What can methane do for you?
The latest brainchild of the Ohio Lame Duck Legislature attempts to rewrite the laws of nature.
One of the many accusations against Ohio is that it’s boring. That’s true if your only experience with the state is driving through it on the hellacious highways we built over our vibrant, walkable cities.
Ohio is a beautiful state if you get away from the highway rest stops. The State Park system is a big part of that. It’s one of those things—like the Ohio to Erie Bike Trail or our library system—that you wouldn’t expect from a state that’s been controlled by Republican reptiles as long as we’ve had.
Unfortunately for us dumb enough to be private citizens, those reptiles just won sweeping re-election. So, with re-election secured and a Lame Duck Legislature in session, the Republicans are doing what they do best: Serving powerful interests at the expense of the rest of us.
This time they’ve attached major bidding for the fossil fuel industry to a bill that “changes the number of poultry chicks that may be sold in lots.”
From Jake Zuckerman of cleveland.com:
COLUMBUS – Within 24 hours of unveiling the idea, Ohio Senate Republicans passed legislation Wednesday that would expand the ability to drill for oil and gas on state-owned lands, including state parks.
The bill forces state agencies to acquiesce to “requests” from energy companies to lease public land for private profits. There have been “rumblings” within the industry to “capture the gas” under Salt Fork State Park in Guernsey County, which is bad news for anyone who enjoys leisure time in that park.
Senate Minority Leader Kenny Yuko (D-Cleveland), a fossil never useful enough to be a fuel, told cincinnati.com that this legislation “Cuts out the public and the important process of deciding if and how drilling occurs in our state parks."
But this is Ohio. Our overlords are not content to pawn off some public land for a toxic mining process that poisons the water tables around it. That’s so early 20th century.
The Republicans in the Senate are so far down their pecking list that they’re also trying to give their fossil fuel sugar daddies a P.R. win by rebranding natural gas as green energy.
Also from Zuckerman, who you should follow on Twitter:
Several energy experts scoffed at the notion of calling natural gas “green” energy, noting that it’s a fossil fuel that emits both methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, both of which are heat-trapping greenhouse gasses that drive climate change.
The Republicans are better are weaponizing language. Democrats for years obfuscated abortion into “reproductive rights,” and you can see where that got us.
Republicans in this instance said, “You know what? Fuck you. Natural gas is ‘green energy’ now.”
The sad part is calling it “natural gas” is already a P.R. win for the fossil fuel industry. We should call it methane!
From cbc.ca:
Even though natural gas is 70 to 90 percent methane, said Karine Lacroix, a Canadian researcher and postdoctoral associate with the program, the responses were starkly different.
Overall, the survey found associations with natural gas were positive and linked to cooking, heating and notions of clean, eco-friendly energy.
Not so for methane.
But wait… that’s not all! Senate Republicans had to get one final speck of salt into our open wounds:
The legislation would also prohibit cities from banning pesticides within their borders.
You can almost guarantee this is a handout for Scott’s Lawn Care, which is headquartered in Marysville, Ohio and fights against these sorts of regulations across the country.
… This bill has only passed the Senate. But the Senate doesn’t snap to attention and pass a sweeping bill like this in under 24 hours if there aren’t some bondage whips getting cracked in the background. There’s no reason to think this won’t face a similar greased track in the House on its way to Governor DeWine’s desk.
It’s all considered hard work in Republican Senate circles:
Only in the Ohio Statehouse can working three consecutive days be considered a week’s honest work.
At least with Senator Gavarone, who lost to a YouTube grifter in a Congressional primary the last time she had to campaign, has to drive back and forth between Toledo and Columbus regularly—I would only wish the worst drive in Ohio on my worst enemy, and there are a couple of her colleagues I’d list before I got to her.
But honestly, it’s better for the state when these people aren’t working one of the 50 days a year in their part-time job that pays $63,000 and comes with the state’s socialized benefits package.
These people are too dumb to appreciate a state park. Their children don’t grow up near the fracking wells their parents unleashed on the state. None of their voters will even hear about this corporate welfare they handed out in a chicken bill.
You never have to hand it to Ohio’s corruption machine. But sometimes, you have to stand back in awe.
THOSE WMDs. How to declutter your home screen… The last Phone Boxes…. The story of the Bishop robbed during his church service… Drugs killed eight friends across the United States, one by one… The morbid appeal of “botched” plastic surgery.