ISSUES: Fossil Fuels, Renewable Energy & the Environment
From an Article by Wenonah Hauter, EcoWatch.com, June 7, 2016
My new book, Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment will be released this week and I want to tell you why I wrote it.
In the 1990s, I worked on a project to promote renewable energy. Even then, renewables were ready. They were cost-effective and along with energy efficiency technologies, we were poised to make the transition.
But, the fossil fuel industry used its immense power to stop the necessary progress from happening.
When we started getting calls about fracking at Food & Water Watch several years ago and then embarked on a major campaign to ban fracking, I was shocked when we looked at the amount of electricity coming from solar and wind energy. The technology is ready and the price is right, but the rules are rigged against the quick transition that we must make. In 2015, just barely over 5 percent of the electricity used in the nation is from wind and solar power.
In the meantime, frontline communities are becoming sacrifice zones where people are sick from toxic water and poisoned air from fracking. Life on Earth is threatened if we don’t take dramatic action to save our global climate from chaos. Yet, even though we must take action to keep fossil fuels in the ground, billions of dollars are being sunk into another 40 years of fossil fuel infrastructure.
Although we face great challenges, I still have great hope for the future. A new generation of activists are demanding an end to the status quo and they are fighting for a ban on fracking and a swift transition to clean energy. Activists of all age groups are tired of settling for what’s politically possible today and they are fighting for the future they want for the next generation.
But, as Machiavelli famously said, “Anyone wishing to see what is to come should examine what has been.” Our current crisis is more than 100 years in the making and I wanted to tell the story of how we reached the point that we are at today. It’s been and continues to be an epic battle with villains, heroines and heroes. It’s a David and Goliath tale about how the fossil fuel industry perverted and shaped energy policy and corrupted our democracy.
I set out on a journey that took much of my time over the last several years. I learned that in many ways, the story of the Frackopoly is much like what happened in the agribusiness and food industry, which I wrote about in my earlier book, Foodopoly.
The stories are similar in some ways. Over the past century, a handful of powerful interests have conspired to avoid the laws designed to keep them from becoming too politically powerful and dominating a single industry. They captured our regulatory bodies and elected officials and they destroyed the set of policies that had been developed over time to protect people and the environment.
Frackopoly tells the story and it is a road map for the changes we need to make to create a sustainable energy future. The market alone is not going to get us where we need to go. We are going to have to keep increasing the size and political power of the incredible grassroots movement that has risen up from communities all across the country to demand that we ban fracking and keep fossil fuels in the ground.
In the years since I started writing the book, we’ve seen victory after victory as our movement grows (and even more since it’s gone to print earlier this year). We’ve won in New York, we’re winning in Maryland and we’ve helped protect communities across the country.
We put together this video to give a taste of what you’ll find in Frackopoly:
And if you want an even bigger sneak peek, here’s a recording of a conversation I had last week with a group of Food & Water Watch members and activists.
I decided when I embarked on this project that I was going to tell the whole story even if that invites attacks from the industry and their friends.
I hope you’ll read Frackopoly—and above all, I hope this book will inspire and inform people who are concerned about fracking and show that we can win if we come together and fight it.
Follow the Money: Republican Attorneys General Attack on the Clean Power Plan
See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net
Point Your RSS Reader to FrackCheckWV.net/feed/
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WENONAH HAUTER discusses FRACKOPOLY with ED BEGLEY | Skylight Books
Frackolopy: the Battle for the Future of Energy and the Enviornment (New Press), June 6, 2016
Over the past decade, a new and controversial energy extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has rocketed to the forefront of U.S. energy production. With fracking, millions of gallons of water, dangerous chemicals, and sand are injected under high pressure deep into the earth, fracturing hard rock to release oil and gas.
A history of the fracking industry, Frackopoly exposes how more than 100 years of political influence peddling facilitated the control of our energy system by a handful of corporations and financial institutions. It provides the public policy backstory and the history of deregulation that has turned our communities into sacrifice zones.
The book also examines the powerful interests that have supported fracking, including leading environmental groups, and looks at the growing movement to ban fracking and keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Praise for Frackopoly — “At this critical juncture in human history, Frackopoly is a must-read. Rich in history and science, it allows us to understand how we’ve got to this point and gives us the courage to continue the fight. Wenonah Hauter and Food & Water Watch were essential in legitimizing the call to ‘ban fracking’ across the United States. Her book is a powerful account of that vital necessary struggle and where we have to go from here.”—Josh Fox, director of Gasland and How to Let Go of the World (and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change)
“Real life anti-fracking superhero Wenonah Hauter delivers the definitive story on how big oil and gas corporations captured our political system and schemed to frack America—and the growing grassroots movement to retake our democracy and protect our planet.”—Mark Ruffalo, actor, director, and advisory board member of Americans Against Fracking
“Even though I have lived every chapter of this book, from beginning to end, I couldn’t, as a reader, put it down. What makes Frackopoly so riveting is not the economic evidence, public health data, and the political analysis—although that’s all here, too—but the brilliance of the author as the teller of this tragic-yet-hopeful tale. Wenonah Hauter is that rare narrator—a gifted writer and an environmental leader with a box seat in the public arena. A must-read for all who care about climate change, democracy, clean water, breathable air, and energy policy. Which is to say, all of us. Read this book and let your eyes be opened to the hoodwinking of America by the fracking industry.”—Sandra Steingraber, biologist and author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment
“A truly powerful manifesto about one of the greatest environmental fights on our planet today—from one of its greatest champions!”—Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author of Oil and Honey
“A gripping and encyclopedic survey of the fracking menace, from the rise of a fossil-fueled U.S. oligarchy to the growing global wave of hard-won fracking bans. Hauter skillfully reveals fracking’s twin legacy: ghost towns, poisoned and quaking landscapes, and a scorching atmosphere on the one hand—and a remarkable wave of courage, resistance, and rising community power on the other.””—Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine
Reviews – “Hauter delivers a passionate history and critique of the energy industry, from Standard Oil to Enron … [A] journalistic exposé of fracking outrages in which aggressive entrepreneurs in pursuit of profits wreak havoc on the land and poison the water.”– Kirkus Reviews
“If Hauter had written this as a novel using the same characters, countries and global intrigue, it would quickly become an international bestseller and a miniseries would soon follow. She describes bigger-than-life captains of industry and colorful small-time scoundrels who play the system for their own gain. There are secret meetings and global conspiracies…a page turner.”—National Catholic Reporter
Wenonah Hauter is an activist, author and progressive policy advocate. She is the founder and executive director of Food & Water Watch, an organization that, under her leadership, has fundamentally transformed the national debate about hydraulic fracturing (fracking), energy and the environment.
Source: http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/wenonah-hauter-discusses-frackopoly-ed-begley