Fw: Win Ugly or Lose Pretty Please read about Rich Berman. Bill H:{) And send out to others. From: Responsible Drilling Alliance Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2014 5:31 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Win Ugly or Lose Pretty Win Ugly or Lose Pretty November 6, 2014 Inflection Energy well pad on Yeagle Road in Eldred Township - Photo Credit: Barb Jarmoska Dear William, Congratulations to our newly elected officials as well as those who retained their positions. Its time to put all of the slanderous campaign ads out of our minds so that we can move forward with the many critical state and national issues we face. In internal election news, RDA welcomes Jim Slotterback as our new President & thanks Robbie Cross for all of his time & dedication throughout the last presidential term. A lot has happened over the Halloween weekend & were bringing you the appropriately creepy highlights. This issue kicks off with some leaked inside advice from an industry meeting, highlights chemical evidence discovered near fracking sites, and introduces a second lawsuit against the Corbett administration to protect our state park and forest lands. A number of new Action Points have been added to the sidebar, so be sure to check those out as well as the Other News listed there. Thank you for caring & staying informed. Sincerely, Brooke Woodside Managing Editor rdapa.org Hard-Nosed Advice from Veteran Lobbyist: Win Ugly or Lose Pretty Richard Berman energy industry talk secretly taped by Eric Lipton - 10/30/14 - WASHINGTON - If the oil and gas industry wants to prevent its opponents from slowing its efforts to drill in more places, it must be prepared to employ tactics like digging up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, a veteran Washington political consultant told a room full of industry executives in a speech that was secretly recorded. Richard Berman - Photo Credit: Daniel Rosenbaum for the New York Times The blunt advice from the consultant, Richard Berman, the founder and chief executive of the Washington-based Berman & Company consulting firm, came as Mr. Berman solicited up to $3 million from oil and gas industry executives to finance an advertising and public relations campaign called Big Green Radicals. The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because you can either win ugly or lose pretty, he said. Think of this as an endless war, Mr. Berman told the crowd at the June event in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum, which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. And you have to budget for it. What Mr. Berman did not know - and what could now complicate his task of marginalizing environmental groups that want to impose limits on fracking - is that one of the energy industry executives recorded his remarks and was offended by them. That you have to play dirty to win, said the executive, who provided a copy of the recording and the meeting agenda to The New York Times under the condition that his identity not be revealed. It just left a bad taste in my mouth. Mr. Berman had flown to Colorado with Jack Hubbard, a vice president at Berman & Company, to discuss their newest public relations campaign, Big Green Radicals, which has already placed a series of intentionally controversial advertisements in Pennsylvania and Colorado, two states where the debate over fracking has been intense. It has also paid to place the media campaign on websites serving national and Washington audiences. A spokeswoman for Mr. Berman confirmed that he gave the speech, but said he would have no comment on its contents. Mr. Berman is well known in Washington for his technique of creating nonprofit groups like the Center for Consumer Freedom that secretly collect corporate donations to finance the aggressive, often satirical media campaigns his team conceives. They are intended to undermine his opponents, like labor unions or animal rights groups that have tried to spotlight the treatment of animals at meatpacking plants. I get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the labor unions - thats my offense, Mr. Berman said in his speech to the Western Energy Alliance. I am just trying to figure out how I am going to reduce their brand. Mr. Berman offered several pointers from his playbook. If you want a video to go viral, have kids or animals, he said, and then he showed a spot his company had prepared using schoolchildren as participants in a mock union election - to suggest that union bosses do not have real elections. Use humor to minimize or marginalize the people on the other side, he added. There is nothing the public likes more than tearing down celebrities and playing up the hypocrisy angle, his colleague Mr. Hubbard said, citing billboard advertisements planned for Pennsylvania that featured Robert Redford. Demands green living, they read. Flies on private jets. Mr. Hubbard also discussed how he had done detailed research on the personal histories of members of the boards of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to try to find information that could be used to embarrass them. Mr. Berman repeatedly boasted about how he could take checks from the oil and gas industry executives - he said he had already collected six-figure contributions from some of the executives in the room - and then hide their role in funding his campaigns. People always ask me one question all the time: How do I know that I wont be found out as a supporter of what youre doing? Mr. Berman told the crowd. We run all of this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People dont know who supports us. What is unclear is if the hardball tactics that Mr. Berman has pitched will succeed in places like Colorado. Already, The Denver Post editorial page, generally supportive of the oil and gas industry, has criticized Mr. Bermans tactics, calling one video spot - featuring fictitious environmentalists who debate if the moon is made of cheese before calling for a ban on fracking - a cheap shot at fracking foes. In fact, at least one of