New York State's Attorney General and Peabody Energy agree on something, sort of

On the 9th of November, 2015, New York State's Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman's office put out this media release A.G. Schneiderman Secures Unprecedented Agreement with Peabody Energy to End Misleading Statements and Disclose Risks Arising From Climate Change 

Previously, Schneiderman was reported as having subpoenaed ExxonMobil "seeking financial records, statements and other climate-change-related material dating back to 1977."  Several media outlets reported this, in addition to USA Today, such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Jounral and too many others to list here.

Prior to those reports about the subpoenas, rumors were all over the place about ExxonMobil having lied for years about its research pointing to the deleterious effects of its raison d'être and having hidden this research from the public and government regulators. Bill McKivbben wrote a piece for The New Yorker on this, where he gave kudos to Inside Climate Change regarding their report two days before on their research about ExxonMobil's actions.  According to the authors of the piece in Inside Climate Change, "Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago."

Back to A.G. Schneiderman.  So he's going after ExxonMobil's actions, potentially worse than that of the tobacco industry's in hiding for years the negative health effects of smoking and also lying about their research on the effects of smoking.

And Schneiderman has forged an agreement with Peabody Energy, whose spokepeople, as is usual in these cases, neither confirm nor deny anything, but according to Schneiderman's release, "Attorney General Schneiderman initiated an investigation of Peabody’s financial disclosures in securities filings in 2013. The investigation found that the company repeatedly denied in public financial filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it had the ability to predict the impact that potential regulation of climate change pollution would have on its business, even though Peabody and its consultants actually made projections that such regulation would have severe impacts on the company."

Schneiderman's agreement with Peabody and investigation of ExxonMobil hits those companies where it hurts - in relations with stockholders, the value of the stocks not only of those companies, the monetary value of the corporations, but others in the fossil fuel business. And this is at a time when oil/gas tankers are lined up in the Gulf of Mexico waiting to unload at ports in Texas, because of the global glut of oil and the low prices of crude and at the gas station pump at the moment.   But that might rapidly change with any slight shock to the system overall, especially involving oil/gas producing countries.

The question for people in those areas still being fracked for oil/gas is why is no one, including Schneiderman, is going after all the drillers in the oil/gas shale plays across the U.S. (We'll keep the discussion to the U.S. for now, but with the potential passage of TPP, the picture gets more "interesting"). Why is no one going after the builders of pipelines snaking across the entire country, in even those states not being fracked, such as Schneiderman's state of New York? All that infrastructure (pipelines, compressor stations, metering stations) have been shown to contribute to the increase in not just carbon, but also methane in the atmosphere and thus to the increase in global temperatures,

Keep in mind that Schneiderman is a lawyer,  the attorney for the entire state, the state that contains Wall Street.  He did not make a public move against ExxonMobil until after the extensive research by a non-profit organization was revealed to the public. The move against Peabody was also after years of activity by those inside and outside of government.

Most likely, the proof of any chronic malfeasance and lying to shareholders, to the USEIA and to regulatory agencies, by the likes of Cabot, Williams, Schlumberger et al has to be produced in a proof positive fashion to the public at large and done by a trustworthy organization like Inside Climate Change, AND must relate to a policy, law or the like emanating from New York State.  In other words, for Schneiderman to act, some one or more private and/or public persons and/or ogranizations has to begin to dig up and document potentially incriminating evidence AND, most importantly, NYS has to have legal standing. In one or both of the situations with Peabody and ExxonMobil, Schneiderman is grounding his position on violations of New York’s Martin Act and Executive Law which prohibit false and misleading conduct in connection with securities transactions.

Back to Wall Street.

Is it because if such investigation of ALL the parts of ALL the fossil fuel industries goes forward, we are potentially looking at the collapse of the entire global economy?

Our choice right now seem to be allow the lies to continue so as not to die right away, but in bits, by slowly twisting in the choking wind.

And meanwhile, the corporate capitalist extractvist system carries on in India with coal and in the U.S. with yet more leases for drilling on public land along with yet more war and global military activity

My trip to the Stop the Frack Attack Summit in Denver, CO in 2015

First, I got up in time to get in the car and drive it to the ramp downtown,  about 20 minutes away, park it on the first floor, or the second, then walk over to the Inter/intra-city bus building - see it to the right - buy my ticket to either NYC or to Syracuse.  Then wait.  Because I'm concerned about the Greyhound being late, getting out of NYC. I've done this every time I have left for Colorado or St. Louis.
It can be a pain to be not on the train-line but at least I comfort myself with guessing I'm in a fairly safer area.

