April, 13 2011, 01:07pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Fracking and T. Boone Pickens' Myths
MAURA STEPHENS
Stephens is a co-founder of the Coalition to Protect New York. She said today: "T. Boone Pickens has President Obama and a lot of other politicians buying into his propaganda that 'natural' gas is a clean domestic fuel.
WASHINGTON
MAURA STEPHENS
Stephens is a co-founder of the Coalition to Protect New York. She said today: "T. Boone Pickens has President Obama and a lot of other politicians buying into his propaganda that 'natural' gas is a clean domestic fuel.
"But it's not clean, it's filthy. A new study shows the entire process of high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracking -- going on in places like the Marcellus shale of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, and threatening New York -- is as bad as or worse than coal in its greenhouse gas emissions.
"And fracking is not going to supply us with fuel. Much will be shipped overseas, where industry can get a higher price. There's a glut of gas now, so Pickens creates a perceived need for drilling and does a hard sell on this bill to convert vehicles.
"Pickens has a lot to gain by pushing fracking. He's bought up huge tracts of land that sit on aquifers. When fracking pollutes our water supplies, he'll sell us bottled water. My mother would call that a sin.
"Fracking is not clean. It is not good for our country. It ruins air quality, poisons our clean, fresh water and jeopardizes our entire food supply. If we want to maintain the health of our communities and our families -- and not contribute further to the kinds of devastating climate disruptions we see with increasing frequency -- we have to stop pimping filthy fossil fuels and start investing in clean, renewable energy technologies.
"Otherwise we just further enrich uber-wealthy marauders like Pickens who push a dirty, dangerous process that harms us all."
Background: "Methane and the Greenhouse-Gas Footprint of Natural Gas" from Shale Formations, by Robert W. Howarth, Renee Santoro, and Anthony Ingraffea (embargoed until online peer-reviewed publication in Climatic Change [4/14] but readable meanwhile at this PDF link):
"Pickens and water privatization," Business Week, June 12, 2008
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