Bomb Trains from Messiah Rhodes on Vimeo.

While on a recent train trip from Denver to New York City, my view of our country was often blocked by the black blur of a train hauling crude-oil tanks.

I watched these bomb trains cross through the backyards of America transporting oil fracked in the Bakken Shale; a once rural region of North Dakota that can now be seen from space because the fracking flares burn so bright.

We recently toured across Pennsylvania and New York, and communities from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and from Buffalo across the state to Albany all the way up through Plattsburgh are scared their town could be the next Lac-Megantic disaster; 47 people were killed there when an oil train derailed and exploded, burning down most of the downtown area.

Seeing those bomb trains rumble through towns, it’s so clear that the future they are speeding off towards is not the one I want for the country beyond my window.

They are careening towards a world where instead of switching to a safer, more sustainable track, we kick it into high gear and squeeze every last drop of fossil fuels from our planet using more extreme methods like fracking and offshore drilling.

The fossil fuel industry is getting more desperate and dangerous with every passing day. They won’t stop endangering our communities and our planet until we demand the alternative.

Please watch and share our Video of the Week: “Bomb Trains” by Messiah Rhodes.

Thanks and have a great weekend,

Lee Ziesche, Grassroots Coordinator

On Monday, the Federal Energy Regulation Committee (FERC) approved the first east coast liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Cove Point, Maryland right on the Chesapeake Bay.

Despite massive citizen opposition to fracking, the oil and gas industry is trying to build these multi-billion dollar LNG ports all over the country so they can continue to frack the hell out of American families living above shale plays and make billions of dollars in profits shipping natural gas overseas. 

Now, more than ever, we need to come together to ban fracking.

If we let facilities like Cove Point and the 14 other proposed LNG ports be built, we are dooming families across the country to be fracked and we are solidifying the destruction of our planet through climate change. 

400,000 people took to the streets for the People’s Climate March to demand action. Thousands of them with signs reading messages similar to this “Fracking = Climate Change”.

The Global Frackdown is an important moment for us all to stand up and demand that we start developing renewable energy instead of continuing down the deadly fossil fuel path.

Please watch and share our video of the week: Join the Global Frackdown 

Thanks and have a great weekend,

Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

The moment that stood out for me the most in today’s Video of the Week is a quick clip of an activist sign that says ‘Don’t Frack the Last Best Place’.

I think most people whose livelihoods are threaten by fracking feel that way.

There are reasons we chose to live where we do. It might be because the land has been in our family for generations. Or because we were drawn to the natural beauty of it. Or it felt like a safe place to raise a family.

Fracking threatens all of that.

We’ve heard many families besieged by oil and gas development say they don’t even know where they would go if they left their homes. With fracking going on in 34 states there is no safe place.

When we look at the big picture and climate change, more last best places get put on the chopping block. The entire fracking process from production to delivery is fraught with fugitive methane emissions, a potent green house gas that will exacerbate global warming.

Fracking and other forms of extreme energy development threaten to take the last best place from all of us.

But as the video points out, there is one defense that can save our last best places. It’s grassroots democracy. It’s you

Please watch and share our video of the week by the Norther Plains Resource Council.

Thanks and have a great weekend,
Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

Northern Plains Resource Council is a grassroots conservation group that organizes Montana’s citizens to protect our water quality, family farms and ranches, and unique quality of life. That’s why Northern Plains is engaging our members to build a statewide network that empowers communities to guide development.

As they stand today, Montana’s rules and regulatory bodies are simply not up to the task of protecting our water, air, soil, communities, or landowner rights from the dangers of extreme oil and gas development. Our state standards lag behind those in neighboring states and even industry standards. The Montana Board of Oil and Gas Conservation (BOGC) is particularly unresponsive to the concerns of citizens and landowners that are outside of the “good ‘ol boys club” of oil and gas companies.

What are we doing to change the oil and gas landscape in Montana? Check out Northern Plains’ website to learn more about our three core campaigns:

-Developing and advocating for regulations based on best management practices that will force the oil and gas industry to do it right. We want to pass landowner protections that improve transparency, oversight and accountability.

