April 2025 does not resolve. It thickens. Protest, spring rain, flowers, insects, public records, climate policy and a truck marked SPILL RESPONSE occupy the same days. Looking back, I ask what it means to pay attention while the machinery of government is being rapidly remade.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
Walking gives me the material and also gives me the order. *Our Town* follows June as it happened—water, flowers, machinery, music, political signs, insects, shadows, protest and pavement—allowing ordinary things to overlap without forcing them into a single explanation.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
Walking through Ithaca, I watch streets torn open and repaired, trees pruned, workers tending the ordinary machinery of a city. This is not a war zone. Neither are other American cities made into battlefields because the government describes them as dangerous or proposes using them as military “training grounds.” September asks what happens when the language of climate, dissent, and public life is changed to obscure what is plainly before us. Reality does not yield to the words used against it.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
October is made from texture, wind, insects, water, shadow, protest, and sound. The walk stays close to the ground, then opens suddenly into public language: an Earth flag, no kings, no crowns for clowns, a national anthem played through drum roll and pennywhistle. My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness!
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
I combine naturalism, history, diary, always in motion.
March may be my key piece. It is the longest video, and it feels iconic to me — the right time and place. This month seems to contain the full grammar: weather, politics, friends, music, gallery light, water, mud, protest, spring, death, food, thunder, and the body walking through it all.
Source: Mixplex (2026) Read More
OGAP tracks drilling impacts with a watchdog’s eye: complaints, enforcement gaps, industry claims, and the fine print of regulation. The hook is accountability — who reports what, who inspects, who pays, who fixes. In boom country, the technical work happens fast and the paperwork trails behind. OGAP exists to pull that trail forward into view, turning scattered incidents into patterns that regulators and communities can’t easily ignore.
Source: Earthworks (2009) Read More
A nuts-and-bolts explainer of the process: drilling, casing, perforation, high-pressure fluid, sand, and chemical additives — engineered force applied underground to release gas. It’s operational clarity in a debate that often floats above the mechanics. The hook here is not ideology — it’s process: how a well becomes productive, where failures can occur, and why “how it’s done” matters when water, cement, and pressure are the core ingredients.
Source: Earthworks (2010) Read More
Exxon confronted shareholder resolutions from Catholic nuns and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) over climate disclosure and long-term strategy. The religious orders argued that the company’s global warming plans failed to account for environmental and moral risk, while CalPERS — one of the nation’s largest public pension funds — framed climate exposure as a material financial concern. The pressure signaled a shift: climate risk had moved from protest lines into boardrooms and proxy votes.
Source: Bloomberg.com (2007) Read More
U.S. Energy Development Corporation pursued upstream drilling opportunities across shale basins, aggregating leases and capitalizing on unconventional resource plays. In Meadville, Pennsylvania, the Department of Environmental Protection issued a cease-and-desist order to the Getzville, New York–based firm, citing persistent and repeated violations of environmental laws and regulations.
Source: U.S. Energy Development Corporation | Strive for Excellence (2010) Read More
Triana Energy operated in the Marcellus Shale during the boom’s early expansion, navigating leasing, drilling, and eventual acquisition in a fast-moving market. In a 2009 case in West Virginia, landowners who sold natural gas to Chesapeake and its predecessors — including Triana Energy, NiSource Inc., and Columbia Natural Resources — alleged they were cheated out of portions of their royalty payments. In shale’s rapid ascent, corporate timing and contract terms often moved just as quickly as the drilling rigs.
Source: Triana Energy (2010) Read More
The Tennessee Gas Pipeline system connects production fields to distant markets, underscoring that extraction is only part of the equation. Pipelines determine where gas flows — and which communities host compressor stations and right-of-way corridors. Infrastructure redraws maps.
Source: Tennessee Gas Pipeline (2010) Read More
Watchdog reporting scrutinized New York’s regulatory approach to natural gas development as the state weighed whether to permit high-volume hydraulic fracturing. New York–based Toxics Targeting examined the Department of Environmental Conservation’s own spill database, identifying 270 documented cases over three decades involving fires, explosions, wastewater releases, well contamination, and ecological damage tied to gas drilling — many still unresolved. The findings challenged repeated assurances that existing regulations were sufficient to safeguard public health and the environment.
Source: Democracy Now! (2009) Read More
Senator Lindsey Graham withdrew support from a major Senate climate bill, fracturing a fragile bipartisan coalition. The setback stalled momentum for comprehensive climate legislation. Energy policy once again splintered along party lines, leaving regulatory authority to agencies and states.
Source: The New York Times (2010) Read More
The term “ecocide” evokes systemic environmental destruction — landscapes degraded not by accident but by policy and industrial priority. Examining ecological collapse in the former USSR provides a historical mirror: when environmental safeguards erode, damage accumulates quietly until it becomes generational. Energy policy is never purely economic.
