I was shocked to learn that last week the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) gave Sen. Bernie Sanders a score of 6 percent in their 2016 National Environmental Scorecard. LCV claims that Sen. Sanders received such a low score because he missed votes while he was running his historic presidential campaign. But there may be more to the story than we're being told.
Those of you who have seen Gasland I and II know that fracking is very personal for me. One of the reasons I was a proud surrogate of Bernie's is because he was the only candidate to call for a national ban on fracking. So when I see him being treated this way by an organization, whose board of directors is known to support and promote fracking, it's also personal.
The bottom line is LCV's scorecard system is flawed and fails to evaluate lawmakers on their full body of work. That's why, according to their scorecard, pro-fracking senators like Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Corey Gardner (R-CO) actually score higher than Bernie. That's just plain ridiculous.
LOVE THIS! @BernieSanders & @BillNye Defend #Climate Science, Explain How #Renewables Can Power America https://t.co/le5Ru8WJHC @mzjacobson— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1488380391.0
It's no secret that LCV, who endorsed Sec. Clinton during last year's primary, have contempt for Bernie. I experienced this firsthand while serving on the Democrat's platform committee fighting for a national ban on fracking to be included as part of the party platform. The pushback I received from LCV Chairwoman Carol Browner, and many others from the Clinton camp, was astonishing. Not to mention the fact that LCV even endorsed candidates known to support the fracking industry and take their money—and 2016 was not the first time. This is antithetical to the organization's mission statement, which includes a commitment to "electing pro-environmental candidates who will champion priority issues." There is nothing pro-environment about fracking, and to say otherwise is nothing short of pronouncing alternative facts.
Bernie had the most ambitious climate platform in presidential history and he has continued his leadership since the campaign—standing up for Native American rights and against the Dakota Access Pipeline, standing up for environmental justice and standing up against President Trump's agenda, which includes rolling back as many environmental regulations as possible and letting fracking run rampant throughout our communities.
Trump Gives Pen to Dow Chemical CEO After Signing Executive Order to Eliminate Regulations https://t.co/xtG9rYLokw @BusinessGreen @CSRwire— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1487978703.0
At a time when we all have to come together, we should be standing with proven climate and environmental champions, not throwing them under the bus to score cheap points with the political establishment.
Please join me in telling the LCV to start acting like true environmental leaders and adjust Bernie's score to account for his historic presidential campaign that consistently elevated climate change and environmental justice as national issues. LCV should also make a commitment to the people and its members that they will no longer support pro-fracking candidates and reflect accurate scores for lawmakers who promote or otherwise support this climate-altering practice.
Deia Schlosberg, the producer of my new climate change documentary, How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change, was arrested Tuesday in Walhalla, North Dakota, for filming a protest action against a pipeline bringing Canadian tar sands oil into the U.S.
5 #climate activists shut down 5 tar sands pipelines https://t.co/QpMYu1G91G via @EcoWatch #globalwarming #NoDAPL… https://t.co/xqLTcF1Dl5— climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)1476298860.0
The action was conducted by Climate Direct Action, but Deia was not part of the group and did not participate in the action, only filmed it. Her film footage was confiscated and she is currently being held in jail.
According to Reuters:
A spokeswoman for the Pembina County Sheriff's Office confirmed that Schlosberg was being held at the jail but declined to release any further information, referring calls from a Reuters reporter to State's Attorney Ryan Bialas. Bialas could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.
Deia Schlosberg accepting the award in the Documentary category for "Backyard" at the 35th College Television Awards in 2014.Emmys
Deia is an award-winning filmmaker in her own right, and How to Let Go of the World, which she produced, is the third film in the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning Gasland series.
Here's my Facebook live video from Tuesday after I learned about Deia's arrest:
Arrest of journalists, filmmakers and others witnessing and reporting on citizen protests against fossil fuel infrastructure amid climate change is part of a worrisome, growing pattern. Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, was arrested last month for covering Native American-led protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The actress Shailene Woodley was arrested and jailed this week while leaving a protest at a construction site for the Dakota Access Pipeline. She was singled out and was told by police that she was arrested because she was well known and has 40,000 people watching her Facebook page.
[email protected] + 26 Others Arrested While Peacefully Protesting #DakotaAccessPipeline https://t.co/wX0CGS02QX @MarkRuffalo @IENearth @350— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1476196054.0
Journalism is not a crime, it is a responsibility. The actions of the North Dakota police force are not just a violation of the climate, but a violation of the constitution.