-Pressuring the Board of Oil and Gas Conservation for reforms—including a lawsuit over their 48-hour fracking notification rule for wildcat wells, and the right for public participation in the permitting process.

-Organizing to ensure the Montana State Water Plan accounts for oil and gas water quality and quantity impacts and limits the shifting use of water to the oil and gas industry.

-Using Citizen Initiated Zoning and Conservation District ordinance campaigns to create local controls that put the power to guide development back in the hands of the people.

To win on this issue, we need your help. Join Northern Plains Resource Council today! As a grassroots member-run organization, Northern Plains is built on the involvement and support of our members. Will you join us?

Get our Video of the Week straight to your inbox. Sign up for updates at www.gaslandthemovie.com

Run on sentence from Corey Ransberg on Vimeo.

We know constantly reading about the latest oil spill or horrifying report on the impacts of fracking can be emotionally taxing.That’s why we wanted to share this video of the week that has nothing to do with fracking!

For us cultural and activism go hand in hand. Whether that means using music and film to help get the word out, or just listening to a great band to unwind after a week of gathering petition signatures and organizing screenings.

So today, we just wanted to share some great music from our friends with all of our other friends around the world.

We’re also very excited to announce that we’re working on a new project that will combine culture, activism and the development of renewable energy so stay tuned for that, and in the meantime kick off your weekend right with some great music!

So have a great weekend. Keep on making movies and music. Keep on fighting for a better future.

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

To hear more music from Run on Sentence check out their website here.

We’ve seen this myth unravel again and again. Whether it’s Chesapeake Energy stiffing folks on royalties or local Pennsylvanians telling us there were a few jobs for them at first in the oil and gas fields being drilled in their own backyards but they quickly got phased out by guys from Texas, it’s clear fracking is not the local economic savior the industry makes it out to be.

The residents of Denton, Texas are seeing what fracked communities from Pennsylvania to Colorado are seeing. Adam Briggle says it all in our video of the week, “We get the off the book costs, the pollution, the spills, the noise, ozone and doctors bills, the truck traffic, lost property values and blowouts while the lion’s share of the wealth pours out of town.”

And they’re fed up. They’ve tried to regulate fracking to keep wells away from their homes and schools, but they’ve discovered what others across the country have. The only way to keep our communities safe is to ban fracking.

Frack Free Denton has gathered more than the required signatures to put their fracking ban initiative on the November ballot. A ban in Texas, an oil and gas state, would be an incredible victory for the entire anti-fracking movement.

Please watch and share this great short by Adam Briggle of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group that simply, but effectively lays out the facts and destroys the myth that fracking is helping the local community of Denton.

Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

Siena is a 10 year old Fractivist from California.  She’s a strong, motivated young lady on a mission to ban fracking, at local, state and national levels.

To spread awareness about these issues, she has given Tedx speeches, lobbied State Legislators, given speeches to Democratic clubs throughout Southern California, and has spoken at Rallies at the Governor’s office, the Federal Courthouse, Cal State Long Beach, and the most recent nationwide Climate Action March – to encourage California Governor Brown, President Obama, and other elected officials about the urgent need to take action now before it is too late and any more irreversible damage is done.  She firmly believes that every single person can help to make a difference, given the right tools and information.

From Siena: “Everyone’s action today directly impacts tomorrow.  If you want your children and grandchildren to have clean water to drink, clean food to eat, and clean air to breathe – then FRACKING MUST BE BANNED NOW!”

California Fractivist, like Siena, are making their voices heard. Los Angles City Council unanimously voted to write a moratorium on fracking and thousands of Californians will come together on March 15th for a rally in Sacramento to tell Governor Jerry Brown to ban fracking.  As California faces a record drought, it’s more apparent than ever that fracking is not the answer. Please share this video and amplify Siena’s message to Governor Jerry Brown and President Barack Obama “No fracking in California! No fracking anywhere! “

We can only continue to share stories like these with your support. Please consider making a donation to the Gasland team today. 

While California faces crazy droughts, coal ash spills into North Carolina’s rivers and dangerous chemicals have poisoned water in West Virginia, the moratorium against toxic hydro-fracking goes into a fourth year in New York state.

