The now-complete petrochemical facility cuts a striking contrast to this quiet backdrop. “It’s like the eye of Sauron.In 2014, when Jackie Shock-Stewart and her husband Matt Stewart first moved to
Shell’s new ethane cracker was supposed to be an economic “game changer” for Beaver County. But some of its neighbors are now fleeing its light, noise and air pollution–and the facility is facing two lawsuits.
We need to decarbonize as swiftly as possible and the most direct path is through electrification. We can make most of the electricity we need through proven green technologies like solar, wind and geothermal, yet the fossil fuel industry is hyping hydrogen as its preferred low-carbon replacement for powering vehicles, heavy industry and heating buildings.
It’s been a wild year in many respects and this week is the time of year when we reconnect with Eric de Place with Salish Strategies in Seattle, to puzzle out all that’s happened. Today we talk about the positives – of which there have actually been a few – as well as the more obvious difficulties and horrors that the world has experienced in 2023.
Appalachia’s fracking boom is fueling the expansion of American plastics manufacturing, including production of vinyl chloride, the carcinogen used to make PVC that burned in East Palestine, Ohio.