New England Coalition for Affordable Energy: The Latest Fracked Gas Pipeline Front Group

For the second time in a year, the oil and gas industry is launching a new front group in Massachusetts to try to trick voters into supporting new fracked gas pipelines. Strangely, Big Oil is being much more up front than usual about creating the "New England Coalition for Affordable Energy."

I'm not sure why you'd create a front group claiming to represent "business and labor groups," then put "Sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute and America's Natural Gas Alliance" right at the bottom of the website, but there it is:

The stock photos of "supporters" are fantastic. Obviously they're just models dressed up like different key demographics, but it's fun to imagine why you'd need, say, a doctor and a chef standing next to each other. And with the guy in the tank top and headphones - showing that the key bro demographic endorses fracked gas pipelines? 

Who's actually in this "coalition"? A handful of industrial groups, a Koch-backed national lobbying group, the Independent Oil Marketers Association of New England, and the one and only union they could find to sell out every other thing unions believe in the name of a handful of pipeline-building jobs. 

Last fall, fracked gas pipeline giant Kinder Morgan tried to hide behind a front group called the "Coalition to Lower Energy Costs," though seeing through that isn't very hard either: The Coalition's spokesman, Tony Buxton, is a lawyer for Kinder Morgan.

If more fracked gas would lower energy costs as these polluter front groups claim, why have electricity prices spiked in Pennsylvania, ground zero of the fracking boom? New England is already alarmingly dependant on fracked gas, which today is providing 57% of the region's electricity.

Fracked gas is scientifically shown to destabilize our climate, pollute our drinking water, and trigger earthquakes. Instead of doubling down on our dangerous fossil fuel dependence, our leaders should continue moving Massachusetts to new sources of clean energy like home and utility-scale solar as well as onshore and offshore wind.

Who're You Gonna Believe, The American Petroleum Institute Or The Green Miles?

From today's story on the presidential oil disaster commission's final report in E&E News (subscription required):

[American Petroleum Institute] president and CEO, Jack Gerard said earlier this week at an event in Washington that "the general public today believes [the Gulf oil disaster] was an isolated incident."

"When you look at the experience of the industry, we've been in the Gulf for over 65 years and have drilled over 42,000 wells. This clearly was a rare incident," Gerard said.

Environmentalists offered a different take.

"Reality shows us that oil disasters are tragically common," Miles Grant, a spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation, wrote in an e-mail to reporters this morning. "The Deepwater Horizon wasn't even the only oil rig explosion in the Gulf last year -- another blast in September injured a worker and sent a plume of thick black smoke into the sky."

Read much more on the commission's report (free!) from Brad Johnson of the Center for American Progress.

Definitive Proof Big Oil Has No Sense of Humor

The Green Fiancee and I headed to the DC Improv recently to see the standup act of John Oliver, a correspondent for The Daily Show.

About halfway through his set, Oliver noticed a man in the front row of tables was texting. Oliver began giving him some good-natured ribbing. But rather than owning up to his faux pas and having a laugh about it, the man told Oliver to buzz off and continued texting.

If there's any way to earn yourself more insults from a comic, it's to act annoyed by his insults. Oliver had the audience in stitches as the man fumed.

Oliver moved on, but a few minutes later, Oliver stopped in the middle of a joke -- texting man was at it again. But this time, he wasn't having any of Oliver digs -- the man and the woman he was with got up and stormed out.

Texting man and his companion had been with another couple, and Oliver apologized to them if he'd caused any trouble. Oliver expressed amazement someone with absolutely no interest in his comedy would bother coming to the show. The couple said they'd bought the tickets and invited the other two.

"What does he do for a living?" Oliver asked.

"He's a lobbyist," the woman replied, "for the American Petroleum Institute."

It must've taken a solid two minutes for the audience's laughter to die down.

"Ninety-five percent of me enjoyed giving him a hard time, but five percent had felt a little guilty," Oliver said. "Not anymore."

Big Oil Gets Behind McCain's VP on Polar Bear Lawsuit

The Washington Post reports a Big Oil front group is joining John McCain's running mate in trying to strip polar bears of Endangered Species Act protection:

The American Petroleum Institute and four other business groups filed suit Thursday against Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, joining Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration in trying to reverse the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species.

The other groups involved in the latest lawsuit are the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute. Just despicable.

As a leading advocate of polar bear protection points out, Gov. Palin's stance puts her to the far right of even President Bush:

Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which originally petitioned to list the polar bear as an endangered species in 2005, decried the assertion in the Alaska suit that science does not prove polar bear populations are declining. The center is also suing the federal government, seeking to change the polar bear's official status from "threatened" to "endangered."

"The amazing thing about this litigation is that the governor of Alaska is so anti-environmental that she is suing the Bush administration over a claimed overabundance of protections for the polar bear," Siegel said. "It's just amazing."

If you liked the Bush administration's war on science, you'll love Sarah Palin!