SOURCE: Common Dreams
DATE: June 5, 2019
SNIP: A first-of-its-kind report released Wednesday by Food & Water Watch details the more than 700 new U.S. facilities that have been recently built or proposed for development “to capitalize off of a glut of cheap fracked gas,” and the consequences for the planet and its inhabitants if these projects are allowed to continue.
The report comes a week after top Energy Department officials, in a press release about natural gas exports, referred to fossil fuels as “molecules of U.S. freedom” and “freedom gas.” Climate campaigners characterized that widely ridiculed language as just another example of the Trump administration’s demonstrated commitment to planetary destruction.
“The Trump administration calls it ‘freedom gas,’ but what we’re really talking about here is failure gas,” Food & Water Watch’s Seth Gladstone told Common Dreams about the report. “Continuing to invest in fracked gas would represent a failure to address plastics pollution, a failure to prioritize human health and safety, and a failure to protect future generations from climate chaos.”
The group’s new report—entitled Fracking Endgame: Locked Into Plastics, Pollution, and Climate Chaos (pdf)—focuses on three key industries that are both benefiting from and helping to drive the country’s fracking boom: “the petrochemical and plastics industries that use natural gas liquids as a key feedstock for their manufacturing; gas exporters building liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals to ship gas overseas; and natural gas-fired power plants.”