Born and raised in Queens my water is still safe to drink. So who’s been fighting against multi-billion dollar gas companies since the beginning?

What if I told you there are separate countries, different languages, and war treaties that were debated upon more than a thousand years ago just 5 hours northwest of New York City? When it was revealed to me, it was a shock to my system.

In the United States, Native American nations have their own governments, own languages, religions, schools, casinos and hockey teams. Traveling to Syracuse, New York, we visited the Onondaga Nation, part of the Haundonsaune confederacy; an alliance of six nations of Native American people nearly a thousand years old. I met up with folks from the Oneida, Mohawk and Seneca tribes too, they all agree fracking is bad for the Earth.

I’ve lived in New York City my whole life among 8 million people, and I’ve learnt a few lessons from the Haundonsaune confederacy. We may be stuck between fluorescent lights, elevators, fake leafs in lobbies and dollar slices of Pizza, but we still share the same water, air and planet. That’s all free without charge. While indigenous peoples still exist after thousands of years, will the high-speed natural gas life do the same? I checked in with some organizers and native people of New York to find out. Stay following the Gasland blog for updates.

If you want to join in to stop fracking, check out Two Row Wampum Campaign and New Yorkers Against Fracking for the latest events in New York.

-Messiah Rhodes, Filmmaker

http://RhodesPictures.com

We can only continue to share stories like these with your support. Please consider donating $5 to the Gasland team today.  

What struck me most about this incredible reporting from the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News, and The Weather Channel was the segment that begins with an interview with Neil Carman, formally with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. He said that he “dealt with over a thousand citizen complaints. I concluded that when citizens complained about air pollution, they were always right. There was a problem.”  

The industry comes back saying that the data doesn’t show a threat to public health.

Then, Jim Morris, the reporter from the Center for Public Integrity, highlights that the proper data collection that would prove what residents believe is happening is indeed happening isn’t currently being done.

We’ve seen so many similar situations all across the country while investigating for Gasland and Gasland Part II. People know there’s something wrong. Their bodies are telling them something is not right.  Their families have lived on the same land for generations and they are seeing the changes. Every part of them, from their minds, to their eyes, to their guts from their burning throats, nose bleeds, and migraines, is screaming “something is wrong”

I trust these families. I trust them more than the industry. I trust them more than the politicians.

And I trust that you can make a difference. No news report or scientific study is going to make an impact unless you act.

Share this video and join our movement today by signing up and finding your local grassroots group at www.gaslandthemovie.com

And please tweet and post this remarkable new video and report. You can find it here: http://eagleford.publicintegrity.org/

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

Last week  the Science, Space and Technology Committee, in a hearing titled  Examining the Science of EPA Overreach: A Case Study in Texas, denied the scientific evidence that proves unconventional drilling and fracking contaminated ground water in Parker County, Texas.

Sound familiar?

It should, because the same committee attacked the EPA and their scientific evidence that proved unconventional drilling and fracking contaminated ground water in Pavilion, Wyoming two years ago.

Our video of the week is a flashback to Josh’s appearance on Democracy Now! after he was arrested for trying to cover that congressional hearing two years ago.

It was strange to be in the exact same room that I’ve seen in footage of Josh getting arrested so many times.

But even more so, it was incredibly disheartening to be there last week with Steve and Shyla Lipsky, almost two years to the day that Josh got arrested, and see that so little has changed.

Josh Fox and Steve & Shyla Lipsky at congressional hearing

Two years ago, Josh was hopefully that the EPA would stand up for families in Pavilion, Wyoming and Dimock, Pennsylvania and stand up for the truth the science in those cases proved. Today, the EPA has walked away from those cases and the families in Parker County, Texas.

The EPA has abandoned them, but these families from Parker County, Pavilion and Dimock are not giving up on the truth and the justice they know should be promised to them in our country. Directly following the hearing, they met with members of congress and held a briefing to share what it’s been like for them to live in Gasland.

Steve and Shyla Lipsky meeting with congressional staff

Ray Kemble, Dimock, Pennsylvania resident, speaking at the EPA Fracking Investigations: A Community Perspective briefing

Because of them, I still have hope.

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator