No Fracking Way

Source

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

Member DSA

Fracking, the process of pumping water, oil, chemicals and who knows what underground at high pressure in order to free natural gas trapped in rock, is coming under assault in the UK. The UK government has called a moratorium on the process as an earthquake, the UK’s largest so far, shook homes near Blackpool in Lancashire. In addition, a report from the UK’s Oil and Gas Authority claims that it is not possible to predict or “determine the probability or magnitude of earthquakes.”

This comes as a bit of a surprise as the present government and its head, Boris Johnson has supported fracking up to now. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labor Party said today that this decision is an election ploy and suggested if the Conservative Party (Tories) wins the election, scheduled for December 12^th, the policy will likely be reversed. If the Labor Party wins the election it will “..ban fracking---whereas the Tories will only call a temporary halt to it.” a prominent Labor Party politician told the Financial Times.

In the US and Canada, fracking has increased earthquake activity considerably. Despite claims to the contrary it is not simply the disposal of wastewater that increases activity but the process of injection itself. There are numerous studies that confirm this view as the US public Broadcasting System has pointed out.

“Hydraulic fracturing drives earthquakes in western Canada, according to research published Thursday in Science. The results defy the often-touted belief that the disposal of wastewater is the sole source of man-made earthquakes with fossil fuel extraction technique.”

Numerous countries have banned fracking including Ireland in 2017.

Exxon Corporation (of the Exxon Valdez fame), is warning the US government that energy investment will flee the country if the US government bans fracking as Democratic Candidates Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris have suggested. Exxon has major investments in Texas and New Mexico. Elizabeth Warren announced in a tweet that she will ban fracking “everywhere.” according to the Financial Times. Banning it will drive the price of oil from $55 to $85 a barrel warns one investment banker and, “…it will shift the economic benefits away from the US to another country….” says Exxon VP Neil Hansen.

The energy companies will not be weaned off of fossil fuels, the profits are too great and they have too much invested in it as it stands. We can expect increased bribery of politicians in the US (lobbying) and more stepping up of economic terrorism threatening to move production and so on.

There are two important aspects working class people should consider in this process. One is the importance of public lands. If a US government ban is successful it will most likely only effect federal land. As the Financial Times pointed out today, states like Wyoming and New Mexico have extensive energy resources on their land while Texas and Pennsylvania do not for example. The struggle of the right wing elements for states rights over federal in the past has, in my mind, been motivated by the fact that it is easier for a state government, and right wing or speculative forces to control it and determine what happens on that land than if it was owned federally. I do not know enough about this issue to go further than that.

But as workers, the main thing for us to grasp is that even in a capitalist economic system with a state apparatus that defends and advances the interests of the owners of capital, our collective power, used through unions and political parties, can win some concessions and have some say in how society functions. That’s why public sector workplaces are somewhat more humane and protected a little more from the competitive violence of market forces.  It is also one of the reasons why the two parties of capitalism, Democrats and Republicans, want to privatize public sector resources and jobs. One a little more aggressively than the other, but as Nancy Pelosi made very clear some time back, “I have to say, we’re capitalists, that’s just the way it is,”

As I wrote in response to Pelosi’s affirmation at the time   there was a lack of a response from new elements within the party that claim to be socialists, to Pelosi’s statement, as well as from the Democratic Socialist of America of which I am a member:

“But there seems to be a significant silence on this issue. DSA appears not to have taken up this challenge and Pelosi is let off the hook. Recently Ocasio-Cortez described the present situation as a sort of  “no holds barred, wild west, hyper capitalism”. Like Pelosi, she is saying that capitalism is not the problem in and of itself. As a socialist she seems to avoid class and class antagonism’s altogether. The billionaire George Soros has the same view but uses the term Market Fundamentalism and suggests names like “robber capitalism”, or the "gangster state,". Either way, all of these descriptions that lead to the idea that capitalism has a future.”

The other important conclusion we must draw from this process and the threats from Exxon and the fossil fuel companies is that it is not written in any religious tracts or a fate accompli that “….energy investment will shift out of the US….” if the government bans fracking.

What this means concretely is that big business will take capital elsewhere and bribe, cajole, threaten, and, if they can, install ruthless despots that will allow them to poison and destroy their environment in their rapacious pursuit of profits.  Workers go on strike and what that means is that we withdraw our labor. If it threatens the capitalist’s profits enough, they will use their courts, their police, the military they control and any other measure they can to force us to back in to the workplace or turn sections of the working class against one another to end the strike.

On other occasions, the capitalists go on a strike of capital. They refuse to enter it in to the production process, hire workers or invest in production as those in manufacturing are doing at the present due to the uncertainty that exists because of Trump’s trade war and his weaponizing of tariffs.

The production of society’s energy needs and indeed the world’s energy needs cannot be in the hands of a tiny group of people whose main goal is personal gain in the form of profits. The loss of over 300 people due to putting profit over safety at Boeing is proof of this; they were murdered by capitalism. Energy production has to be taken in to public ownership. Capital has to be re-directed in to environmentally friendly energy production. The present owners will not do that. Capital, is a product of collective labor. Labor creates all wealth as the saying goes. It is not theirs to do with as they wish and they only own it and use it in their interests through a process of violence and coercion. The capital need not flee and will not if we dispossess them of it.

Within the framework of capitalism this problem, just like environmental catastrophe, cannot be solved. There is no such thing as a humane form of capitalism. The production of energy, the production of society’s transportation, health care, education, and all forms of producing social needs in harmony with nature must not be a private but a public venture.

The conclusion here is that we do have to build a movement and also strengthen the organizations of the working class or build new ones when the objective conditions demand it. I am not in favor of simply abandoning the present organizations US workers built over more than a century without a fight.

And we should conclude that the Democratic Party will not take these steps. The working class must have a party of our own. Such a party will likely emerge through great social events and out of the movement that arises in response to them, and to me, it is inconceivable that organized labor, with 14 million members, will not play a significant role in this process.