Producer of @LETGOANDLOVEdoc Deia Schlosberg @deiafilm still in jail after unjust arrest at #ShutItDown protests. Free her and her footage!— Josh Fox (@Josh Fox)1476277661.0
Tonight my new film How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change debuts on HBO at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
How to Let Go of the World is unlike any other documentary you've ever seen on climate change. Traveling to 12 countries on six continents, the film acknowledges that it may be too late to stop some of the worst consequences and asks, what is it that climate change can't destroy? What is so deep within us that no calamity can take it away?
So what should you do? Watch the film tonight with your friends. If you're like me and don't have a TV, you can get a free trial of HBO NOW and stream the film online. I'll be hosting a live video chat after the film to talk about what we need to do next but here's a few idea to get you started.
1. Leave your house. You know you're on the right track when you've left your house. Climate change is too far along for you to simply click on anything or sign a petition. I need you to go out and find your local climate action group, join it and get involved. Join a protest, join a sit in, take action, plan a march, work to develop renewable energy in your community but above all leave your house. Turn off the computer right now and match outside. What I mean is join the movement.
July 24 get out of your house and join the March For a Clean Energy Revolution in Philadelphia outside of the DNC.
2. Work with other people. Climate action is a team sport. Take the focus off of yourself and on to your community. Don't try to save the world alone. You will make the best friends you have ever had while doing this work, this is the time to meet the people you will fight along side of for the rest of your life.
Host a Let Go and Love watch party. The film is available all summer on HBO NOW.
3. See the intersectionality and fight for justice. Our whole system needs to change, our values need to change. Climate change is not just about climate change. Climate change is a result of inequality, it is a result of economic injustice, it is a result of energy and factory farming and institutionalized racism. So see that all of these fights are bound up in the fight against climate change. And start showing up for those movements too. Our current system is based on greed, competition, violence, institutionalized racism, materialism and fossil fuels. Those are probably our worst human qualities. Time to start to focus on a different set of values, courage, creativity, resilience, civil disobedience, revolution, human rights, democracy, community and love. We can only build a better more sustainable world when we see the connections between things.
4. Do what you love. I'm not an organizer. I am a filmmaker. I can't organize a sock drawer. If I went into this as an organizer because I felt I had to, I would have quit in three weeks. As a filmmaker however, I am still here eight years later, three films and countless short films later and I am doing what I love. The movement needs you to do what you love and it needs you. You may find also, that you fall in love with it. We have to love what we do, we have to love the Earth. When we love something we must protect it. The more you exercise love, the more loving you will be and the more you will love your life, the life we are trying to make better.
5. Surrender. Realize that we don't save the world, we only save today. So don't shame yourself. We're all in the same boat, we say “I don't know how to save the world, yet I must save the world. I don't know how to save myself, yet I must save myself. I don't know where my soul resides, yet I must discover my soul because I live within it." The world is saved and lost every day, not all at once.
6. Support renewable energy through political action and group action as well as individual action. We need an overhaul in our whole system, we need massive political change if we are going to overhaul our entire energy system. So don't just buy an electric car and get solar panels and change your light bulbs, go vegetarian and pat yourself on the back and call it good. Yes that is good, but it won't get us anywhere if we focus on the individual.
So yes, fix the power in your own home, change your diet and change your lightbulb, but do it in a way that creates a community, not just the self-satisfaction part of this all. The aim is to transform society and that means working with everyone, changing laws and changing systems.
7. Put your whole body into it. Dance. March. Sing. Run. Get inspired, inspire your friends. Dance break: share this video and watch my new film.
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We need democracy like we need water. California primary voters must choose Bernie Sanders or the state will continue to experience a serious drought of both.
Despite California's claims to be an environmental leader, its government has been co-opted by the oil and gas industry and its citizens and climate are suffering. Gov. Brown has turned a blind eye to poor and Latino communities living next to polluting fracking wells and fracking wastewater being used to irrigate crops.
Under a Hillary Clinton presidency, California and the rest of the country would get even more fracking and fracked gas infrastructure. Her campaign took nearly $7 million from oil and gas lobbyists. Her State Department created the Global Shale Gas Initiative to promote fracking in 30 countries. Newly unearthed State Department emails show how aggressive that initiative was, working closely with oil and gas companies and enlisting help from 13 federal agencies to expand fracking into Europe, even where governments opposed it.
As president Bernie Sanders would support state fracking bans, ban fossil fuel extraction on federal lands, end government subsidies for oil and gas companies and bar their lobbyists from the White House. He'd change the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan, so it would require reducing methane as well as CO2 emissions and favor building renewables instead of more gas plants.