The train leaves once a day from Syracuse, at night, around 9:30 p.m. or later if the train is delayed.  Depending on what train I'm taking from NYC's Penn Station, there's more choices.
If I'm going to Chicago, then it's Syracuse.  If I'm going South, like to Florida or TX, then it's NYC's Penn Station. No point paying extra just to take the train from Syracuse east then south to NYC.  The station at the left is of Syracuse. It's a very pleasant and not crowded at all even though it's a station that serves the city bus, the intra-city busses and the Amtrak.  Well planned. So I get on at night close to bed time and hope to sleep.  I'll wake up sometime the next day at around Erie, PA.  The stop there is a bit longer as they do something with watering the train.  With a hose.
So I just occupied myself with gazing out the window.  In preparing for writing this entry on the blog, I did a search and found some other blogs of other people who had made cross country train trips.
There's things I could write about the cities between Syracuse and Chicago, such as Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo, Bryan, Waterloo, Elkhart, South Bend and then Chicago.  There's other stops in between BUT the train has a choice whether to stop or not, depending on traffic.
Once in Chicago, with a 3 to 6 hour layover for the train to Denver (the California Zephyr), I had time to spare and needed to get outside.  The car's attendant commented about taking a ride around Chicago (not interested as who knows?) plus I needed to find wi-fi ASAP to connect with my students in my online course and also check email.
So, I headed outside to the Panera that's over around the corner over the bride, just past the Corner Bakery.  I know this as the train employees in the station kept saying that I did not know anything and that I should just go to the Corner Bakery.  So I went out into the sunshine away from the darkness and crowdedness, turned left, went over the river, then turned left again and found it.  It being lunch time, it was crowded and the wi-fi was limited to one hour of use.  So I then left and went back to the Corner Bakery, spent some time there and then retraced my steps back into the station.
At the select time, the train, the California Express, pulled out of the Chicago station.  The person next to me was friendly and talkative.  We talked about the car attendant, who was one of Amtrak's worst people.  It turned out she was a smoker as we saw her smoking with the passengers at the smoke stops.  Did I mention them?  If not in this post, the smoke stops are the longer stops scheduled more or less to take place before the smokers raise hell on the train.
We went from Chicago to Naperville, Princeton, Galesburg, then into Iowa for Burlington, Mount Pleasant, then Ottumwa, Osceloa, Creston, then Omaha, NE! We crossed the Mississippi River.

In NE there were other train stations missed after Omaha as it got later and then night fell and I missed the U. S. Air Force depot.  It's pretty boring to cross the plains there as it's flat and there's fields and fields and fields.

But inside the train, especially in the observation car, was kinda nice.

But as you go through IA then NE, a voice came on over the car's speaker saying to look out on one side to see the remnants of a tornado that had passed through a short time before.   So I looked and took photos as I could not see to determine and hoped I would catch it. When I checked my photos later I had!

After that, there were more flat lands and fields.

We arrived, worn out and tired into Denver, CO. in the morning. And not having had a shower with the train car being more hot than cold, I was kinda grungy.
So I called the hotel to check again if there was a cost-free shuttle.  There wasn't.  Only to and from the Denver airport  So I grabbed the first cab I saw.  It turned out to be a mistake. Driving from the station to the hotel, he took the highway and at one point, skipped from one lane to the next at the last minute.  I braced myself and looked at the meter, saying nothing. A bit tired and more, I checked into the hotel, found my room on the fifth floor, noted that my room-mate was away, then went down to the basement to register then went back up to the room to shower.  Then I was ready.

Things got very busy that Saturday and Sunday, especially with Prof. Tony Ingraffea speaking to a beyond packed room, then the session on media, then the session with the young LGBT lawyer from California, speaking about events in the agricultural fields of the Central Valley of California.  For the session with the young lawyer from California, she was passionate and driven and very funny. I could not stand to see Robbie typing and making mistakes while he typed but he was calm throughout. She was one of the four women who received recognition at an event towards the end where they spoke.
Later, I met my roomie, who turned out to have a bad deep cold.  That night I went to the hot tub.  I met there Hope ForPeace (her FB name) but it had no bubbles, just sitting in hot water. Keep those two points in mind.
On Monday, we piled into busses which took us downtown to a park to assemble for the big march.
From now on it'll be mostly photos, with some few comments:
This is a new friend,  We had lunch together, along with two other women.  She is so very friendly.  She's originally from the Fayette shale and because of damage done to her and her dog there, she moved away to another place.  I got a shirt like the one she's wearing.  It was very popular along with another shirt with a black background. 