Source: BasicBooks (1993) Read More
In Decatur, Texas, the Ruggiero family described what changed after nearby drilling began — odors, noise, medical symptoms, uncertainty about air quality. State regulators conducted tests. Companies defended operations. For families living beside compressor stations, the energy boom was not macroeconomics — it was lived proximity.
Source: Earthworks (2012) Read More
NYRAD organized statewide resistance to high-volume hydraulic fracturing, rallying residents concerned about water, health, and rural character. Through protests, teach-ins, and policy advocacy, the group turned a regulatory decision into a grassroots movement. As Albany deliberated, public pressure intensified.
Source: New York Residents Against Drilling (NYRAD) (2010) Read More
Northern Rockies Rising Tide organizes grassroots resistance to fossil fuel expansion across Montana and neighboring states. Activists stage protests, train volunteers, and scrutinize pipeline routes and drilling permits. Their strategy blends direct action with community education. In a region defined by wide skies and long distances, the group insists that remote landscapes still demand vigilant defense.
Source: Northern Rockies Rising Tide (2010) Read More
Shaleshock captures the upheaval unleashed by rapid shale development — economic spikes, social strain, environmental uncertainty. As drilling rigs multiply, communities wrestle with boomtown dynamics: housing shortages, infrastructure stress, divided neighbors. The shock isn’t only geological. It’s civic. The ground may hold gas, but the surface holds consequences.
Source: Shaleshock (2010) Read More
Writing in The Nation, Eyal Press traced the evolution of federal natural gas policy from the Clinton administration’s balanced expansion to the Bush administration’s push to remove drilling restrictions on public lands. The article framed shale development not simply as an energy story but as a political shift in regulatory philosophy—one with implications for environmental protection, public land stewardship, and the accelerating push toward fossil fuel extraction.
Source: The Nation (2004) Read More
“The state Land Board, undeterred by anti-mining protesters who disrupted the board’s Helena meeting for 45 minutes until they were arrested, voted 3-2 Thursday to approve leasing 570 million tons of state-owned coal for development of a mine in southeastern Montana’s Otter Creek Valley.
Source: Billings Gazette (2010) Read More
This video documents a well in Candor, NY—above the Marcellus Shale—where drinking water can be ignited, raising urgent questions about regulatory oversight and underground contamination (Spill #0811696). Referencing Walter Hang’s 2010 letter to the NYS DEC and watchdog reports criticizing decades of insufficient enforcement, the footage situates the incident within a broader pattern of state-level regulatory failure and mounting public protest.
Source: YouTube (2009) Read More
In Tree Spiker: From Earth First! to Lowbagging: My Struggles in Radical Environmental Action, Mike Roselle recounts his evolution from Yippie provocateur to cofounder of Earth First! and the Rainforest Action Network, tracing decades of radical environmental activism from street theater to mountaintop-removal protests in Appalachia. Writing against the backdrop of federal drilling exemptions advanced under Vice President Dick Cheney and ongoing battles over hydraulic fracturing disclosure, Roselle situates non-violent civil disobedience as both moral response and strategic necessity in confronting coal, oil, and gas power structures.
Source: St. Martin's Press (2009) Read More
In a Texas Observer investigation into oilfield waste injection wells, high school art teacher Cecile Carson challenged the Railroad Commission of Texas after commissioners swiftly denied her protest against a proposed injection well near her Wise County property. The case highlights weak enforcement penalties—often capped at a few thousand dollars—and raises broader concerns about regulatory oversight of oil and gas waste disposal in Texas communities.
Source: The Texas Observer (2006) Read More
On May 17, 2010, Climate Ground Zero activists EmmaKate Martin and Benjamin Bryant blockaded Massey Energy’s headquarters in Boone County, West Virginia, protesting mountaintop removal mining. Magistrate Snodgrass set bail at $100,000 each for misdemeanor charges, marking one of the highest bails imposed on nonviolent environmental protesters in the state. The action, linked to broader campaigns involving James Hansen and Daryl Hannah, spotlighted escalating legal pressure on climate resistance movements.
Source: It’s Getting Hot In Here (2010) Read More
Leaked internal bulletins revealed that Pennsylvania’s Department of Homeland Security contracted a private intelligence firm to monitor anti-drilling activists, sparking public outrage and forcing Gov. Ed Rendell to apologize and cancel the agreement. The episode raised serious concerns about civil liberties, state surveillance, and the alignment of public agencies with natural gas industry interests.
Source: Workers World (2010) Read More
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher, founder of Peaceful Uprising and later cofounder of the Climate Disobedience Center, became known as “Bidder 70” after disrupting a 2008 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas lease auction held during the final months of the George W. Bush administration. By posing as a bidder and driving up prices on 22,000 acres of Utah public land slated for fossil fuel development, DeChristopher sought to prevent what environmentalists described as a rushed and undervalued sale. He was later prosecuted and convicted of fraud in March 2011 and sentenced to two years in prison, framing his act as civil disobedience in defense of climate justice and democratic accountability.
Source: Bidder70 (2010) Read More
Appalachia Rising, a national mobilization held in Washington, D.C., September 25–27, 2010, brought together coalfield residents, grassroots groups, and national organizations to protest mountaintop removal coal mining and its destruction of Appalachian mountains, waterways, and communities. The action ’culminated in arrests at the White House and was covered by outlets including Democracy Now!, framing mountaintop removal as both an environmental and public health crisis affecting America’s water supply.
Source: Appalachia Rising (2010) Read More
The Thoreau Reader, curated by Richard Lenat in cooperation with the Thoreau Society, presents annotated editions of Henry David Thoreau’s works including Civil Disobedience and Walden. Thoreau’s refusal to pay taxes in protest of slavery and the U.S. war with Mexico later influenced figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., whose philosophy of nonviolent resistance drew upon Thoreau’s assertion that when government becomes destructive of human rights, individuals may have a moral duty to resist unjust law.
Source: Thoreau eServer by Richard Lenat (2002) Read More
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), officially established on December 2, 1970 by President Richard Nixon, emerged from a decade of rising environmental awareness sparked in large part by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. As pollution crises mounted and public pressure intensified following the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Nixon created a strong, independent agency to unify federal air, water, pesticide, and radiation programs under Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus.
Source: EPA Journal (1985) Read More
In a 2009 report for the Philadelphia Independent Media Center, Nastassja Noell documented escalating tensions in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia over natural gas drilling. Residents described spills, road accidents, and regulatory failures involving Cabot Oil & Gas and Chesapeake Energy, while activist Joanne Fiorito criticized the Pennsylvania DEP for failing to monitor sites. As federal and state oversight faltered, some citizens turned to civil disobedience to defend land, air, and water.
Source: Philadelphia Independent Media Center (2009) Read More
SourceWatch traces the popularization of the term “eco-terrorism” to Ron Arnold of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. After September 11, the label gained traction through legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), blurring the line between peaceful civil disobedience and terrorism. Environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network argue that redefining protest as “terrorism” threatens media visibility, fundraising capacity, and constitutionally protected dissent.
Source: SourceWatch (2017) Read More
On November 3, 2010, more than 500 demonstrators gathered in Pittsburgh to protest the Developing Unconventional Gas (DUG) East Conference, where industry leaders—including keynote speaker Karl Rove—met to discuss shale gas development. Activists from Pennsylvania and neighboring states marched to the David Lawrence Convention Center calling for a moratorium on drilling and raising concerns about health, water safety, and environmental impacts linked to Marcellus Shale gas extraction. MarcellusProtest.org, a project of the Center for Coalfield Justice, served as an information hub for organizing, events, and regional activism across shale-impacted communities.
Source: Marcellus Shale Protest | No Frackng Way (2010) Read More
CHE: Collaborative on Health and Environment is an international partnership committed to strengthening the scientific and public dialogue on the impact of environmental factors on human health…
Source: CHE | Collaborative on Health and the Environment (2010) Read More
The Independent Petroleum Association of America challenged the nomination of two prominent fracking critics—Theo Colborn and Robert Howarth—to an EPA review panel studying hydraulic fracturing. Industry leaders accused them of bias, citing Colborn’s work on health impacts and Howarth’s draft report suggesting shale gas emissions may rival coal. The dispute highlighted tensions between environmental scientists and industry advocates as the EPA began evaluating the risks of hydraulic fracturing and its implications for climate and public health.
Source: New York Times: Greenwire (2010) Read More
MarcellusProtest.org served as an information hub for grassroots opposition to shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania and beyond. Emerging from local demonstrations, the movement connected activists, events, and resources across the Marcellus region while critiquing industry narratives. Participants later formed coalitions such as Protect Our Parks to resist drilling in public lands. The site documented how regional organizing built enduring activist networks that continued influencing environmental campaigns long after initial protests concluded.
Source: YouTube | "The Marcellus: An American Renewal" (2010) Read More
In her Oregon Law Review article, “The Effect of the United States Supreme Court’s Eleventh Amendment Jurisprudence on Clean Water Act Citizen Suits,” Professor Hope Babcock examines how the Court’s expansion of state sovereign immunity has narrowed citizens’ ability to enforce federal environmental laws. She argues that recent decisions have shielded state agencies from accountability, weakening Clean Water Act enforcement and limiting private lawsuits under other environmental statutes, thereby constraining the public’s capacity to vindicate federally protected rights.
