* Pope vs. Exxon? * Hunger Strike Against Pipelines and Fracking

SARAH ANDERSON, via Elaine de Leon Ahn, elaine at ips-dc.org
Anderson just wrote the piece "Papal Smackdown: Pope Francis v. Fossil Fuel Execs" for AlterNet. She directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

FRANCIS EATHERINGTON and MELINDA TUHUS, melinda.tuhus2 at gmail.com
Tuhus is with the group Beyond Extreme Energy, which has organized a group of activists who have been fasting in Washington, D.C. for as long as 16 days. The fasters range in age from 72 to 23.

On Friday, Sept. 25, fasters, together with their supporters and leaders from several faiths, "will break bread in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in D.C. to end a dramatic 18-day fast undertaken to demand that FERC stop issuing permits for the pipelines, storage facilities and LNG export terminals that use fracked natural gas, and instead heed Pope Francis's call to care for the Earth.

"On Friday copies of the Pope's encyclical will be presented to the five FERC commissioners; and there will be music, brief statements, and a procession, featuring BXE's colorful and moving 50-foot anti-fracking banner, 'The United States of Fracking,' around the FERC headquarters block."

Eatherington said today: "I will be fasting to help FERC understand the devastation caused by permitting projects like the Jordan Cove LNG Export Terminal and pipeline in my home state of Oregon. In September FERC will be releasing their final environmental study which will likely claim there is no harm from exporting fracked natural gas from Oregon to Asia.

"FERC will allow Veresen, a foreign corporation, to take land from over 300 Oregonians, including my land, with eminent domain to build a 230-mile pipeline across our state's pristine forests and farmland, ending at Coos Bay on the Pacific coast. There, in an area overdue for a subduction-zone earthquake and tsunami, FERC will allow the LNG export terminal to be built on a sand dune."