She took a photo of me as we were getting ready to get on the bus behind me or the one behind that.  At lest two busses full of us plus some smaller vehicles.

Here's Alma Hasse and RayKemble from Dimock, PA.


Signs of the trouble we face with fracking, getting on the bus.

 
Robbie gave some last minute instructions and then we were off! We rode along the highway, then to downtown, past some buildings until we got to our destination.

Here, we were, getting off the busses at the park downtown, then spending a long time getting ready, but it was really worth it.
 
Now I see what those things were in the back of the pickups at the hotel! I do not know how the people wearing them managed! And there were lots of them.  Different types!  Very impressive!

  

And above, in the red shirt and the blue and white ganja hat is the famed Jimmy Betts who travels all over from California to Denver to wherever, fighting the good fight.
As we moved out into the streets to march, to the left of the photo above, first we went over (up wide steps and then down, making it really tricky with all the stuff we had to carry), we were mostly in good spirits.

Getting all the equipment ready before heading out onto the streets.

The sixth extinction

I became almost completely convinced of this a few years ago.  This is part of why I travel in a limited way to a few places.  Nowhere near the widely travelled.  Like my younger sister who's hiked in the outback in Australia, lived for a month in a tent in the Tsanga Tsanga National Forest in the Central African Republic where "ants rule," lived for a month in a tent on a high plain in Bolia where the cows came to check out her tent, drove across the U.S., camping in one National Park after another, from east to west. 

To experience places, peoples, views.
One of my goals is to experience the Canadian Rockies by rail.
For some years, I've whispered to myself that I look forward to the idea of collapse. As the pollution or capitalism and the rushed behaviour of those colonized by it are just too, too much. Plus the many problems and psychic assaults of living in the U.D. with its many delusions/illusions.
I go hiking in a woods nearby whenever I can.

Tipping Points and the Question of Civilizational Survival

Human Extinction by 2030

Going Dark

The return of the wolves

Wolves of Yellowstone Park

Lobster population is shifting north

A salute to those who bravely run for local office

At first, I though he was running for Sheriff, as I figured you would have to be tough to grow up with a name like that.  What were his parents thinking in giving him that first name?  If he had both names while in school, unless he went to a private school/Catholic school, he most likely would have been called Rock of Turd. I would love to meet such a survivor.

We from the tropics are way ahead in the green gardening movement in the U.S.

U.S. culture has a trained obsession with lawns.  Two of us in the development of 800 houses on a former farm have resisted this toxic behaviour.  We are both from islands in the Caribbean Sea. In my case, it could be that I grew this mini-forest in front in an attempt to shield myself from the hostility, ignorance and, yes, racism of those around me.
The development of this old farm tract on the side of a hill started with smaller one story houses now valued around $70,00 to $90,00, at the bottom of the hill, then later larger houses with more two story ones and some four bedroom ones, now valued around $100,000 to $250,000 in the midway up the hill (value varies on how much "upgrading" has been done to the interior, like newer kitchens and bathrooms and whether the house is 3 or 4 or 5 bedroom - mine has no upgrades to kitchen or bathrooms and is a 3 br/1 1/2 bath valued around $100,000 even though the plot size is almost 1/2 acre - a bit larger than most not on the creek which flows through the middle. The few on the creek can have a deep lawn sloping down to the creek). Further up towards the top of the hill and into the area where the electric lines are underground, house values can vary from $180,000 to $280,000 or more.  At the very top in the most recently developed part, the houses have deep lawns in front with very long driveways and even 3 car garages.  This results in values over $300,000.
In spite of the economy being in the gutter for well over two decades, with the departure of large corporations, the few people who move into the area do so because of the low cost of housing.

But, in any event, we both were way ahead of the movement to not have lawns.
Here's some photos of my place, in different seasons, in different years, held in respect for the original inhabitants, the indigenous people chased out and murdered and cornered into reservations.

 A crucial item for gardening is a pair of trusty Wellingtons, a bit large, so I wear two long socks which also help to keep the Wellies from slipping off.

 The 2014/2015 winter - aargh.

 Another crucial item for winter:

I planted two Blue Spruce years ago when they were babies of 12 inches tall.  Now they're huge, with nests and shelter for the birdies.

Photo taken while standing at the front door. 
See how you can't really see the houses across the road, thus they can't really see me standing or sitting there.  Nice. When I first started building this forest, the man next door with no trees marched up to my front door one day in a red-faced rage, waved his arm around and said "I don't know where you're from, but we don't do things like this around here."
Maybe they should have been  for several health reasons.

