I don't feel like my family's health and welfare is a frigging "issue" to be trifled or used as a bargaining tool/pawn. Those that talk about expediency and 'short term' have no clue what it's like for the peons that are living it.
Life isn't about 1 issue, no. BUT being progressive doesn't mean you relegate people's lives to a back burner. It means you multi-task and take on the big issues that affect others. You don't fix everything at once, no. But you damned well make the attempt instead of playing triage on those it most affects and shrug it off with an - Oh well. We'll get to it later. Hope ya'll make it on your own without too many birth defects, breathing problems, cancers, etc. And don't forget to buy bottled water! It's good for the economy! Don't forget to donate to the party and vote Democratic!
Yes, Brown done some good stuff. But he fails miserably on fracking and I won't make excuses for him. He can and should do better. The race for progress isn't over when you have some done. And if he isn't done, why isn't he helping with one of the biggest issues facing the Central Valley? Do you know that 95% of California's fracking is done in 1, count 'em ONE, county?
This is not a Sanders only issue for me, either. Though it is ONE of the reasons I support him. The following is from my Journal, without the Sanders stuff so that maybe, MAYBE! - some of you people will read it ... minus the candidate glasses. This isn't academic speculation. It's real life. It's our families. Not a matter of prioritization of issues. Fracking hits our air. Our water. Our food. Big oil is too powerful to take on at the local level. It takes a big gun, like the governor, to make any headway. And he doesn't take it on in a real, meaningful way.
http://earthjustice.org/blog/2015-december/one-california-countys-fracked-idea
@ 2 miles from home, and there is so many more all over the county.
snip/
It’s Kern County, California with around 42,000 active wells . California is the third largest oil producing state, behind Texas and North Dakota. The epicenter of the state’s oil boom is Kern County, which lies about 100 miles north of Los Angeles in the rural Central Valley. Kern is home to approximately 75 percent of California's oil drilling and 95 percent of the state’s fracking, and regulators hope to keep the black gold flowing.
Last month, the county board of supervisors approved a new ordinance that would purportedly allow oil and gas companies to fast track drilling permits for tens of thousands of new wells in the next two decades with no environmental review and no public notice or participation. On Thursday, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against Kern County on behalf of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in coordination with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment and the Center for Biological Diversity. The Earthjustice suit challenges the county’s claim that a single environmental review conducted before the ordinance was passed is sufficient to authorize up to 3,647 new oil and gas wells a year for the next 20 years or longer, for a total of 72,000 new wells.
NRDC found that 14 percent of Californians—5.4 million people—live within one mile of an oil or gas well. Of that group, 69 percent are people of color, most Hispanic or Latino. Low-income communities of color typically face disproportionate financial and health burdens from heavy industry, including oil and gas production. The new wells authorized by the Kern County plan would be built in an area that already has some of the nation’s worst air quality. According to the American Lung Association, Bakersfield, the largest city in Kern County, is the second worst city in the country for air pollution, both short-term and year-round.
Air pollution from oil and gas wells can exacerbate illnesses like asthma and high blood pressure, and fracking, specifically, has been linked to water pollution, which can occur when massive amounts of fracking wastewater laced with chemicals are injected deep underground. Just one barrel of fracked oil produces 10 barrels of contaminated waste water that must be disposed of.
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