DeSmogBlog: A "War on Shale Gas"?

Since late 2009, there’s been a slowly-growing wave of attacks from the unconventional oil and gas industry on media outlets that cover the controversies surrounding hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and other shale gas practices. Reporters who write for publications ranging from Rolling Stone to Reuters to the New York Times have

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DeSmogBlog: Exposed: Pennsylvania Act 13 Overturned by Supreme Court, Originally an ALEC Model Bill

alec-exposed-600×400.jpeg On July 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled PA Act 13 unconstitutional. The bill would have stripped away local zoning laws, eliminated the legal concept of a Home Rule Charter, limited private property rights, and in the process, completely disempowered town, city, municipal and county governments, particularly when it comes to shale gas

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DeSmogBlog: Oil Sands Fact Check: New API Front Group

shutterstock_48011344.jpg How do you sell a rotten bag of goods? Rule number one of effective propaganda: repackage it into something seemingly less grotesque. In that spirit, the Houston Chronicle recently reported the American Petroleum Institute (API) has created yet another front group, this one to promote tar sands crude, one of the dirtiest sources of fuel in the world, as a

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DeSmogBlog: ALEC Wasn’t First Industry Trojan Horse Behind Fracking Disclosure Bill – Enter Council of State Governments

shutterstock_95581429.jpg 19th Century German statesman Otto von Bismarck once said, "If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made." The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), put on the map by the Center for Media and Democracy in its "ALEC Exposed" project, is the archetype of von Bismarck's truism. So too are the fracking chemical

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