The choice between these two futures is an existential one. Here's why:
Fracked oil and gas operations leak natural gas, which is mostly methane, a warming agent 86 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years. Industry statistics indicate onshore operations annually emit over four times more natural gas than the massive blowout at the Aliso Canyon storage facility. Just weeks after it was capped, Gov. Brown signed a bill allowing SoCalGas to resume operating there, provided the wells pass safety tests. But they aren't “safe;" they leak. SoCal's Aliso Canyon facility was only the best known leak; CPUC found hundreds of others last year, including a different Aliso Canyon operator caught deliberately venting natural gas in January, in the middle of the blowout.
Meanwhile the industry is pushing more fracked gas pipelines, gas plants and injection wells, which means more leaks. California is green-lighting and enabling the expansion. Over the past year the state even approved fracking wastewater injection wells near fault lines, raising earthquake risks.
If it stays on this path, it will lock in fracked oil and gas for the next 40 years. Then we can forget about California's environmental leader image or meeting Paris climate agreement goals of keeping warming under 2 degrees centigrade (we've already locked in 1.5 degrees, at 2 degrees sea levels rise 5 to 9 meters).
Even as it struggles with Biblical droughts and wildfires, California continues to frack oil wells and expand fracked gas infrastructure, further damaging the climate. This sets a hypocritical example for the rest of the world. As the world's eighth largest economy, California's choices influence others'. As the world's third largest consumer of gasoline and diesel, with the fourth highest per capita GHG emissions, it should make better ones.
California could set a very different example by choosing the only candidate who opposes fracking. Clinton and Brown both worked against concerned citizens trying to ban fracking; Sanders invited us into his office to talk policy. He and we understand we need nothing less than a political revolution to say "no" to big oil and gas and start scaling up renewables now.
So there's more at stake in Tuesday's primary than California's 475 delegates. Whether or not the outcome clinches the nomination, it will send an influential global signal about what Californians are prepared to do about climate change. And as California goes, so goes the planet.
Josh Fox's final film in his GASLAND trilogy How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change opens in the Los Angeles area on June 3 and airs on HBO June 27.
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The climate science is uncompromising. We've already warmed the earth 1 degree Celsius. And we have enough carbon and methane and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and enough heat in the oceans to warm the earth another half a degree Celsius already. So if we stop all greenhouse gas emissions right now, we've already reached the 1.5 degree threshold. The current 1 degree rise has already increased extreme weather, caused mammoth floods and unprecedented drought, it has gotten the ice caps to start a menacing thaw. The consequences of 1 degree have been far more severe than we ever imagined and we are on our way to 1.5 no matter what we do.
Now here's the really tough part: At 2 degrees of warming, this gets much much worse. We are at an apocalyptic vision of the planet that few people want to imagine. We see worsening ocean acidification and other habitat loss that will kill off 30-50 percent of the species on the planet, we will see tropical diseases explode out of control and perhaps most damaging the slow thaw of the ice caps enters a critical and irreversible phase leading to between 5-9 meters of sea level rise.
At 7 meters of sea level rise, the greenhouse that just held the democratic debate in Brooklyn, where we saw the most robust discussion on climate change and fracking ever in presidential politics, will be under water. This kind of sea level rise will render New York City mostly uninhabitable. Sure, the Brooklyn Bridge won't be underwater, but the on-ramp will be. Subways will be submerged, the Lower East Side, the Financial District, Red Hook, The Rockaways, the coast of Williamsburg, disappear under the east river and life in the Big Apple is nothing like what it was before.
And this is not just trouble for New York city—most of our major coastal cities would suffer the same watery fate, including Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC, Charleston, Miami, New Orleans, San Francisco and Oakland. All will face a crisis of sea level rise, not to mention the millions of toxic sites that are on the coast lines that will need to be moved or remediated if we are not to contaminate the oceans in a nightmare of drowning refineries, nuclear plants, chemical factors, gas stations and the like.
It is clear that we have not done enough thinking on this subject and the political system has not done anywhere near enough to address the issue or inform the public.
It's time for New York City and the rest of the coastlines to wake up to climate change.
Join me for an emergency climate discussion each night after the screening of my new film How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change, April 20-28 at the IFC Center in New York City.
The truth is, we have a very narrow window of time to drastically reduce our emissions if we have any hope of slowing climate change.
But New York state is under attack from a web of fracked gas pipelines, power plants and storage facilities that will lock us into decades of more fossil fuel use.
Each night, I'll be joined by amazing folks like James Cromwell, Susan Sarandon, Benjamin Barber, Anne Bogart and many more to talk about climate change and all the things climate can't change—love, community, democracy.
