So, Sadly We Must Ask: Is Jerry Brown Really a Fracking Whore?

CALBUZZ-Gov. Jerry Brown is dedicated to preserving the environment and leading the fight against climate change. He’s fearless enough to slap Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as a “disgrace” for trying to incite the states to reject White House efforts to reduce carbon emissions. And he’s deft enough to label Sen. Ted Cruz, a climate-change-denying GOP presidential candidate, as “absolutely unfit to be running for office.” 

All of which renders Brown’s persistent defense of fracking – the environmentally dangerous and water polluting practice of drilling for oil by hydraulic fracturing – such a huge disappointment.

On the one hand, he calls for – and even leads – a “crusade to protect our climate”; on the other he allows oil companies to engage in a practice that science and common sense insist is destructive, wasteful and unsafe to the environment and to Californians. 

So, more in sadness than in anger, we must ask:  Why is Brown acting a fracking whore? 

Quid Pro Quo? Oh No. Surely, it can’t be that Occidental Petroleum gave $500,000 in 2012 to help Brown pass his crucial Proposition 30, which raised taxes on wealthy Californians and increased spending on public education. That would seem oh too quid quo pro for this political Jeremiah who self-righteously thunders that climate change denial “borders on the immoral.” 

And yet, whenever he is challenged on his approval of fracking – he called it a “fabulous economic opportunity” in May 2013 – Brown slips the punch by citing all the other good stuff he’s set in motion to combat climate change. 

As Mark Hertsgaard wrote in February: 

“I challenge anybody to find any other state” that’s doing as much about climate change, Brown shot back to anti-fracking protesters during his speech at the California Democratic Party’s convention last March. California was on track to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25 billion tons by 2020, Brown accurately pointed out. The state will also obtain at least 33% of its electricity from solar, wind or other non-carbon fuels by then, he added. 

OK. But good deeds on climate change don’t provide a free pass on fracking. 

Don’t Frack With Me: Again Hertsgaard, the smart and sharp environmental correspondent for The Nation magazine: 

Unlike conventional oil drilling, fracking injects vast amounts of water, sand and industrial chemicals such as benzene into the earth at extremely high pressure, shattering rock and freeing the oil or gas below to be pumped to the surface. In effect, fracking creates new reserves of product that energy companies can bring to market. 

This not only raises health issues – which caused New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ban the practice – but for California, in the midst of an historic drought, questions about the diversion of desperately needed fresh water. As Hertsgaard explained: 

Fracking a single oil well can require 2 million to 8 million gallons of water that is then left too polluted for human or agricultural use. Scientists have also concluded that fracking, which aims to shatter underground rock to free oil and gas, has helped cause earthquakes in Ohio and Oklahoma — no small consideration in California. 

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Moreover, the “fabulous” economic benefits of fracking that Brown once cited were all but wiped out last May, when federal officials slashed by 96% their estimate of how much oil can be recovered from Monterey Shale deposits that stretch from Kern County to Monterey. 

Asked last week by NBC’s Chuck Todd if California’s water crisis alone isn’t enough of a reason to ban fracking, Brown answered with a kind of uncharacteristic, defensive non-sequitur word salad: 

No, not at all. First of all, fracking in California has been going on for more than 50 years. It uses a fraction of the water of fracking on the East Coast for gas, particularly. 

This is vertical fracking for the most part. It is different. 

California imports 70% of our petroleum products. Our cars drive over 330 billion miles, mostly on petroleum. If we reduce our oil drilling in California by a few percent, which a ban on fracking would do, and we import more oil by train or by boat, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. 

What we need to do is to move to electric cars, more efficient buildings, and more renewable energy. 

And in that respect, California is leading the country and some would say even the world, and we’re going to continue moving down that path. 

Uh, yeah, but what about the question Chuck actually asked? 

Man Up, Gandalf: It’s time for Gov. Brown to face facts: there is no defense for fracking in California – no environmental or economic rationale and it’s a huge waste of water. 

Better to accept the notion, as President Obama has explained, that in order to combat climate change to the extent we can, we must leave two-thirds of the oil that’s available to mankind in the ground. That means stop fracking for the hardest-to-extract oil and move away from fossil fuels. 

Or else explain why you’re so set on selling yourself to the oil companies.

 

(Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine … long time journalists … publish the award-winning CalBuzz.com) 

-cw

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 26

Pub: Mar 27, 2015