Source: Oregon Law Review (2004) Read More
New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Environmental Conservation Committee Chair Robert K. Sweeney announced the passage of legislation
Source: New York State Assembly | Speaker Sheldon Silver (2010) Read More
“There is growing evidence from the real world that climate changes are accelerating faster than we originally feared and that impacts—already appearing—will be more widespread and severe than expected. This makes the arguments against taking actions against climate change not just wrong, but dangerous,” Dr. Gleick said in his
Source: Climate Science Watch (2010) Read More
Heartland Institute Conference held March 8-10th in New York at the Marriott New York Marquis Times Square Hotel, brought together scientists, economists, legal experts, and other climate specialists to “confront the issue of global warming.”
Source: The Heartland Institute | BBC News (2011) Read More
Twitter is one of the ways the Environmental Protection Agency communicates with the public. She has 13,000 followers and follows
Source: Lisa P. Jackson, EPA (lisapjackson) on Twitter (2010) Read More
If you plan to stop by these woods on a snowy evening bring some marshmallows and expect an evening sunburn. There’s a chance your treats will be toxic.
Source: YouTube (2008) Read More
Shell USA, Inc. (formerly Shell Oil Company, Inc.) is the United States–based wholly owned subsidiary of Shell plc, a UK-based transnational corporation “oil major” which is among the largest oil companies in the world. It is reported that Royal Dutch Shell Plc agreed to buy closely held East Resources Inc., for about $5 billion.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2010) Read More
According to the EPA’s National Emission Inventory, Chevron was responsible for 4,030,422.95 pounds of green house gas emission pollution in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana in 2002.
Source: Friends of the Earth (2008) Read More
The gas stored in the Marcellus Shale formation is the subject of desperate drilling to secure US domestic energy supplies. But the process involved – hydraulic fracturing – is the focus of a bitter dispute over environmental damage and community rights.
Source: The Ecologist (2010) Read More
Let’s consider for a moment the targets the federal government chooses to make an example of. So far, no bankers have been charged, despite the unmitigated greed that nearly brought the world economy down. No coal or oil execs have been charged, despite fouling the entire atmosphere and putting civilization as we know it at risk.
Source: Grist (2011) Read More
To protests from business and praise from unions, environmentalists and consumer groups, one agency after another has ratcheted up the price of life, justifying tougher — and more costly — standards…
Source: The New York Times (2011) Read More
Protestors outside the Buffalo offices of the Department of Environmental Conservation today called for an executive order by Governor Andrew Cuomo to define fracking fluid as a hazardous waste and ban its treatment by municipal facilities…
Source: PBS | Innovation Trail (2011) Read More
Amici curiae are fourteen faith-based organizations that are active participants in the ongoing attempt to respond to global climate change and have a strong interest in developing limits on greenhouse gases, which are the primary cause of global climate change.
Source: American Bar Association (2011) Read More
Bring everyone you can find as well as your biggest signs and banners. After the rally, we will march to the Governor’s office on the Second Floor of the Capitol to let him know we support his policy that New York’s “watersheds are sacrosanct.”
Source: Walter Hang (2011) Read More
In the absence of federal policies that are protective of child development and the ecology of the planet on which our children’s lives depend, we serve as our own regulatory agencies and departments of the interior…
Source: Da Capo Press (2011) Read More
Change.org, the website that allows users to create petitions for social change, received a legal threat from Peabody Energy after Coal Kills Kids (CKK) — a group that partnered with the Yes Men to unveil a faux Peabody charity initiative earlier this week (archived) — continued the hoax with a mock petition.
Source: San Francisco Bay Guardian Online (SFBG) (2011) Read More
Broder’s piece goes on to offer a smokescreen of protest by the right, but according to Dusty Horwitt of the Environmental Working Group (archived), “An industry insider like John Deutch is completely unacceptable to lead this panel…It looks as if the Obama Administration has already reached the conclusion that fracking is safe.”
Source: NYTimes.com: Green | A Blog About the Environment (2011) Read More
Stop Fracking Ontario is a web project to inform and promote activism against fracking in Ontario, in the surrounding region, and elsewhere.
Source: Fracking Canada (2011) Read More
Numerous complainants petitioned the USA government to get the EPA to review the earlier decision on hydraulic fracking. One of them, from Neil Zusman, Ithaca, NY, is particularly poignant: I have read widely on this topic and it is of personal interest to me. I am not a scientist. I observe the events along the historical timeline that includes civil rights, anti-war protest, and the environmental movement….
Source: Magiric (2011) Read More