Don't miss these historic screenings and discussions in the state that banned fracking and is one of the cities most threatened by climate change.
There's a reason that fracking was mentioned in the debate and has become a central issue in the New Yorker primary. It's because New York has worked hard to share the science on fracking. People refused to let the most powerful industry in the world bury the truth.
Now New York City needs to do the same on climate change. If this city doesn't get involved and realize fracked gas pipelines and power plants upstate pose as big of a threat as fracking did (and some not so far upstate like the AIM Pipeline), we're going under water.
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The Town of Wawayanda is in the fertile, black dirt region of New York State, not far from Pennsylvania. Like many communities in neighboring Pennsylvania, the rural way of life in this area of Orange County is now under threat from America's shale gas boom.
New York has banned fracking, but not the mass build out of fracked gas infrastructure and that's put many New York communities on the fossil fuel chopping block.
Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) has proposed to build a 650-megawatt fracked gas power plant in Wawayanda. The residents of Orange County already know firsthand that living near fracked gas infrastructure poses many of the same health risks as living next to fracking wells.
In 2013, a fracked gas compressor station was built in nearby Minisink, New York to move gas along the Millennium Pipeline. Because of emissions from the compressor station children living nearby began suffering from nosebleeds, rashes, headaches and dizziness.
A study done by the Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project in November 2015 found that the air pollution around Minisink was worse than that of a big city. Families with homes close to the compress station have walked away from them.
CPV's fracked gas power plant would release 43 times the emissions as the compressor station. And it's just one of some 300 fracked gas power plants that are being proposed all over the country. If these plants are built you can say goodbye to New York City.
Researchers are finding that the web of fracked gas infrastructure that crosses all over the country has a big emissions problem. And those emission aren't just bad for local air, they're catastrophic for the climate.
Methane, the main component of natural gas, is 86 -105 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than C02 in the first 20 years it's in the atmosphere. Cornell Earth systems scientist Robert Howarth said since the planet responds so quickly to methane, if we want to slow global warming, we must immediately and drastically reduce methane emissions.
But what Howarth and other researchers studying emissions are finding are scary rates of leakage from extraction to delivery. There's continual leakage at the wellhead, there's leakage from the storage and processing facilities, purposeful venting and also accidental leaks. There's leakage in the pipeline systems, distribution systems and storage systems.
If just 3 percent of the fracked gas being mined and supplied to the power plant leaks throughout its life cycle, natural gas is worse than coal for global warming. In the Uinta Basin, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found 6 to 12 percent leakage rates for natural gas production. And before the Aliso Canyon disaster, they found leakage in the Los Angeles Basin was 17 percent. Harvard found that the U.S. shale boom over all has increased global methane emissions by more than 30 percent.
The U.S. has a serious methane problem that will go from bad to dire pretty fast if we build 300 fracked gas power plants.
That's why the first New York screening of my new documentary on climate change will be with community members fighting to stop the CPV Valley fracked gas power plant.
Our climate will get fracked unless we do.
New from @joshfoxfilm ‘How To Let Go of the World’ to Premiere at @sundancefest via @EcoWatch https://t.co/y4NWpV3Doy #ActOnClimate— LET GO AND LOVE DOC (@LET GO AND LOVE DOC)1452517566.0
If you live in the Sugar Loaf, New York area, join us for this historic screening or click here to find other screenings throughout the U.S.
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This week in Heimdal, North Dakota another "bomb train" derailed and exploded. These dangerous trains carrying crude-oil fracked in the Bakken Shale are rolling through the backyards of America, across rivers and streams and into major cities like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Albany, New York.
Our Video of the Week from documentary filmmaker Jon Bowermaster exposes the daily threat that many Americans are now living with as the oil and gas industry continues its desperate and dangerous expansion of extreme fossil fuel development in America.
You can see if dangerous bomb trains are rolling through your town here.
Lee's from Pittsburgh, so we looked them up first. Pittsburgh was the first city in the world to ban fracking and many of the most passionate fractivists on Earth come from Western Pennsylvania.
The red is 0.5 Mile U.S. Department of Transportation Evacuation Zone for Oil Train Derailments and the yellow is 1.0 Mile U.S. Department of Transportation Potential Impact Zone in Case of Oil Train Fire.
It's a terrifying map to look at.
We've been looking at a lot of maps recently. Maps of bomb train routes. Maps of proposed pipelines and other infrastructure projects like LNG ports and gas-fired power plants. Maps of fracking wells and areas where fracking earthquakes are popping up like crazy.
