Meet the Gas Geezers

Maura Stephens. Gassy Geezer Pushes Fossil Fuel. 20 Apr 2011. TruthOut.

This weekend, as 10,000 energetic, bright young people are converging on Washington, DC, for PowerShift 2011, a geezer* is waging an all-out assault on their future.

Eighty-two-year-old Texas fossil-fuel-pushing megabillionaire T. Boone Pickens has, incredibly, essentially written a bill called the NAT GAS Act (“New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions,” H.R. 1380), to switch fleet vehicles such as buses and interstate trucks to “natural” gas.

Pickens has been working the Hill, White House, airwaves, and editorial boardrooms for some time. He’s got buddies like MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan gushing over him and Joe Nocera writing oily op-ed odes to nat gas in the New York Times. And Pickens has somehow managed to sell President Obama and an astonishing number of Congress members on the myth that nat-gas is a homegrown wonder fuel “bridge” from dirty foreign oil to a clean energy future…
Maura Stephens. Gassy Geezer Pushes Fossil Fuel. 20 Apr 2011. TruthOut.

Maura Stephens

Associate Director Park Center Independent Media

Journalism
School of Communications

From 1997 to 2010 Maura Stephens was publishing editor of ICView, Ithaca College’s quarterly magazine, bringing to a 63,000+ readership hundreds of stories about the College and its many constituents.

From 2004 to 2007 Maura served as vice president of the board and speakers bureau member of Theocracy Watch, a nonprofit organization founded by Joan Bokaer that tracked and exposed the rise of the radical religious right in U.S. government.

Maura is now actively involved in the fight against dangerous mining for methane gas via toxic-chemical-laden “slick-water hydraulic fracturing,” or fracking, in the Marcellus Shale region, which encompasses the Finger Lakes region. With many other concerned citizens who have taken it upon themselves to learn of the environmental, health, and economic hazards of this destructive practice, she is hoping to stop Big Gas before it can permanently destroy the region they love, as it has done to large portions of neighboring Pennsylvania and many other states. Maura is a cofounder of Coalition to Protect New York. Read one of Maura’s stories on the subject here.

Maura has guest lectured in several disciplines at IC and other institutions and given scores of presentations, lectures, and media interviews. She has written for such independent media outlets as AlterNet, openDemocracy, Salon.com, TruthOut, and Yes! magazine. She was one of 32 women from around the world invited to contribute to a “Women Making a Difference” dialog marking the fifth anniversary of UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security and the EU resolution that followed it, and to a dialog on “Women and the G8.” In both cases the contributors’ recommendations were compiled and given to UN and G8 leaders.

Maura’s Ithaca-area community involvement has included Finger Lakes Progressives; Sustainable Tompkins; Shaleshock Action Alliance; Democracy New York; Ithaca Rape Crisis/Crime Victim and Sexual Assault Services of Tompkins County; ROUSE; the marketing and development committee of the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County; Wolf’s Mouth Theatre Collective and other theater organizations; and independent media alliances. She has also taught creative writing at Lifelong and other venues and is a theater actor, director, producer, and playwright; her first full-length play, Promise/Insh’Allah, will be workshopped in 2011. She lives in Tioga County with her husband, George Sapio, a playwright, director, teacher, photographer, and producer.

See: Chevron Human Energy Stories | Addressing Climate Change

See: The Government Accountability Project (GAP)

See: Fueling Washington

See: The Next Drilling Disaster?

See: Natural Gas Industry Shills Use the Media to Mislead the Public – Here’s How to Spot Them

See: This Website is a Crash Course In Fracking

See: Affirming Gasland

See: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA): Weston Wilson Whistle Blower Letter

See: NETL: Secure & Reliable Energy Supplies

See: Hydraulic Fracturing Applicability of the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act Science Advisory Board Discussion

See: EPA Findings on Hydraulic Fracturing Deemed “Unsupportable”

See: Coalbed Methane Development: The Costs and Benefits of an Emerging Energy Resource