http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/congress-uses-ukraine-as-shock-doctrine-excuse-to-expand-dangerous-and-polluting-gas-lng-exports
[Multiple links in on-line article]
Friday, 28 March 2014 07:45
Congress Uses Ukraine as "Shock Doctrine" Excuse To Expand Explosive and
Polluting Gas (LNG) Exports
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
In a BuzzFlash at Truthout commentary yesterday, "The Major Reason There
Will Be No War With Russia: They Are Rasputin Capitalists Now," we
speculated that there would be no armed conflict between the United
States and Russia, because Moscow under Putin has become a full-fledged
gangster capitalist nation -- a country Wall Street can love and admire
for its brashness in being openly proud of its thuggishness oligarchy.
However, that does not mean that there is not competition within the
pantheon of titan capitalists. Such is the case occurring in the United
States using the Ukarine-Crimea "crisis" to launch an all out fossil
fuel face-off with Russia's Gazprom, the number one natural gas supplier
in the world. Europe and the Ukraine and many other nations depend upon
Gazprom for a good percentage of their natural gas supply.
The United States may now be, or so the government claims, the largest
producer of oil and natural gas combined in the world, but the
production frenzy of the US (and Canadian) fossil fuel industry is
reaching a grand finale of maximum Earth destroying extraction, before
global warming will force a possible too-late reduction of oil and gas
production ravaging of the Earth.
So, what are US politicians doing in response to the Russian incursion
into Crimea? Why, vociferously advocating for undercutting Russian
natural gas exports by increasing US shipments to Europe and former
Soviet Union republics, now independent nations.
In fact, President Obama is encouraging not only increased shipment of
natural gas overseas, but more fracking in Europe -- all destined to
ratchet up the Earth's climate change, putting residents of the planet
in perilous risk.
Indeed, you can see an example of Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine" at work
in the heavy-handed jingoistic efforts of the fossil fuel industry to
force the federal government to permit approval of large-scale expansion
of LNG processing plants and shipment facilities to, allegedly, use a
tool to undermine Gazprom through challenging sales in its marketplace.
LNG, if you do not know, stands for liquefied natural gas. Currently,
the EPA is approving LNG port facilities very slowly because of the
concern about its potential volatility and harm to the environment. As
the Sierra Club writes on its blog in opposition to increasing LNG
facilities in the US:
Exporting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to overseas markets is a dirty,
dangerous practice that lets the industry make a killing at the expense
of human health....
Exporting natural gas would increase fracking and carbon emissions, put
sensitive ecological areas at risk, and do nothing to address our
country's energy challenges. Natural gas companies envision a network of
winding pipelines and noisy, polluting compressors that connect the
drills to the docks, slicing through wild lands, rivers, and backyards.
Pipelines and gas wells will inevitably leak or rupture, risking lives
and fouling the environment where people live and further polluting the
air we breathe and the water we drink.
Not only that, the super-cooling process that turns fossil fuel vapor
into LNG requires an immense amount of energy -- so much energy, in
fact, that the LNG life-cycle is as dirty as coal. The industry wants to
build enormous shipping terminals that would pave over fields, fill
wetlands, and destroy estuaries.
The industry claims natural gas is the key to America’s energy
independence, yet they want to export almost half of daily U.S.
production, leaving our communities polluted while the gas industry
profits.
Preventing these facilities from being built will dramatically decrease
the pressure to drill for more gas and in turn prevent more destruction
of our land and pollution of our water and air.
As Klein has noted, nonetheless, capitalism never lets a crisis or a
manufactured crisis go to waste in the pursuit of profit and unfettered
free market theory.
So it is that the fossil fuel industry's favorite Democratic Senator,
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, is now using the Ukrainian political
confrontation as a justification to expand LNG facilities due,
allegedly, to a geopolitical "emergency":
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., the Senate [Energy and Natural Resources
Committe's] new chairman, said U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, or
LNG, would be a “powerful geopolitical tool” to pressure Russian
President Vladimir Putin to lower gas prices across Europe.
“We all know real competition in real open markets drives efficiency and
lowers prices for everyone,” Landrieu said. “The last thing Putin and
his cronies want is competition from the United States of America in the
energy race. Tyrants and dictators throughout history have had many
reasons to fear revolutions, and this U.S. energy revolution is one they
should all keep their eyes on.”
Landrieu’s energy-producing state is home to several proposed terminals
to export LNG, including the only project that has won final approval.
The terminal at Sabine Pass, La., is scheduled to begin operations late
next year. Other proposed terminals would not begin sending fuel
overseas until 2017 at the earliest....
Landrieu, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other lawmakers have
been urging the Obama administration to clear the way for more exports
amid a U.S. natural gas boom driven by improved drilling techniques,
including hydraulic fracturing.
The real shock in this iron-fisted opportunism and use of the "shock
doctrine" to advance fossil fuel interests will come when climate change
has re-shaped our biosphere to make us an endangered species.
Yet, money trumps the future of the planet: Short-term gain as the Earth
is plundered to its core, increasing carbon emissions by leaps and
bounds, is behind the bellicose calls for dotting America with LNG
plants and tankers.
The United States and Russia are in a race to extinguishing life as we
know it. When money is the only value for our elected officials in DC,
human life and the wonder of our planet take a back seat.
This ultimately lethal game for profits increases exponentially when the
shock doctrine kicks in.
[Of course, if we really cared about Gazprom's clients or reducing GHGs,
we could be providing European's with funding and materials to expand
solar heating and building insulation now, rather than waiting until
2017 or later to make any impact.]
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