The front of my house in October

The house across the road from me

The house on one side of me.  The light pole at the left edge, whose shadow falls into the center, marks the line between my place and theirs.

Here's a photo of the front yard of the other family:

and a contrast with a lawn nearby:

Musings on a train trip to St. Louis, MO

Recently, I presented a session on framing and messaging at the annual national meeting and conference of the U.S. Green Party( USGPANM) in St. Louis, MO at the University of MO-St. Louis.

The admnistration building with offices for a Dean.  This is on the South campus, which has a MetroLink stop steps away.
The North campus, an 8 minute walk away, also has a MetroLink stop and newer buildings, such as this space-ship like Student Center, with a nice food court and many student oriented offices. The pond in front as well as the stand of grasses just to its righ seem to act like some sort of water filtration device.

 

I particularly chose to go to this conference via Amtrak which, at the stop in St. Louis, connected IN THE SAME BUILDING to the local light rail (Metrolink) the stops for which also connect to the city bus system, as did this Amtrak stop. St. Louis Amtrak stop
All passengers waiting for either Amtrak, the MetroLink, the intra-city buses or the city bus system, can be seated inside in heated or air-conditioned building with ample restrooms and a small eatery which are centered in the building near passenger seating so a long hike is not needed.  Very well planned for people comfort.

Below is the MetroLink stop at the South Campus of the University of St.Louis-MO.  While it has little to no shelter from the elements, you can see it's clean and well lit at night.  The city bus system stops just to the left of the platform (where you can see a piece of the bus shelter) and just a few steps to the left of that is a parking lot, so you can sit in your car until close to the time for the bus or the Metro-Link to arrive before getting out.

Here's a MetroLink approaching the UMSL-South stop

 And about to leave the stop.

Where I live has nothing remotely like this.

To get to St. Louis I had to drive my car to the city transport center in the next county (which transport center services only that county's bus system and intra-city buses, not the Amtrak) take a bus 2 hours to Syracuse to wait to get on the once a day Amtrak to Chicago. And there wait for the connection to the Texas Eagle to get to St. Louis.

While the Metro-Link system and its being connected to the city bus system, the intra-city bus system as well as the stop for the Amtrak for that city, as well as the aiport! seems to signal public transport nirvana, all is not well.

The day after I arrived at the cmpus, since the conference was not starting until that evening, I did a walk-about as I like to do when I visit a new place.  I walked along the road edging the campus heading north, with the Metro-Link track running along to my right.  On reaching an intersection, the road going left/right (Bridge Road !) went over the tracks via a bridge into what looked like an area with shops.  I walked and walked, encoutering almost no one on this Thursday morning, except an intermittent black male coming in the opposite direction on foot, not making eye contact with me.  On my right I passed a large property with a huge lawn in front and a sign stating the presence of a convent, the buildings for which were set far back from the road.  The property was rimmed with a black chain link fence.  At one point, on the inside of the fence and close to it was a lawn sign stating "Black Lives Matter."

I continued walking in the hot sun, noticing that the businesses edging the road were Payday Loan, African-American Hair Products, Second Hand Clothing on the right.  On the left were a small bank, then a chain drug store, then a McDonald's.  I quickly crossed the road to get to the McDonald's rest room with no problem as auto traffic was very thin.  I notieced one police car parked in front of the drug store. On entering the McDonald's with me now in desperate need of a rest room, it was clear that the entire place was staffed by black folk.  Even though a female employee was using the Women's rest room, she immediately gathered up her stuff while speaking to me in a very, very friendly manner.  When I asked her how to get to a chain store which I had heard was close by, she gave me very detailed and very helpful directions.

On my leaving the McDonald's, she repeated the directions for me with even more specificity.

On my walk back to get back to the campus, still encountering only one or two people walking, with them still being only black,  I wondered about this.

The one "white" person in the area was at the wheel of a car making its way to head over the bridge over the train tracks.  Had I just entered a "black" area of St. Louis? Were the train tracks yet again a marker for the divide between the "white" area - in this case the university campus - and the "black" area.

Later on, I came across some more articles about the destruction of areas where "black" people lived, so as to build college campuses or sports stadiums or the Cross-Bronx Expressway in NYC.

I  chose to go to this conference because while we do have some challenging people like any diverse organization tends to, Greens are the best.  Green "white" males listten to Green "black" females.  That's Scott, the U.S. Green Party media coordinator, on the right, and David Doonan, Green Mayor of Greenwich, NY in the middle. We were mostly all dressed casually as the weather outside was beastly hot with very high humidity.  The cricket orchestra outside at night was the loudest I've ever heard with what seemed hundreds of crickets sawing away.  The woman on the left was one of the many videographers at the conference where press conferences and presentations were uploaded to Craig at his apartment in NYC, from which he livestreamed and later posted videos on You-Tube.