the major oil and gas companies that had executives at the event - Anadarko, a Texas-based company that operates 13,000 wells in the Rocky Mountain region - now says that it did not agree with the suggestions that Mr. Berman offered on how to combat criticism of oil and gas drilling techniques. Anadarko did not support Mr. Bermans approach and did not participate in his work because it does not align with our values, John Christiansen, a company spokesman, said. Mr. Berman probably appreciates the criticism. As he explained in his remarks, what matters is increasing the number of people who see his work, which is part of the reason he intentionally tries to offend people in his media campaigns. They characterize us in a campaign as being the guys with the black helicopters, he explained. And to some degree, thats true. Were doing stuff to diminish the other sides ability to operate. Source: nytimes/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives-western-energy-alliance-speech-taped.html?_r=1 Toxic Chemicals, Carcinogens, Skyrocket Near Fracking Sites The spikes almost certainly will lead to a cancer increase in surrounding areas, a study author says A PA farmhouse sits below pipes/pumps used for hydraulic fracturing in 2011 by Alan Neuhauser - 10/30/14 - Oil and gas wells across the country are spewing dangerous cancer-causing chemicals into the air, according to a new study that further corroborates reports of health problems around hydraulic fracturing sites. This is a significant public health risk, says Dr. David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany-State University of New York and lead author of the study, which was published Thursday in the journal Environmental Health. Cancer has a long latency, so youre not seeing an elevation in cancer in these communities. But five, 10, 15 years from now, elevation in cancer is almost certain to happen. Eight poisonous chemicals were found near wells and fracking sites in Arkansas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wyoming at levels that far exceeded recommended federal limits. Benzene, a carcinogen, was the most common, as was formaldehyde, which also has been linked to cancer. Hydrogen sulfide, which smells like rotten eggs and can affect the brain and upper-respiratory system, also was found. I was amazed, Carpenter says. Five orders of magnitude over federal limits for benzene at one site - thats just incredible. You could practically just light a match and have an explosion with that concentration. Its an indication of how leaky these systems are. The health effects of living near a fracking site have been felt elsewhere, according to separate research. A study published last month by researchers from the University of Washington and Yale University found residents within a kilometer of a well had up to twice the number of health problems as those living at least 2 kilometers away. The way frackings being done in these five states, its not being done safely, Carpenter says. For Carpenters study, trained volunteers living near the wells conducted air measurements, taking 35 grab air samples during heavy industrial activity or when they felt symptoms such as dizziness, nausea or headaches. Another 41 passive tests - meaning samples were taken during a designated period, not merely when levels spiked - were conducted to monitor for formaldehyde. The tests were then sent to accredited labs. Not every sample exceeded the recommended limits. But in those that did - slightly less than half the samples taken - benzene levels were 35 to 770,000 times greater than normal concentrations, or up to 33 times the exposure a driver might get while fueling his or her car. Similarly, hydrogen sulfide levels above federal standards were 90 to 60,000 times higher than normal - enough to cause eye and respiratory irritation, fatigue, irritability, poor memory and dizziness after just one hour of exposure. Excessive formaldehyde levels were 30 to 240 times higher than normal, which a statement on the study described as more than twice the formaldehyde concentration that occurs in rooms where medical students are dissecting human cadavers, and where most students report respiratory irritation. A law passed in 2005 by Congress included whats commonly known as the Halliburton loophole, which exempts oil and gas companies from federal regulations involving the monitoring and disclosure of fracking chemicals. Its the gift that keeps on giving, the longer youre exposed to these things, says Wyoming resident Deb Thomas, who saw a well open across the road from her in 1999 and helped collect air samples for Carpenters study. I had an asthmatic episode - Ive never had any asthma, I dont have a history of asthma. I ended up at the hospital where they gave me breathing treatments. Ive had really bad rashes. Thomas has come across similar symptoms at other unconventional oil and gas sites across the country, where as executive director of the nonprofit group ShaleTest, shes helped take air samples for low-income families and communities affected by fracking. Click the link below to read the rest of this article. Source: usnews/news/articles/2014/10/30/toxic-chemicals-and-carcinogens-skyrocket-near-fracking-sites-study-says Second Lawsuit Filed to Halt Drilling in State Parks and Forests by Katie Colaneri and Susan Phillips - 10/30/14 - An environmental group has filed a lawsuit challenging the Corbett administrations plan to lease more state park and forest land for oil and gas development. The Corbett Administration lifted a moratorium on new leases in state parks and forests with an executive order last May to help plug a budget gap. The lawsuit filed by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network is the first to challenge that executive order directly, but is the second suit aimed at preventing more drilling on state lands. The Delaware Riverkeeper Networks challenge, filed Thursday in Commonwealth Court, is based on the states environmental rights amendment and is a direct result of the Riverkeepers successful