Tag Archives: tar sands

At RCNJ on 12/11 Gas Infrastructure & Its Adverse Impacts: Implications for Communities across the Region

The Masters in Sustainability Studies and Environmental Studies Programs, Ramapo College of New Jersey in conjunction with the NJ Highlands Coalition, NJ Club, ClimateMama, and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network

Cordially Invite You to a Program on Gas Infrastructure and Its Adverse Impacts: Implications for Communities across the Region with Renowned Environmental Scientist and MacArthur Fellow

“>WILMA SUBRA on Gas Infrastructure
Wed 11 Dec 2013, 9:30-11:30am
RCNJ in Friends Hall

Rationale: The Ramapo Region now serves as a confluence for major gas infrastructure projects proliferating throughout the New York/New Jersey area. Beyond the other consequences of new gas pipelines, compressor stations, metering stations and gas- fired power plants, there is the question of whether natural gas is the clean source of energy it is billed as, particularly now that the gas traveling through our area is increasingly sourced from fracking of Marcellus Shale deposits.

Because of its position between the Shale fields of Pennsylvania and northeastern cities, the Ramapo region will likely remain at the crossroads of fracking infrastructure development. With these new drilling techniques and expanding infrastructure requirements we must ask, “How Hazardous is our reliance on Natural Gas?” This is a question of importance to community decision makers, parents, and other residents of the region seeking information upon which to base policy and personal decisions. Yet, there has been a paucity of information available.

Wilma Subra is a highly regarded environmental scientist and MacArthur Genius Award recipient who has devoted herself to approaching such challenging environmental health questions. Owner of a private environmental testing company in Louisiana, she has emerged as a strong voice for environmental justice and precautionary decisions regarding environmental hazards. She has served on numerous EPA commissions relating to environmental health and justice, played an important role in understanding the issues in post-Katrina Louisiana and has emerged as a key voice in cautioning about the proliferation of gas fracking and the resulting infrastructure projects because of potential adverse health effects and community impacts.

Please use this parking permit for the event.

Green Drinks Host Sally Gellert Is Arrested Protesting Oil Pipeline

Sally writes

I was arrested on Friday, 2 September, and it was deeply meaningful – and I hope, will contribute to the defeat of this monument to fossil-fuel addiction. The charge was “failure to obey a legal order”, and it is an infraction, not even a misdemeanor. Basically, the equivalent of a traffic ticket, as the trainers [seasoned activists who prepared protesters for getting arrested] explained it. The service at All Souls [Unitarian Church] may have been cancelled, but there were protests every day at the White House. There may not have been arrests, as diverting park police from hurricane-related duties would not have been a good idea for many reasons, but nobody [none of the protesters] took the day off.

A question: was 15 people really the largest delegation from any single denomination? That seems surprising to me, even as it seems a pretty poor showing for a religious group [Unitarian] that prides itself on its history of social action and commitment to social justice. I challenge us to do better in the 2.5 months that we have remaining in which to influence the president: for the pipeline to be built, he must sign a permit declaring that [the pipeline] is in the national interest. That would mean approving a pipeline to the Gulf of Mexico [where the oil would be refined and then sold to the highest bidder, domestic or foreign]. [On its way it would cross] the Ogallala aquifer, which provides drinking water for millions of people and irrigation for most of our agriculture; [it] would be fed by a technology that removes 2 tons of soil and uses 4-5 barrels of water for every barrel of oil [produced], and [the pipeline would produce] only 3 times the amount of energy expended. By comparison, conventional oil produces 100 times the energy [invested to produce it]. I cannot see how this can be in the interest of anything but profit [to the producers at the expense of extensive exploitation of and damage to natural resources].

[signed] Sally Jane Gellert