In spite of the horrendous humidity and heat, I had a really good time.

Here are some stalwart Greens piling into cars for car-pooling to Ferguson, MO for a rally and press conference to mark the police killing of Michael Brown, an 18 year old "black" male about to enter college. 

The killing (let's call it what it is - genocide) continues. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/08/08/black-and-unarmed/

The U.S. Green Party 2014 Presidential candidate, Jill Stein M.D., who's running again to be the candidate for 2016, also went to the rally and was one of the speakers.

 I left early Sunday morning, before the conference ended, mostly due to Amtrak's schedule and my limited funds for spending another night in the dorms. 

Leaving St. Louis (see the famous Arch) on the Texas EagleAmtrak heading to Chicago to wait in the horrible Union Station there for the connection to the Amtrak Lake Shore Limited eastbound so as to get back to Syracuse, NY. on Monday morning.

 

Going over the Mississippi River that runs by St. Louis

The ubiquitous presence of polluting industry

The almost inevitable sight of freight trains carrying perhaps oil or chemicals, etc.

What appears to be a slew of frack-sand trucks or maybe since this is corn and soy country, they might be for transporting such corporate agricultural products (now usually GMO in form).

 

A sample of the afore-mentioned large scale agriculture

and then a station stop (not a smoke break stop, if I recall correctly):

This route has several at grade crossings in the middle of a village, town or city.

Here's a view of inside a coach car on a northeast/midwest type of Amtrak train - need to pass the time somehow but I enjoy looking out or in for good photo ops: Norice that the seats and the leg room are much more civilized that you encounter on intra-city buses like Greyhound or CoachUSA or the like.

Then Pontiac, IL

 a station not in an industrial area which is often the case, but near a park and playground,

more conrnfields:

This is not the first time I've passed a derailed freight train, which, if it was on the track that Amtrak needed to use, would hold up our progress for an hour or so for the cars to be cleared off the track. WE NEED TO STOP PRIORITIZING FREIGHT RAIL TRAFFIC IF PASSENGER RAIL IS TO GET ANYWHERE NEAR THE 21ST CENTURY IN THE U.S. First step is to amend the U.S. Constitution to get rid of fiction of corporate personhood, which, as you all know, started with a railway case.

Corporate agriculture

Windmills amidst corporate agriculture

This looks to be a stop on one of the many Metra lines emanating from Chicago into its suburbs or nearby smaller cities.  Remember that I took this photo while seated on an Amtrak train heading to Chicago.

Then a baseball stadium? paid for most likely with taxpayer fundss without their informed consent, as is done all over the U.S.

And then Joliet, IL

And then aargh!!!!!!

Outcry of resistance to this toxic non-natural environment: as we get closer to Chicago:

and more resistance.  Notice the street art is on the track side of the wall which supposedly was to keep out the artists and others.

I like train travel at lot, even by Amtrak, and in spite of the delays caused by not only freight traffic, but the ocassional removal of a person from the train. Here this was somewhere between Joliet, IL and Chicago, IL.

And then after dealing with Chicago's Union Station while waiting for my connection to the Lake Shore Limited, getting on it, a sold out train, so no way to lie down curled up on two seats with the foot rests out and the backs set back to the farthest position as I have done in the past, I had to try to sleep (almost imossible) in one seat, fortunately not next to a large person but next to a moderate sized young man who from our conversation seems to work in the military and was heading back home to Utica having driven out with his wife and three young children to visit family in Wisconsin? (I don't remember).

During the daytime on Monday, I had a fairly nice chat with him as more and more people got on the train and into our car, obviously heading to NYC (from the stubs the conductor stuck over their seats). The rest rooms got more and more unpleasant so when I got off at Syracuse pretty close to on time, I was more than ready, having been standing by the exit for over an hour, with my stuff around me (backpack, food bag, roll on luggage). Got to the stop, headed for the rest room, then on checking the time noticed that the intra-city bus to my destination was waiting at the gate, joined the line, got on it for the two hour trip south, reached that city, got off, grabbed my roll-on luggage from the bay under the bus, used the rest room inside the station, then headed to where I had parked my car, got in it, drove home in the fading afternoon light, parked it in the garage, took out all the bags and hauled them in.  Noticed the bee balm had started blooming in my absence.

Then collapsed.