challenge of Act 13. In that case, the Supreme Court invoked article 1, section 27 of the state constitution, also referred to as the environmental rights amendment, to strike down key aspects of the states new drilling law. The Riverkeepers latest challenge of Corbetts executive order could serve as a test case for how the courts continue to interpret the states environmental rights amendment. Riverkeeper Maya Van Rossum said Corbetts executive order on opening up more state land to natural gas development invites and encourages the frackers to come right up to the edge of our public parks, destroying the adjacent communities as well as destroying the park lands themselves. A separate lawsuit, filed back in 2012 by the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Fund - also based on the environmental rights amendment - challenges the Governors authority to lease that land, and to use the proceeds for the general fund. After a series of hearings, the case is now in the hands of seven Commonwealth Court judges. Corbetts Energy Executive, Patrick Henderson defended the administrations policy, which is projected to raise $95 million in state revenue and specifically prohibits leasing which would result in any new or additional surface disturbance in state lands. Source: stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2014/10/30/second-lawsuit-filed-to-halt-drilling-in-state-parks-and-forests/ ATTENTION - Website skills needed: RDA is seeking someone with web developing/editing skills to assist with our website @ rdapa.org. Please feel free to contact us for more information. Thanks! Back to Top In This Issue Win Ugly or Lose Pretty Toxic Chemicals Second Lawsuit Filed Events/Action Points In Other News Join RDA! Newsletter Archive Events/ Action Points Proposal to Protect Clean Water Public Comment Period Marcellus Documentary Project NPR Petition A Message to our Next Governor Frack Free Parks Campaign PA Moratorium Petition Pinkwashing Petition In Other News Pennsylvania Congressman Launches Frack Waste Investigation In a reflection of growing national concern about the disposal of oil and gas waste, a Pennsylvania congressman launched an investigation Wednesday into the way his state regulates the discarding of the unwanted, often toxic material. Rep. Matthew Cartwright, a first-term Democrat from eastern Pennsylvania, wants to know more about how the contaminated leftovers from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, are regulated. Click here to read the full story. ------------------ Scientists Just Discovered how to Determine if Water Contamination Comes from Fracking A team of US and French scientists say they have developed a new tool that can specifically tell when environmental contamination comes from waste produced by hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. Click here to read the full story. ------------------ The Scary Facts About Fracking Across the country, fracking has contaminated drinking water sources, made nearby residents sick, turned pristine landscapes into industrial zones, and caused air and global warming pollution. The oil and gas industry has spent untold millions of dollars on advertising and public relations campaigns to convince the public that fracking is necessary and safe, but their efforts have included distortions of the truth or outright falsehoods. Click here to read the full story. Proposal to Protect Clean Water Deadline - November 14th Clarifying protection under the Clean Water Act for streams and wetlands that form the foundation of the nations water resources Click here for more details. Action Alert: Public Comment Period Deadline - November 18th Standards and Guidelines for Identifying, Tracking, and Resolving Violations We want to alert you to a DEP Oil & Gas Management Program Technical Guidance Document also known as a policy document that is now up for public comment. The good folks at C.O.G.E.N.T. (the Connection for Oil, Gas & the Environment in the Northern Tier, Inc.) have even crafted a how-to sheet for you to follow along and write your comments. If youve had concerns about the lack of DEP staff, slow response to water supply investigations, calculations of penalties of that NOVs are not being issued, now is the time you are able to address this effectively. This comment period is the mechanism to do that. Click here for more details. Marcellus Shale Documentary Project September 23 - December 14 The Palmer Museum of Art, State College The Marcellus Shale Documentary Project features photographic images that tell the personal stories of Pennsylvanians affected by the Marcellus Shale gas industry. By creating a visual document of the environmental, social and economic impact of the drilling, the work aims to engage communities in the current Marcellus Shale debate while providing important historical images for the future. In capturing images of the people and places most affected by gas drilling, photographers Noah Addis, Nina Berman, Brian Cohen, Scott Goldsmith, Lynn Johnson and Martha Rial examine both the positive and negative results of the recent boom in the gas industry and how the environment and the communities that live with the resources are being shaped. Click here to view the Marcellus Shale Gallery Conversation Schedule for November. Click here for more details on the entire exhibition. NPR Petition Think About It We Most Americans consider NPR an independent media organization, so it might surprise you that one of its biggest corporate sponsors is the American Natural Gas Alliance, a front group that exists only to promote some of the worst energy polluters in America. The ANGA has been an NPR corporate sponsor for months, using its airtime to promote the misleading think about it campaign that is in fact a promotion for the dangerous and destructive drilling process known as fracking. NPRs financial dependence on the fracking industry could be fouling its news coverage, just like fracking fouls up our air, water and climate. Fracking puts America on a path toward a bleak energy future, with