DeSmogBlog
The Republican Governors Association (RGA) along with the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) sent a sent a letter to President Obama today, telling him that the federal government should abandon a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposal to create more transparency for natural gas fracking operations.
The proposal that the RGA and RAGA are referring to was first pitched earlier this year, and would require fracking companies who operate on federal or Native American lands to disclose the chemicals used in the fracking process. A loophole in the proposal allows companies to disclose after the fracking process has already begun, meaning that there are no requirements for disclosure prior to drilling.
But even such lax standards are too much for the dirty energy industry’s friends, and they believe that the federal government is overstepping its bounds on the matter. From their letter:
The strong and efficient track record of states to regulate oil and natural gas production—as well as the rule’s significant and destructive impacts on our states—should not be ignored, and needs to be taken into serious consideration …
The BLM’s proposed rule only will discourage exploration and production on federal and Indian lands, potentially costing the federal government—and states that share in federal royalties—billions of dollars in revenue. The BLM rule places sweeping new regulations on hydraulic fracturing and related operations without any demonstrated problems that might need to be addressed.
The BLM’s proposal:
- Adds significant and unnecessary costs to the production of oil and natural gas without assuring additional environmental protection;
- Includes numerous expensive and time-delaying measures such as cement bond logs that do not guarantee additional safety or effectiveness;
- Includes complicated permitting requirements that would further delay federal permitting times, which already may be measured in months or even years, compared with weeks for permits granted by states. This would discourage exploration and production on federal and Indian lands, leading to significant lost investment and employment for states with federal lands …
In sum—the RGA and RAGA believe that any regulations and standards should be left in the hands of the state, not the federal government. But they couldn’t be more wrong. According to the Sierra Club’s Fracking Regulatory Action Center, very few states have even proposed rules for the fracking industry, and even fewer have put rules into effect.
The argument that RGA and RAGA are trying to make is that the federal government should leave the issue to the states to decided, which is a very common theme among Republican politicians. They firmly believe that states should be in charge of what happens within their boundaries, which is completely understandable. And while the letter to the president may give the appearance of adhering to the Party platform of “limited federal government,” if you look beneath the surface the real motivation becomes clearly visible.
The letter to Obama is signed by two people—Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt. Jindal has taken in more than $300,000 from the oil and gas industry, and Pruitt (mostly from his tenure in the OK State Senate) has taken in a little more than $7,000. And those two are just the current mouthpieces.
The letter that was sent this week is actually just a follow up to one sent several months ago by the RGA, sent and signed by Virginia’s Republican governor Bob McDonnell. McDonnell’s donations from the oil and gas industries put the others to shame, as he has taken in more than $3 million from the dirty energy sector during his tenure in politics.
And, according to the Sierra Club’s Fracking Regulatory Action Center, none of these states currently have rules proposed or pending or on the books to reign in the fracking industry.
The bottom line is that if rules do not come from the federal level, they will not come at all. History doesn’t lie, and the signatories of this letter have had more than enough time to craft rules for the industry, but they have failed.
Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.
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Click here to sign a petition to tell the Bureau of Land Management to issue strong rules for federal fracking leases on public lands.
"Now that we are spending more time at home, we are noticing the large number of delivery vans and lorries driving through cities," said Netherlands environment minister Stientje van Veldhoven, announcing plans to ban all but zero-emission deliveries in 14 cities.
"The agreements we are setting down will ensure that it will be a matter of course that within a few years, supermarket shelves will be stocked, waste will be collected, and packages will arrive on time, yet without any exhaust fumes and CO2 emissions," she added.
She expects 30 cities to announce zero emission urban logistics by this summer. City councils must give four years' notice before imposing bans as part of government plans for emission-free road traffic by 2050. The city bans aim to save 1 megaton of CO2 each year by 2030.
Help to Change
To encourage transport organizations to go carbon-free, the government is offering grants of more than US$5,900 to help businesses buy or lease electric vehicles. There will be additional measures to help small businesses make the change.
The Netherlands claims it is the first country in the world to give its cities the freedom to implement zero-emission zones. Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht already have "milieuzones" where some types of vehicles are banned.
Tilburg, one of the first wave of cities imposing the Dutch ban, will not allow fossil-fuelled vehicles on streets within its outer ring road and plans to roll out a network of city-wide electric vehicle charging stations before the ban comes into effect in 2025.
"Such initiatives are imperative to improve air quality. The transport of the future must be emission-free, sustainable, and clean," said Tilburg city alderman Oscar Dusschooten.
Europe Takes Action
Research by Renault shows that many other European cities are heading in the same direction as the Netherlands, starting with Low Emission Zones of which Germany's "Umweltzone" were pioneers. More than 100 communes in Italy have introduced "Zonas a traffico limitato."
Madrid's "zona de baja emisión" bans diesel vehicles built before 2006 and petrol vehicles from before 2000 from central areas of the city. Barcelona has similar restrictions and the law will require all towns of more than 50,000 inhabitants to follow suit.
Perhaps the most stringent restrictions apply in London's Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which charges trucks and large vehicles up to US$137 a day to enter the central area if they do not comply with Euro 6 emissions standards. From October, the ULEZ is being expanded.
Cities are responsible for around 75% of CO2 emissions from global final energy use, according to the green thinktank REN21 - and much of these come from transport. Globally, transport accounts for 24% of world CO2 emissions.
The Rise of Online Shopping
Part of the reason for traffic in urban areas is the increase in delivery vehicles, as online shopping continues to grow. Retailer ecommerce sales are expected to pass $5billion in 2022, according to eMarketer.
The World Economic Forum's report The Future of the Last-Mile Ecosystem, published in January 2020, estimates that e-commerce will increase the number of delivery vehicles on the roads of the world's 100 largest cities by 36% by 2030.
If all those vehicles burn fossil fuels, the report says emissions will increase by 32%. But switching to all-electric delivery vehicles would cut emissions by 30% from current levels as well as reducing costs by 25%, the report says.
Other solutions explored in the report include introducing goods trams to handle deliveries alongside their passenger-carrying counterparts and increased use of parcel lockers to reduce the number of doorstep deliveries.
Reposted with permission from the World Economic Forum.