Antis File Lawsuit Against Reworked Atlantic Coast Pipe Permits
Earlier this week we brought you the good news that the forces of good have overcome the forces of evil–evil being the Sierra Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) and their mission to stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) from getting built (see Victory! FERC Lifts Stop Work Order for Atlantic Coast Pipeline). The FERC stop-work order came in early August after a federal court pulled permits for approximately 100 miles of ACP in response to a lawsuit filed by the anti-American Sierra Club and a few other groups, including the radical SELC (see Federal Court Stops Works on Some (All?) of Atlantic Coast Pipe). The Clubbers and their cohorts convinced the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn permits granted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the U.S. National Park Service (NPS), granted to ACP to cross the Blue Ridge Parkway. FWS and NPS have reworked and have now reissued their permits, which is why FERC lifted the stop-work order. Predictably, the SELC, on behalf of the Clubbers and a few other far-out leftist groups, has already filed an appeal with the Fourth Circuit to overturn the newly-reworked permits…
Read More “Antis File Lawsuit Against Reworked Atlantic Coast Pipe Permits”
Our friends at the Clear Energy Alliance have just released a new MUST-SEE video (scroll down to view it). The video, titled “The Cause,” is a spoof on the Wizard of Oz. You know, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” The new video pulls the curtain back to reveal who has been funding Big Green lawsuits, studies and propaganda to convince the general public that mankind is causing catastrophic global warming. The video uses research published earlier this year that exposes 19 major foundations that are colluding together to push global warming hysteria here in the U.S. The four-minute video is enlightening. So too is the study. We have both for you below…
In 2016, Philadelphia’s SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) announced plans to build a Marcellus gas-powered electric plant to provide electricity to SEPTA’s northern Regional Rail lines and a bus garage (see 
The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled that yet another ballot measure backed by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in Columbus, OH, a measure meant to ban fracking to send a “you’re not welcome” message to Utica drillers, is in fact illegal and will not appear on the November ballot. In July we told you about a group of anti-fossil fuel nutters, backed by CELDF, making a run at implementing an illegal frack ban in Columbus, OH (see 
From 2008 to 2016, liberal foundations forked over $3.7 billion (!) to rabid anti-fossil fuel groups. Much of that money went into suing fossil fuel companies (and the government), attempting to outlaw fracking and the extraction of oil, gas and coal. The money is given to groups like THE Delaware Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, the Sierra Club and other odious bottom feeders. The media would have you believe it’s David vs. Goliath–David being these innocent little green groups, Goliath is Big Oil. It’s actually the opposite. We are fighting against a well-organized, well-funded campaign to end the use of fossil fuels. And now, finally, we have a tool to identify who is behind all that money. A new website called 
Seven radical green groups–Sierra Club, Clean Air Council (CAC), FracTracker Alliance, Earthworks, PennFuture, Breathe Project, Environmental Integrity Project–sent a protest letter last week to the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection objecting to a request by Shell that its 97-mile Falcon Ethane Pipeline be granted certain air permit exemptions. Shell is asking the DEP to determine whether or not (hopefully not) any emissions coming from the pipeline would be “minor sources,” exempting the pipeline from certain permits. The rads are telling the DEP to deny that request, in an attempt to slow or even stop the project. With no ethane, Shell’s $6 billion cracker plant, currently under construction, can’t begin operation. Will the DEP do the right thing and ignore these nutters?…
