Big Oil in Small Town America


Book Description

This book started as a result of four ordinary people seeing something wrong in their small tourist community and tried to right it. Who would have thought that our government would subject its own people to the damaging emissions of the oil and gas industry? This book is about the fight of four people fighting the oil companies and the Local, State and Federal governmental agencies charged with protecting its citizens. It is seen through the eyes of one of the group, who has had a stroke and contributed to the "fight" by sending out hundreds of email newsletters almost weekly. The fight to save a community's way of life was marred with disillusionment and frustration, but they continued to fight. In Lewiston and surrounding area there are roughly 5000 gas and oil wells along with their associated facilities. The particular offloading facility the group focused on was emitting illegal amounts of Hydrogen Sulfide and Sulfur Dioxide and no one was stopping them. Lewiston was downwind from this facility most days. The local, state and federal governments were fighting us. They threw up road blocks every way we turned as if they didn't want us to know what was really going on. Why? Because of the many lies that the group uncovered as to what was really happening at the facility. Local citizens were looking the other way. Others were calling us crazy or to just leave the problem alone! Did they have oil/gas wells on their property, possibly collecting royalties? The group has hundreds of pages of transcripts, videotapes and photographs to prove otherwise. The Citizens Against Environmental Destruction, as we came to call ourselves, were fighting an uphill battle, but battle we did and are continuing to do to save our lives and our community. Too many health problems. Too many deaths. Why? Read and hope this never happens to your community. The knowledge of how our government works to protect us (they don´t) was so disappointing.




Small Town, Big Oil


Book Description

How three New Hampshire women triumphed over an oil billionaire: “A very timely reminder that when we fight we often win.”—Bill McKibben Never underestimate the underdog. In 1973, Greek oil shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis—husband of President John F. Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, and arguably the richest man in the world—proposed to build an oil refinery on the narrow New Hampshire coast, in the town of Durham. At the time, it would have cost $600 million to build and was expected to generate 400,000 barrels of oil per day, making it the largest oil refinery in the world. The project was vigorously supported by the governor, Meldrim Thomson, and by William Loeb, the notorious publisher of the only statewide newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader. But three women vehemently opposed the project—Nancy Sandberg, the town leader who founded and headed Save Our Shores; Dudley Dudley, the freshman state rep who took the fight to the state legislature; and Phyllis Bennett, the publisher of the local newspaper that alerted the public to Onassis’ secret acquisition of the land. Small Town, Big Oil is the story of how the residents of Durham, led by these three women, out-organized, out-witted, and out-maneuvered the governor, the media, and the Onassis cartel to hand the powerful Greek billionaire the most humiliating defeat of his business career, and spare the New Hampshire seacoast from becoming an industrial wasteland. “Activists and organizers will find lots of ideas and inspirations in this book's detailed account of an epic battle.”—Bill McKibben “[An] apt handbook on the power of the people.”—Providence Journal




Landscape and the Environment in Hollywood Film


Book Description

This book systematically explores how popular Hollywood film portrays environmental issues through various genres. In so doing, it reveals the influence exerted by media consolidation and the drive for profit on Hollywood’s portrayal of the natural landscape, which ultimately shapes how environmental problems and their solutions are presented to audiences. Analysis is framed by a consideration of how cultural studies can make more theoretical and practical room for environmental concern, thereby expanding its capacity for critical examination. The book begins by introducing the theoretical underpinning of the research as it relates to cultural studies, landscape, and genre. In the chapters that follow, each genre is taken in turn, starting with popular animated family films and progressing through spy thrillers, eco-thrillers, science fiction, Westerns, superhero films, and drama. This book is ideal for students and scholars in a variety of disciplines, including film, environmental studies, communication, political economy, and cultural studies.




