People Are Pissed: public meetings intensify, full spectrum resistance continues

Marcellus Shale Unrest

From pittsburgh tribune-review: About 120 people attended a public hearing held at the request of a petition by city residents. The hearing followed a half-hour protest on the steps of the City-County Building, Downtown.
From Times Herald-Record: BINGHAMTON – The battle lines were drawn Monday morning two hours before the federal meeting to help determine the future of gas drilling in New York and the country.
On one end of the street where the Environmental Protection Agency’s public hearing on fracking will begin at noon stood a few hundred anti-drilling people. They held signs saying, “Protect Our Water Stop Fracking America.” They listened to speakers like Josh Fox, the Honesdale, Pennsylvania director of the film, “Gasland” say, “the restoration of the EPA’s mission is to stop fracking now.”
Counter-protesters of the Industry
There are protesters from the Tea Party and other conservative groups fighting carbon emissions caps from New Jersey to California. According to salon.com, “Prop. 23 is the California ballot initiative that aims to suspend California’s pioneering Global Warming Solutions Act — AB 32. To suggest that the oil companies abhor it is akin to saying that Sarah Connor has a problem with robots.”
The fight is clearly a financial one between industry and the people, not a regional one between backwards republicans against progressives. This is made clear by students in the Deep South hub of the University of Alabama in Birmingham protesting a new coal mine, claiming that it will pollute their groundwater.
Protesting False Solutions, Development and the Gang Green’s Cronyism
Still, alternatives to coal are not having an easier time. According to Las Vegan Review-Journal, the Chemehuevi of the Colorado River and Fort Mohave, call the Mojave Desert a sacred place, and Tuesday, they came to a sacred site to join about 20 protesters who want to protect a 5.6-square-mile stretch of desert below the ridge—the spot where BrightSource Energy expects to break ground next month on what will be the world’s largest system of mirrors, or heliostats. The system will focus the sun’s energy on three solar towers to create heat to drive turbines to generate electricity for Southern California.
In other places, such as Terra Ceila Island, Florida, residents are fighting to ban more subdivisions and development, but not everything can be done through the government. Leaving the Wilderness Society of Australia after 12 years of acting as its executive director, Alec Marr has that much to say this week. “The cronyism that was rife in The Wilderness Society during the 1980s is in the process of being reintroduced on an unprecedented scale.” The Wilderness Society gained international notoriety with the 1982 blockade of Frank Road that stopped illegal logging in the Tasmanian rainforest that was greatly assisted by Earth First! and also helped to launch EF! in the region. EF!ers in Australia and all around the world stand in solidarity with Marr, the residents of Terra Ceila, the Chemehuevi and everyone else fighting industry and the destruction of the world this week.