We have to confess we have a lot in common, philosophically, with Libertarians. We like the philosophy of live and let live–as long as what you do (or what I do) doesn’t hurt the other person, nobody has a right to stop you (or me) from doing it. But the Libertarian philosophy does have its quirks–things we don’t agree with. Sometimes wacky. Like support for legalizing pot smoking. Can you imagine a bunch of potheads driving down our roads? We don’t care if they want to stone themselves into oblivion in the privacy of their own homes–but we do have public safety concerns. A fine line/balance between the public good and private freedom. Here’s another case of public good vs. private freedom: pipelines. We’ve always had a tough time with the use of eminent domain for pipelines. But in the end, the greater public good is served by running pipelines, and if there’s one or two landowners here and there who refuse to deal, eminent domain is regrettably, sometimes necessary. As a last resort. The Niskanen Center, a “right-leaning” Libertarian think tank, has just entered the pipeline debate by filing a “friend of the court” brief with U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, siding with radical anti-fossil fuelers against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The Niskanen Center is understandably concerned about landowners’ property rights being infringed. Unfortunately, they’ve allowed themselves to be used by antis, people whose political philosophy is closer to Mao Tse Tung (Communist) than it is to freedom for everyone. How could the Niskanen Center be so easily duped? We think we know. They believe in the fairy tale of man-made global warming, which appears to color their view of freedom. If they can fall for that one, they’ll fall for anything…
Warning: Knowledge of what’s happening in the offices of governors like Jerry Brown (California) and Andrew Cuomo (New York), and their attorney generals, will make you want to throw up–at the overt corruption. A pair of research reports from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) shines a very bright light on what is major corruption at the highest levels of our state governments. One report, titled “Law Enforcement for Rent: How Special Interests Fund Climate Policy through State Attorneys General” (full copy below) details how Democrat Attorney Generals in various states, including New York and Maryland, are selling access to their offices to Big Green groups. AGs can only make so much mischief. They have budgets that control how many staffers they can hire. In order to circumvent those hiring limits, Big Green groups are funding lawyers and assistants to help AGs sue fossil fuel companies–they work right in the AG’s office! If it’s not outright illegal, it’s certainly unethical. State legislatures need to pass laws now to prevent this kind of abuse of our legal system to favor one side over another. The law is supposed to be blind and impartial, not weighted against one side or the other. If that weren’t bad enough, CEI published a second study titled “Government for Rent: How Special Interests Finance Governors to Pursue Their Climate Policy Agenda” (full copy below) showing how some Democrat governors are doing the same thing–allowing outside, paid-by-Big-Green staffers to be added to their operations in an attempt to slander and smear fossil fuel companies. Andrew Cuomo’s office is one of the offenders. THIS MUST STOP…
This is getting really old. Every few years lying antis recycle the same debunked meme that “frackers” are trying to hide the identity of big, bad nasty chemicals they use to extract shale gas. The implication is those chemicals will kill you. And if you only knew what those chemicals were, why, you’d be outraged! And demand an end to all fracking. Problem is, it’s a total lie. Chemicals are FULLY reported by drillers, for every single well they drill. But that doesn’t stop antis repeating the same meme every few years. It’s just popped up again, in Pennsylvania. The Partnership for Policy Integrity, a shell/front group for Big Green radicals, has just released a totally fictional “report” that supposedly proves drillers in PA are hiding “secret chemicals” from the public. The report, which is titled “Keystone Secrets: Records Show Widespread Use of Secret Fracking Chemicals is a Looming Risk for Delaware River Basin, Pennsylvania Communities” (full copy below), is total BS. Made up. Lies. And yet mainstream news sources pick it up and run with it, believing and spreading the lies…
While we’re not a climate science web site, this misguided notion that mankind is causing the earth to catastrophically warm up is at the heart of irrational fossil fuel hatred–and motivates otherwise smart people into becoming bumbling fools, willing to do extraordinarily stupid things. Take, for example, the governors of 17 states–14 Democrats and three Democrat-lites (RINOs)–who recently signed a declaration to severely disadvantage their own states with so-called environmental measures that will supposedly save Mom Earth (and defeat Donald Trump, of course). These are all people who have drunk deeply from the Obama Kool Aid. Trump can’t do a single, solitary thing to revise, change, tweak or relax the massive over-regulation done by Obama, or “It’s the end of the world. We’re killing mankind. It’s an emergency. We must save the world from The Donald.” It’s freaking bizarre to watch. These states, already on the decline, will further decline economically while watching their neighbors do better. These states, all 17 of them, are being disadvantaged by the actions of their chief executives. We have the list below…