The Small-Town Midwest


Book Description

Most people in the United States live in urban areas; still, there are nearly fifty million people living in small towns of just a few thousand people or less. Some towns are within a short drive of a metropolitan area where people can work, shop, or go to school; some are an hour or more from any sort of urban hub. In this book, Julianne Couch sets out to illuminate the lives and hopes of these small-town residents. The people featured live—by choice or circumstances—in one of nine small communities in five states in the Midwest and Great Plains: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Daily they witness people moving out, heading to more urban areas, small businesses closing down, connected infrastructure drying up, entrepreneurs becoming discouraged, and more people thinking about leaving. This is the story we hear in the news, the story told by abandoned farms, consolidated schools, and boarded-up Main Streets. But it’s not the whole story. As Couch found in her travels throughout the Midwest, many people long to return to these towns, places where they may have deep family roots or where they can enjoy short commutes, familiar neighbors, and proximity to rural and wild places. And many of the residents of small midwestern towns are not just accepting the trend toward urbanization with a sigh. They are betting that the tide of rural population loss can’t go out forever, and they’re backing those bets with creatively repurposed schools, entrepreneurial innovation, and community commitment. From Bellevue, Iowa, to Centennial, Wyoming, the region’s small-town residents remain both hopeful and resilient.




Climate Courage


Book Description

How Americans can take action in their own communities and unite across the political spectrum in pursuit of solutions to climate change. Andreas Karelas has a message we don’t often hear: we have all the tools we need to solve the climate crisis and doing so will improve our lives, our economy, and our society. But to engage people in the climate fight, we need stories that are empowering, inclusive, and solutions-oriented, not based in fear. Karelas digs into the latest data on the rapidly falling costs and increased efficiencies of clean energy technologies compared to fossil fuels, looks at the rate of job creation in the clean energy sector, and introduces the reader to the inspiring work of climate heroes on both sides of the aisle—from Republican mayors and governors to activists, from businesses to faith communities. Climate Courage shows us how we can move past our collective inaction on climate change and work together in our communities to create a more sustainable, just, clean energy–powered economy that works for everyone.




The Future of Oil


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Congressional Record


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Small-Town America


Book Description

A revealing examination of small-town life More than thirty million Americans live in small, out-of-the-way places. Many of them could have joined the vast majority of Americans who live in cities and suburbs. They could live closer to more lucrative careers and convenient shopping, a wider range of educational opportunities, and more robust health care. But they have opted to live differently. In Small-Town America, we meet factory workers, shop owners, retirees, teachers, clergy, and mayors—residents who show neighborliness in small ways, but who also worry about everything from school closings and their children's futures to the ups and downs of the local economy. Drawing on more than seven hundred in-depth interviews in hundreds of towns across America and three decades of census data, Robert Wuthnow shows the fragility of community in small towns. He covers a host of topics, including the symbols and rituals of small-town life, the roles of formal and informal leaders, the social role of religious congregations, the perception of moral and economic decline, and the myriad ways residents in small towns make sense of their own lives. Wuthnow also tackles difficult issues such as class and race, abortion, homosexuality, and substance abuse. Small-Town America paints a rich panorama of individuals who reside in small communities, finding that, for many people, living in a small town is an important part of self-identity.




Refinery Town


Book Description

The People vs. Big Oil—how a working-class company town harnessed the power of local politics to reclaim their community With a foreword by Bernie Sanders Home to one of the largest oil refineries in the state, Richmond, California, was once a typical company town, dominated by Chevron. This largely nonwhite, working-class city of 100,000 suffered from poverty, pollution, and poorly funded public services. It had one of the highest homicide rates per capita in the country and a jobless rate twice the national average. But when veteran labor reporter Steve Early moved from New England to Richmond in 2012, he discovered a city struggling to remake itself. In Refinery Town, Early chronicles the 15 years of successful community organizing that raised the local minimum wage, defeated a casino development project, challenged home foreclosures and evictions, and sought fair taxation of Big Oil. A short list of Richmond’s activist residents helps to propel this compelling chronicle: • 94 year old Betty Reid Soskin, the country’s oldest full-time national park ranger and witness to Richmond’s complex history • Gayle McLaughlin, the Green Party mayor who challenged Chevron and won • Police Chief Chris Magnus, who brought community policing to Richmond and is now one of America’s leading public safety reformers Part urban history, part call to action, Refinery Town shows how concerned citizens can harness the power of local politics to reclaim their community and make municipal government a source of much-needed policy innovation. “Refinery Town provides an inside look at how one American city has made radical and progressive change seem not only possible but sensible.”—David Helvarg, The Progressive




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