polluted land, flammable tap water and earthquakes. Meanwhile, clean, green energy sources like wind and solar can provide 99 percent of our electric, transportation and manufacturing power needs. No fracking required. Even better every time we choose renewable energy over oil, coal and gas, we reduce emissions, lower the cost of energy and create jobs. When trusted news outlets like NPR take money from ANGA and repeat their deceptive marketing claptrap - on OUR airwaves - we have to question their objectivity. Sign up here to tell NPR that when it comes to fracking, dont even think about it. Click here for more details. A Message To Our Next Governor - Take a Strong Stand on Methane Take a zero tolerance pledge on methane leaks from the shale gas industry Methane leakage from shale gas infrastructure endangers public health and safety, and accelerates climate change. Leaking methane from shale gas infrastructure also includes significant amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which contributes to ground-level ozone pollution and exposes residents to cancer-causing pollutants. Colorado has already adopted standards demanding that the oil and gas industry find and fix leaks and capture 95% of leaked methane and VOCs. While shale gas burns cleaner than coal, shale infrastructure can leak as much as 17% of its product, undercutting any climate change benefit. Some of Pennsylvanias elected officials have made a career out of denying the environmental impacts of shale gas development. A strong stance on methane leakage is an absolute necessity in a state where the gas industry remains largely unchecked. Please ask each candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania to stop methane leakage. Click here to take a stand & send a message to the candidates. Frack Free Parks The Campaign Continues Its not too late to participate in the Frack Free Parks campaign initiated by the Save the Loyalsock Coalition. Take a selfie in the woods with THIS SIGN and email it to frackfreeparks@gmail so they can upload it to the tumblr site. Then feel free to share it all over your other social media. Click here for more information PA Moratorium Petition Request a Moratorium on Further Leasing of our State Park and Forest Land Our state forests are rare places that provide respite and recreation for our citizens. The proposed lift on the moratorium of gas leasing will lead to further drilling that will jeopardize fragile ecosystems. Our state forests and parks should be set apart, protected and held in trust for the future. We need your help to stop additional gas leasing of state park and forest land. We urge you to please take action by sending a message to your legislators so the General Assembly will not open the door to additional leasing. Click here to take action! Pinkwashing Spotlight Susan G. Komen & fracking giant Baker Hughes have taken pinkwashing to a new low - theyre teaming up to distribute 1,000 pink drill bits. Baker Hughes fracking chemicals increase our risk of breast cancer while Komen raises millions of dollars to try to cure it. This pinkwashing is indefensible. Take Action: tell Komen to stop fracking with our health. Join RDA! Sign Up/Make a Donation We welcome your active participation and are in need of help for special events, publicity, research, and other projects. It costs nothing to sign up for our e-newsletter or become a member of our organization, but tax-free donations are accepted & greatly appreciated. As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, RDA relies on donations for the important work we do. In order for RDA to continue its valuable education and advocacy outreach in 2014, please consider a tax-free contribution to our efforts. You can send a donation to the address listed at the bottom of this email, or click here to download our current membership form to fill out and send in along with your donation. Membership levels: Adventurer..................$10 Explorer......................$20 Woodlander................$50 Guardian..................$100 Naturalist..................$500 Preservationist.......$1,000 RDAPA.org Past Newsletters Click here to access our newsletter archive. Join Our Mailing List RDA Newsletter Brooke Woodside, RDA Working Group, Managing Editor Barb Jarmoska, Treasurer - RDA Board of Directors, Editor Ralph Kisberg, RDA Working Group, Contributing Editor Ted Stroter, RDA Working Group, Contributing Editor Jim Slotterback, President - RDA Board of Directors Jenni Slotterback, Secretary - RDA Board of Directors Mark Szybist - RDA Board of Directors Roscoe McCloskey - RDA Board of Directors Robbie Cross - RDA Board of Directors Dianne Peeling - RDA Board of Directors This biweekly e-newsletter is written and designed by the RDA consultants and Board of Directors and sent to RDA members/subscribers. Every effort is made to assure complete accuracy in each issue. This publication and the information contained herein is copyrighted by RDA and may not be reproduced without permission. All rights reserved. Readers are invited to forward this newsletter in its entirety to broaden the scope of its outreach. There is a forward link below. Readers are also invited to submit articles to be considered for publication in a future issue. Please note: The RDA newsletter includes reporting on a variety of events and activities, which do not necessarily reflect the philosophy of the organization. RDA practices only non-violent action in voicing the organizations beliefs and concerns. Responsible Drilling Alliance | responsibledrillingalliance@gmail rdapa.org Phone: 888.332.1244 (toll free) Please mail donations to: RDA, PO Box 502, Williamsport, PA 17703 Copyright © 2014. All Rights Reserved. Forward this email This email was sent to [email protected] by [email protected] | Update Profile/Email Address | Rapid removal with SafeUnsubscribe™ | Privacy Policy. 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Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 15:41:54 +0000
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