boarding of nature, and with toxic fluids, not just water, the underground equivalent of mountain top removal in West Virginia.
Fracking is promoted to citizens with a standing which surely Tom Paine would recognize as resembling the old “divine right” of monarchs, whether in the faux constitutional form of George III or the fiats of Louis XVI. How dare we question what the private sector of oil and gas promotes?
Their divine right and anti-democratic posture is exemplified by their out-of-the gate exemptions in 2005 for fracking from national environmental laws and their gagging of citizens’ right to know what is in their toxic injections, and even as they were about to lose jury trials in PA and Texas this year, their lawyers were busy binding and gagging compensated victims of their toxicity with “non-disclosure agreements.”
We opponents of fracking have watched what has unfolded in West Virginia and Pennsylvania: regulatory capture, the highest environmental jobs going to industry friendly anti-regulatory types. Citizens and journalists have had to don miner’s lamps and take up picks and shovels to get at the truths of the impacts from fracking buried by regulators who have turned their back upon citizens’ pleas. And we have watched at the national level as time and time again EPA has let science be captured by industry funded studies or diverted to industry captured state level “regulators.”
We have seen this scenerio before: in the historic struggles of citizens to uncover the truth about pesticides, smoking, asbestos, endocrine disruptors, and most recently, Round-up.
If Western Maryland residents want to preserve their shared vision of the mountain rural, then join us in asking our delegation to ban fracking because it will surely destroy the vistas and the very environmental basis of what we say we cherish.
The idea that the government of Larry Hogan, who said in his Inaugural Speech on January 21, 2015, that “we must get the state government off our backs, and out of our pockets, so that we can grow the private sector” is going to be a tough regulator of one of the most powerful private sector industries in the world is unbelievable - no more believable than the state of Maryland’s historically futile gestures to control the chicken manure from Purdue and other big chicken processors, despite everyone’s professed love for the Chesapeake Bay.
And fracking, by its very toxic and explosive nature, its 24/7 industrial intensity, cannot be regulated even by better, good faith attempts – which is far from what has unfolded nationally or next door to us over the past seven years.
I will close with an observation directed to our delegation’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge the changing facts on the ground: citizens’ opinions here about fracking and also the changing science on methane, which has abolished natural gas’ claim to be the bridge to the alternative fuel future. Mrs. Clinton might also have paid attention to this shift, but didn’t. The great economist John Maynard Keynes was allegedly asked why he had changed his position on a major issue of the day in the economically catastrophic 1930’s. His reply was that “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?”
I hope that’s what our delegation does as well, instead of continuing to dwell in the land of magical thinking that is the Republican Right of today, traditional and alt, in regards to economics and the science of global warming.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
billofrights
Frostburg, MD
* That delegation is as follows: Senator George C. Edwards, District 1: 301-722-4780;410-841-3565; george.edwards@senate.state.md.us; Wendell R. Beitzel, District 1A (Garrett and Allegany Counties);301-387-6950;410-841-3435; wendell.beitzel@house.state.md.us; Jason C. Buckel, District 1B (Allegany County);301-858-3404;410-841-3404;Jason.Buckel@house.state.md.us; Mike McKay, District 1C (Allegany and Washington Counties); 301-858-3321;410-841-3321;Mike.McKay@house.state.md.us
PS So far, the minds of the Western Maryland delegation have not changed: they all support fracking, which is why I urge you, if you live in the region, to call or Email to let them know how you feel. And here’s another legislative hurdle: corporate Democrats in Annapolis, hot off the press: www.corporatecrimereporter.com/… an insight into Senate President Mike Miller (the permanent Maryland Governor — didn’t you know we had two — the other ones just rotate office) and Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Joan Carter Conway from Baltimore. Here’s the contact points: Mike Miller, District 27 (Prince George’s, Charles and Calvert Counties);410-841-3700;301-868-6931;thomas.v.mike.miller@senate.state.md.us; Senator Joan Carter Conway, District 43 (Baltimore City); 410-841-3145;joan.carter.conway@senate.state.md.us