Short version: …I get the general impression that the dispute is not going to be the same high-energy affair that it is, elsewhere. Neither side’s politicians really want to drill down too deep on this one; they’d rather find other flash points on energy policy where pressure can be more profitably applied. Honestly, the poltiical environment in Maryland isn’t really friendly for any sort of massive fracking dispute.
Moe Lane Continue reading My Watchdog.com post on Maryland fracking is up.
Call this a buried lede:
Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo, D-Montgomery, is sponsoring the Protect Our Health and Communities Bill that would delay hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Western Maryland for the next eight years in order to provide more time to investigate health and environmental ramifications.
Eight years. How droll.
Moe Lane
PS: I dunno if the legislature can override Hogan’s inevitable veto… :click click click: …Maybe? Ask me again after we see how far this bill gets.
The New York Times must not be feeling well: they usually just blurt out inconvenient truths about Democratic politicians like this. Today’s example: millionaire Congressman Jared Polis (D, Colorado) and his hatred of cheap, clean energy:
Mr. Polis became a self-proclaimed poster boy against fracking last year when a red-and-white drilling rig sprouted near his weekend home in Weld County…
Yes, God forbid that our self-proclaimed ruling class ever see their part of the skyline sacrificed for such a trivial thing as energy independence and clean power*. That’s for the peons who aren’t enlightened enough to be rich Democratic liberals.
Via
The coalition is hydraulically fracturing. MT @jdickerson: Battle Over Fracking Poses Threat to Colorado Democrats. http://t.co/jnYZHCSdVg
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) June 10, 2014
Moe Lane
*Remember when the left liked natural gas? Yeah, turned out that was just pillow talk, baby. As usual.
PS: While I understand that hydraulic fracking is a matter of some theological urgency to certain percentages of the population, I would appreciate it if the people who are so insistent about keeping other people’s religious sensibilities out of the public debate would exercise similar restraint when it comes to their own.
(Via Hot Air Headlines) I know, I know. This news makes you weep.
Not so long ago enviros endorsed natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal or oil. Most limited themselves to calling for “better” industry practices, or to solely opposing exports. But as the gas rush has grown, threatening their solar-and-windmill nirvana, greens now openly decry drilling, chiding Mr. Obama for his “support for hydraulic fracturing” and calling on him to keep “our nation’s fossil fuel reserves in the ground.” The letter was signed by Bill McKibben, the director of the anti-Keystone outfit 350.org, as well as directors of nearly every major green shop in the country—the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, CREDO and Earthjustice.
This new demand could not come at a more awkward time for the party. Under fire for ObamaCare and the economy, scores of vulnerable Democrats are rushing to natural gas and drilling as political safe harbors. Supporting fracking allows them to claim they are in favor of more jobs, cheaper energy and rising incomes. Supporting natural-gas exports allows them to look responsive to the Ukraine crisis, or at least more responsive than their unpopular president. It helps, too, that this puts them on the same page as the significant majority of Americans who support more drilling (and pipelines).
Continue reading Green movement ready to go to war on Democrats over… natural gas?
Works like this: George Soros bought into Pioneer Natural Resources.
Billionaire fund manager George Soros now owns 964,000 shares of Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE: PXD), one of the biggest players in the Texas Permian Basin.
Soros’s stake is worth about $180 million.
[snip]
Pioneer also has assets in the West Texas Spraberry Wolfcamp. The company estimates Wolfcamp holds 50 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil.
Pioneer Natural Resources is happy to frack: Continue reading Do you take George Soros’s money? Congratulations: you’re pro-fracking!
Documentary filmmaker and activist Josh Fox has a warning for Washington policymakers: You’ll face “political consequences” if you ignore the anti-fracking movement.
You will not face political consequences if you ignore the anti-fracking movement. The administration had to pick which bone to throw to the deep ecologist religious fanatics: they could either hassle hydraulic fracking, or yjr Keystone pipeline. It wasn’t a hard call: the administration chose Keystone. You see, natural gas is ‘green’ energy in the orthodox liberal canon, so Fox’s band of schismatics are in fact also a bunch of unhelpful heretics who are dangerously close to being formally declared to be obdurate in their error. Should that happen… well, an auto-de-fe would probably be too ironic, all things considered. But certainly loud anti-frackers will be kept from all the good policy groups and parties.
Hey, it’s an improvement from the European Witch Craze.
Via don’t remember, sorry. Might have been an email.
Moe Lane
You knew that at some point, the Democrats with constituents who would benefit from the jobs that can be created through fracking — i.e., blue-collar voters and their representatives — and the Democrats who see fracking as a chainsaw massacre of Gaia’s baby seals would conflict. Democrats have largely papered over these differences, but you can only kick the can down the road so many times.
Now that simmering dispute is boiling over . . . in Pennsylvania.
Just in time for the midterm election cycle, too. …Yeah, I know: not entirely positive, for reasons that I will not get into until, oh, December of 2014.
Saw that in a comment to this piece, which is a politely horrified reaction to anti-fracking agitprop trying to convince Manhattan hipsters that FRACKED GAS!!!!! is about to blow up Greenwich Village. Oh, and RADON RADON RADON. The poor guy writing said horrified reaction then attempted to point out the obvious flaws in said agitprop… and, of course, got screamed at in comments by various sectarian fanatics*.
:pause:
Look, I honestly don’t mind people allowing their religious sensibilities to inform their policy positions, but I must insist that radical environmentalists stop pretending that their frankly unsophisticated, if not actually cartoonish, belief structure is some sort of hyper-scientific Absolute Truth. Or if they can’t do that, then they can at least stop trying to make the rest of us go along with the joke.
Moe Lane
PS: I wait, with no little trepidation, for the day that somebody goes out in public and blames natural gas fracking on the International Zionist Conspiracy.
*To be fair: there were sane people in the comments there, too. Hence the post, in fact.
There comes a time when it’s smart to throw in your cards. This would be one of those times. 66/23 for it, overall, and just look at the crosstabs:
Support for the pipeline spans most demographic and partisan groups. Substantial majorities of Republicans (82%) and independents (70%) favor building the Keystone XL pipeline, as do 54% of Democrats. But there is a division among Democrats: 60% of the party’s conservatives and moderates support building the pipeline, compared with just 42% of liberal Democrats.
The 42/48 split among liberal Democrats on the question of Keystone is actually be the one that should really worry Barack Obama and the other Luddites running the Democratic party, though. Being against Keystone isn’t just fringe; it’s perilously close to being a fringe position even among the existing fringe. Mind you, if the Democrats absolutely want to take a cordially hated anti-energy position through at least two, and probably four, more gas hikes, I can live with that. After all, there’s an election going on next year, and every little bit helps.
Via Hot Air.
Moe Lane
PS: For the record, Pew: a 48/38 split on whether fracking is a good idea is not a “mixed opinion:” it’s “a double digit lead favoring fracking.” Again: for the record.
Background here: essentially, Perdue vetoed a bill permitting fracking in North Carolina, and the legislature overruled it. Anyway…
There are so many puns that could be made from this story.
A veto by North Carolina’s Democratic governor was overridden Monday night because a Democrat in the state House cast the deciding vote, by accident.
The lawmaker, Becky Carney, accidentally pushed a green button at her desk voting for the override, instead of a different button. Under state rules, legislators can change their votes if they make a mistake, but only if the changed vote wouldn’t affect the result.
In Carney’s case, she was the 72nd person to vote for the override, the exact number needed to do so.
So.
Many.
Puns.
(Via AoSHQ)