Is there any fixing stupid? We suppose not. So-called environmentalists are opposing a plan by the University of Michigan to update the main campus’ Central Power Plant with a natural-gas fired turbine to produce electricity for the Central and Medical Campus buildings. By doing so, the University will leapfrog to achieving 50% of its goal to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2025 (seven short years from now). Put another way, by building this gas turbine and using the electricity it generates, the University of Michigan will be halfway to their emissions reductions goals. One turbine. Clean natural gas. It’s a win/win all the way around. Yet environuts oppose the plan because it is a “long-term investment in fossil fuels.” Again we ask, is there any fixing stupid?…
The Sisters of the Corn (our name for the a group of nuns in Lancaster County, PA) are not giving up their wildly hypocritical lawsuit against Williams for building the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline across their property. The good sisters are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, claiming infringement of religious freedom. The nuns use natural gas to heat an old folks home they operate, yet are trying to block the Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline from traversing that very same property. We don’t know how they justify using natural gas yet actively try to block a pipeline that delivers it. The nuns, with the help of local anti group Lancaster Against Pipelines, stuck a garden trellis and a few wooden park benches in the middle of a corn field owned by the nuns (leased to a local farmer) directly in the path of the pipeline, declaring the site a “chapel.” Hence our attempt at humor, calling them “Sisters of the Corn.” The sisters then sued to block the pipeline based on religious grounds (see 
Antis on the Jessup (near Scranton, PA) Town Council delight in grilling officials from the Lackawanna Energy Center (LEC) at each monthly board meeting. LEC is a 1,480 megawatt, $1 billion Marcellus gas-fired electric plant still under construction, now 97% complete. When the plant is done it will be Pennsylvania’s largest natural gas-fired electric generating plant. The plant is being built in three trains or units. The first train/unit was done and online producing electricity since June–despite the efforts of a local group of antis who seized power of the local town board last November (see 
Liberal Democrat State Rep. Glenn Holmes (from Girard, Trumbull County, OH) is attempting to use a hammer to kill a fly. That is, he’s floating House Bill 723 to cap the number of injection wells at 23 per county, in an attempt to block a new injection well from getting built in Hubbard Township. Currently Trumbull County has 17 live and functioning wastewater injection wells. Five more are currently under construction. If the bill passes, it would prevent a newly-proposed well in Hubbard from getting built. Come here fly, see this hammer? Instead of debating the merits (or lack thereof) of the single well in Hubbard, how many wells are too many in Trumbull County, Holmes wants to limit injection wells everywhere in the state as his preferred solution. Right now Trumbull and Ashtabula counties are tied for the top spot with 17 active injection wells each. Nearby Portgage and Stark counties both have 16 injection wells. Meigs County, in southeast Ohio, has 14 active injection wells. Here’s the latest Democrat shenanigan aimed at stifling the Utica (and Marcellus) industry in Ohio…
RINO (Republican In Name Only) Pennsylvania House of Representatives member Chris Quinn, from the Philadelphia area, introduced House Resolution 1034 last Wednesday. The resolution instructs the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the PA Public Utility Commission (PUC) to prepare a “comprehensive risk assessment of the Mariner East 2 [ME2] Pipeline.” Even though ME2 is 99% built and will soon go online. The resolution, which if passed doesn’t have any practical effect since it’s not a law, is actually an exercise in political derrière covering. What if the DEP and PUC performed such a risk assessment, and what if the report they issued found there are some risks associated with ME2 (as there are will any/all pipeline projects, roads, electric lines, stepping outside your door, etc.)? What then? The pipeline isn’t going away. It’s still going to be used, now that it’s built. Such is how the game is played by political swamp dwellers. Quinn also says he’s about to introduce House Bill (HB) 2609 requiring the state Attorney General to draft a landowner “bill of rights”–issued to landowners who may be subject to eminent domain for pipelines. Can’t wait to see what that bill says…