Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: October 3, 2024
Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: October 3, 2024
Plugging 550 old gas & oil wells in Pennsylvania!
New federal funding will help Pennsylvania plug 550 orphaned & abandoned fossil fuel wells.
Tell Congress to sustain BIL funding for well plugging!
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Reasons For Hope
On September 3, 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration announced that the state of Pennsylvania is receiving $76.4 million in federal funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to plug 550 “orphaned and abandoned” oil and gas wells. The BIL overall is set to disburse $4.7 billion to plug orphaned and abandoned wells across the country.
“President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is empowering communities across the country to confront long-standing environmental injustices by making a historic investment to plug orphaned oil and gas wells.
These investments are good for our climate, for the health of our communities, and for American workers. With this additional funding, Pennsylvania will put more people to work to clean up these toxic sites, reduce methane emissions and safeguard our environment.”
-U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
Orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells are a widespread problem in historically fossil fuel-abundant Pennsylvania, occurring when the corporate owners of no-longer-profitable wells go out of business or disappear, leaving the open wells just outgassing climate-warming methane emissions and sometimes even leaking oil and gas into water and soil.
In response, the state of Pennsylvania has developed a robust Well Plugging Program to clean out such wells and seal them with cement, but before the BIL it was seriously underfunded, spending around $1 million per year. Pennsylvania now has unprecedented financial support to plug its abandoned wells thanks to the new federal funding!
“By plugging orphaned and abandoned wells, we’re tackling a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and creating thousands of good-paying jobs in the process. This is a smart, commonsense way to combat climate change, promote public health, and create jobs.”
-Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro
This is a tangible economic and public health benefit arising from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and as we continue the transition away from fossil fuels, it’s a program that needs strong support in future funding appropriation.
Have you ever taken a plunge into naturally hot seawater? Try south Florida’s waters in summer. Absolutely intolerable, but it wasn’t that way a few decades back. The general explanation of Florida’s hot seawater: global warming. Of course it is, but it’s only a small consequence of the unlimited environmental power that nations believe they have within their borders over the environment. That is the real culprit of Florida’s hot waters and many other environmental maladies. But there’s much more to that: global warming has now spilled and redefines the traditional definition of what countries’ sovereignty is, and how it intertwines and impacts very negatively the environment.
Let’s take the case of Brazil burning down the Amazon forest for cattle breeding and producing. According to Brazilian and International law, Brazil is not breaking any human law, but it is certainly breaking natures’ law. Brazil -and all countries- has, politically, the right (?) to ignore that the environment is a Shared World Resource that transcends national borders. We all can pull examples from all over the world. Very recently, just to mention two, out of thousands: the US approved massive lithium mining in Nevada, overriding protests. Environmentalists worry that the Rhyolite Ridge Lithium-Boron Project could drive a rare wildflower to extinction. Another one?: oil and gas leases in Artic National Wildlife Refuge, which only depends on the approval of one man or one woman, only one, regardless that tragic consequences could be everlasting to the world. Yes, again, just the stroke of a fountain pen of one man or one woman for the environment to go forever under.
These ‘approvals” rests in the current general basic belief of what is considered Sovereignty in our days, a definition centuries old: "Sovereignty is the supreme power or authority of each country within its official borders admitted by the rest of the countries of the world", inspired by the over three hundred years old Peace of Westphalia in 1645. Now, in the 20th and part of the 21st century, the statement "within their official borders" is reigning in all countries of the world and there you find the reason for the bulk of environmental degradation worldwide. It allows -and has and will allow- countries to do, environmentally speaking, whatever they desire and decree "within their official borders". That will continue unless we make NOW a 180° change.
It is an undeniable fact that the environment is a global resource shared by all countries of the world. Therefore, environment transcends the political borders of countries. Nature reminds us all the time. Can the most powerful country of the world with today’s technology stop the rain or a typhoon or hurricane brewing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, aimed at central America and the Gulf of Mexico and heading directly into the USA and Canada? No, it can’t.
The solution I propose is a 180° turn. Is what I call ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY which is totally divorced from the reigning and cited notion of Sovereignty defined in the Peace of Westphalia. No, it will not stop immediately those typhoons and hurricanes but it will eventually, as sea temperatures drop to traditional level.
Again, countries take for granted that, within their borders, the environment is a legitimately attained or inherited sole property, and that, therefore, they have absolute freedom to do environmentally whatever they want within their borders (Brazil burning down the rain forest, for example, for cattle production one of the most contaminating factors of the environment). This is freely continued due to what countries call "SOVEREIGNTY", which is not. It’s BAD SOVEREIGNTY and that’s why we propose: ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY!
ENVIRONMENTAL SOVEREIGNTY MEANS THAT THE ENVIRONMENT
IS UNIVERSAL AND FREE, AND IS NOT DIVIDED POLITICALLY, PROPORTIONALLY OR NOT, AMONG COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD.
In short....
1) Countries’ borders cannot be the dominant factor that prevails over the environment. The Environment is beyond not only what countries currently call SOVEREIGNTY, but also above its three classic powers: the Judicial, Legislative and Administrative powers. It is a "Power above Powers", and it is not the Fourth Power, but the First Power. Without it, life would not exist on planet earth. It would be as barren as the moon.
2) Political authoritarianism and the inadequate application, or lack of enforcement, of laws that protect the environment as a global entity, is a detrimental factor that becomes a multiplying factor for environmental damage.
What do we propose?
Global environmental degradation will continue until the current concept of SOVEREIGNTY is reinvented and the world accepts that there are two types of sovereignty: GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, which respects the environment as a power above all powers and has only its natural limits, or BAD SOVEREIGNTY, which does not. With BAD SOVEREIGNTY, nations can do whatever they want environmentally within their borders. With GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, nations do not have that power. Until the first is removed from the face of the earth, damage to the environmental by the so- called ‘civilization’ will continue to spread as natural and inevitable. BAD SOVEREIGNTY must therefore be switched to GOOD SOVEREIGNTY, which prioritizes global environmental interest above all other interests. Constitutions must be amended accordingly. Countries cannot continue with a free hand over the environment within their legal political borders if we want to have a world to live in, a world for present and future generations.
Yes, there will be plenty of opposition from international economic interests, from autocratic governments, from political interests, from arrogance and ignorance, from fear and indifference, but facts are the facts: NATURE’S GENEROSITY OF IS NOT FOREVER.
This is my way of reaching out directly to the world. If you agree, please help me spread the word and share. Thank you
Jorge Partida A
soberanía.ambiental.global@gmail.com
jorgepartidas@gmail.com
VENEZUELA