I’ve heard Josh talk about how scary and lonely it felt when the gas industry first came knocking on his door on more than one occasion.

But then a strong, passionate community rose up, and he realized that he wasn’t alone.

We’re all in this together. Our hearts all sink when we see families like the Fentons and Lipskys suffering because of drilling. Our spirits all rise when we see areas like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania or Longmont, Colorado achieve a ban. And our eyes have all been glued to the battle going on in Balcombe, UK because their fight is our fight.

Tomorrow we’ll screen for the European Parliament, and it’s never been more clear to us how connected we all are. Walking down the street of Brussels we fortuitously bumped into activist from Bulgaria and New York. Talking to them, the similarities between the movements going on across the globe reveals a connectivity that transcends borders.

Below is a post we wanted to share from Frack Off, a group of activist on the front lines of the fight in Balcombe. They’ve shown an amazing amount of strength and tenacity that we can all learn from and take to heart in our own towns and cities because as they so perfectly stated, their’s is just one battle in a global struggle.

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

The sleepy village of Balcombe in West Sussex has until recently not been a place you would associate with industrial development. The surrounding countryside is among the most picturesque you will see out of the train window on the line between London and the seaside town of Brighton. This has all changed since fracking company, Cuadrilla Resources, infamous for the earthquakes it caused when it fracked the first and so far only shale gas well in the UK, set its sights on the village. Cuadrilla wants to drill a shale oil exploration well in Balcombe, targeting a similar formation to the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, but at a much shallower depth.

When local residents realised what was happening the company mobilised its PR machine to win them over. However a public meeting in the village in January 2012 saw Cuadrilla’s management besieged by 300 angry locals, and the company have since avoided similar events. The company has pressed on and with all bureaucratic options for resistance exhausted, a call-out was made for people to gather outside the site when the first equipment arrived. So began the community blockade that has so far lasted over a month. People and groups from across Sussex and the UK have rallied round in support and it is now settling down into a war of attrition, similar to that which ultimately defeated plans for a massive road building program which threatened to carve up the countryside in the early 1990s.

While Cuadrilla have not published any estimates of how much shale oil there might be, a recent report by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) suggests there could be up to 700 million barrels in the Weald Basin, mostly in Sussex. Given the typical low total production of a shale oil well this would require around 5,000 wells to be drilled. In the Bakken these wells are now being drilled at density of 4 per square mile, with 1.8 mile long horizontals fractured in up to 40 stages along their length. but rather than a population density of 11 people per square mile in North Dakota, there are 1,100 per square mile in Sussex.

Across the UK a similar wave of unconventional oil and gas extraction is being planned, both Shale an Coal Bed Methane (CBM). As easier to extract fossil fuel resources are depleted by unsustainable levels of energy consumption the system is resorting ever more extreme methods to feed itself. As extraction effort grows the pollution, social disruption and the fraction of the economy that must be devoted to energy extraction are also increasing. Licences are also being given away for Underground Coal Gasification (UCG), an insane technique which involves setting fire to coal seams underground and piping the resulting gases to the surface.

Globally the picture is equally bleak, with extreme energy threatening to spread across the planet. Spare a thought for farmers in West Bengal, India already under massive stress from climate change and globalisation, where a huge wave of CBM wells are now planned. These unconventional fossil fuels are also extra carbon which we cannot possibly afford to burn and avert catastrophic climate change. This fight is not about any one technology or country, but about the whole future direction of human society. Will we descend into a extreme energy nightmare where we live, and die, in the shadow of vast energy extraction projects which mainly exist to feed themselves. Or can communities across the planet revolt against the horrific future that is planned from them and take a different course.

-Frack Off UK

Dear Friends:

The Delaware is the river that runs through the heart of the film GASLAND. We’ve kept drilling and fracking out of the river basin for the past three and a half years. Now the Delaware River faces its most grave and urgent threat.

Please see this video that Matt Sanchez and I just created to highlight the critical importance of the upcoming vote on October 21st in Trenton NJ:

This is an urgent call to the fans of GASLAND and to the anti-fracking movement across the nation:

Please act now to Save the Delaware River.

On October 21st, the Delaware River Basin Comission will vote on a plan to allow over 20,000 gas wells in the Delaware River Basin. We need calls to come from all over the nation and we need people from all over the region to come out in protest on October 21st.

The Delaware River Basin Commission is an intergovernmental body that is comprised of five voting members, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, Governor Christie of New Jersey, Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania, Governor Markell of Delaware, and the Obama Administration represented by the Army Corps of Engineers. For the Delaware River to be opened up to drilling, three out of the five have to vote yes on the draft regulations plan. We need them all to reject the proposal and reject gas drilling and fracking.

There has never been a more urgent moment in the Northeast in the battle against fracking. The Delaware is the primary drinking water source for 15.6 Million people and is a national treasure.

Here are 4 ways that you can participate:

1) Call the the Governors from the member states and President Obama TODAY and tell them, “Hello, I am calling you to express my serious concerns about hydrofracking. Please Don’t Drill the Delaware!”

Governor Christie’s office – 609-292-6000
Governor Cuomo’s office – 518-474-8390
Gov Corbett’s office – 717-787-2500
Gov Markell’s Wilmington Office – 302-577-3210
And the white house comment line is 202-456-1111
2) Come to the DRBC meeting in person!

When: October 21, 8 am

Where: Patriots Theater at the War Memorial, 1 Memorial Drive Trenton, N.J. Map HERE.

There are over 20 buses traveling in from all over the region. Click HERE for bus sign up.

3) Delaware Riverkeeper will be hosting a Peaceful Non-Violent Direct Action Training on October 20th. For more information, sign up HERE.

4) If you work with an organization fighting to keep our water safe from hydraulic fracturing, please send this alert to those in your membership, and post it on facebook.

We will continue to send updates in the coming weeks.

For more information go to www.savethedelawareriver.com or visit www.delawareriverkeeper.org

With your help, we can stop the poisoning of our historic rivers and move to renewable and sustainable energy solutions.

Thanks for all you do! Together we can turn the tide.

Josh and the Gasland Team