Looking at all these maps, We see each community that has been put on the fossil fuel chopping block and think about the people we know who are now forced to live their lives in these danger zones. Looking at map after map, we can also see the bigger picture of fossil fuel domination as it expands across our country, a dangerous web of pipelines and train tracks that connect fracking well pads to the rest of the world, threatening us all.
Seeing the bigger picture is a powerful thing. That's why were starting a new series on our blog: Map of the Week. Our first post has a bunch of startling maps that show how these bomb trains may be running right through your town.
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I have to write you a very deeply personal letter right now and I hope it is met with an open mind.
I have a secret to confess.
Well, it's actually not a secret at all, it's a very easy thing to find out if you just Google me, but I am not sure that many of you who are fans of my two documentaries GASLAND and GASLAND Part II know it.
It is this: I was not always a documentary filmmaker and I was not always an environmentalist. In fact, before the gas industry made a maelstrom out of all of our lives, I had a job that I deeply deeply loved: I was a theatre director and playwright.
I made more than 25 new works for the stage with my theatre troupe the International WOW Company. These plays would premiere in amazing places all over the world, hence our name. We performed in Thailand and Japan and the Philippines, we performed in Germany and France, we performed in New York City and in upstate New York. We made huge, fantastical, epic plays with large casts, striking imagery and powerful politics.
The theater is a kind of collective action. The theater is a motivator. A great theater production is something that you never forget about all your days.
So here is the news: I am making a new play, for the first time in five years, and I want you to come see it. I want you to be a part of this very special new kind of action. I am calling it The Solutions Grassroots Tour and it is a very different and unique kind of play that prompts a very different and unique kind of action.
But before I go into that I want to tell you one more secret.
Actually, it's not a secret either, if you Google this fact you will get it almost immediately.
It feels like a secret because it seems like nobody knows it.
It is this: we can run the planet on 100 percent renewable energy.
The science and technology says we can do it—100 percent wind, water and sun. No fossil fuels necessary. No more fracking, no more mountaintop removal, no more tar sands. We have the technology now.
What we don't have right now is enough people and politicians acting to create our new world.
So what The Solutions Grassroots tour does is combine culture and grassroots organizing, creating a powerful tool to change our nation's beliefs when it comes to renewable energy.
The Solutions Grassroots Tour is a theater, film and concert event that gives communities the tools and recourses to build their own renewable energy.
We have created these events to show you exactly how easy it is to immediately switch your power provider.
We have created these shows to show you exactly how difficult it will be to continue living in a hotter, more fracked up world.
Our renewable energy partners will be on hand to show you how easy it is to begin your transition out of the fossil fuel cycle by switching to a renewable energy provider or installing rooftop solar.
We'll also connect you with your neighbors who want to work on this with you.
But don't let me give you the impression this event is all work, organizing and building renewable energy. It's so much more.
The Solutions Grassroots Tour will be the stage debut of rancher and spokesman John Fenton, subject of GASLAND I & II and his son Johnny Fenton, of Pavillion, Wyoming. It will also feature music by Vanessa Bley and Stuart Matthewman and the band Twin Danger and with a cast of more than 20 actors, live video installation and a world-class seven-piece band. It's like no other event on the planet.
It is some of the most important work I've ever done and I want nothing more than for you to come share this incredible experience of retuning to the theater with me.
We've even made a trailer from our first two performances in Oneonta and Callicoon this summer:
THE SOLUTIONS GRASSROOTS TOUR
Tickets here http://bit.ly/1qh6pn8
Sept. 21 - 26 at 7:30 p.m. at the Irondale Theater
Directed by Josh Fox
With guest hosts Mark Ruffalo, Debra Winger, Peter Yarrow, Sandra Steingraber and Nahko Bear
Co-sponsored by Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Food & Water Watch, Frack Action, The Mother's Project, New Yorkers Against Fracking, Sane Energy Project and United For Actions.
Created by and featuring the International WOW Company: Carrie Getman, Herbe Go, Doug Chapman, Beth Griffith, Brandon Smith, Broderick Clavery, Sheree Campbell, John Fenton, Johnny Fenton, Jessica Hadju-Nemeth, Olivia Ross, Sarah Keyes, Cody Jordan, Noelia Antweiler, Malin Barr, Margot Bennet, Rebecca Goldstein, Ali Andre Ali, Jade Ziane, Zach Signore, Guy Eckstine, Nick Anderson, Robert Granata, Julian Smith, Omar A Little, Vanessa Bley, Stuart Matthewman and Josh Fox.
Thanks and see you at the show!
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