Last year, Tim DeChristopher, a student in Utah, bid $1.8 million he did not have in a federal oil lease auction. He won the leases. He stated he did it to protect the environment and to prevent further global warming, arguing that the danger from this drilling was too great and immediate to try to stop it any other way. This week the judge in the case, Dee Benson, disagreed, citing the lack of imminent danger. DeChristopher is now facing felony charges of making false statements and interfering with a (government) auction.

Coincidentally, several days earlier in New York City, the State of New York Department of Environmental Conservation held a public hearing on new regulations allowing natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale deposit in upstate New York.

The Marcellus, which supposedly holds enough gas to power the entire country for 20 years, also crosses the Catskill/Delaware River watershed, a major source of water for the City.

Stuyvesant Auditorium was packed, with the audience, many with placards, overwhelmingly against the drilling. Public input started with local politicians fulminating (this is what talented politicians do well). Their anger was directed at the hydraulic fracturing process used to release the gas during drilling; their fear is that there will be an accident and some of this probably poisonous fracking glop will end up in the New York City water supply, which is comes from the Catskills almost totally untreated. They can yell, but their anger was misdirected and so, ineffective.

There are any number of perfectly good reasons to be concerned over the leasing of land for oil or gas drilling, but to voice a complaint effectively, there are some common sense considerations:

1) Do your homework so you know what you are talking about. The problem with the city’s analysis is that it is infinitely more likely that gallons of the fracking fluid will mess up some rural site, ruining that land and maybe the water for local farmers (who don’t seem worried enough about this and should know better — it has happened before). Even in a worst case scenario, only the most miniscule amount of the fluids will make it into the watershed, and then be diluted by trillions of gallons of water before getting to the City. Ironically, the environmental groups that got up afterwards to give public comments made more sense. Their objections very sensibly focused on the horrendous mess of a plan the state government has offered in its haste to cash in on the Marcellus craze. Some of its allowances include drilling and using explosive technology within 1000 feet of  century-old water tunnels. Anyone with a brain has to ask: Really? Is this for real? The plan is badly thought-out and needs to be re-done with more sensible regulations, protections, oversight and back-up plans. New Yorkers might be comforted by the knowledge that because of competent regulation and oversight, the City of Fort Worth has allowed shale oil drilling and hydrofracking in hundreds of wells within city limits for years without contamination of the city’s water — although there have been problems in the less regulated rural areas. In Mr. DeChristopher’s case, he should have understood the whole situation even a little, before reacting on emotional impulse. Any drilling takes years to bring to fruition and there are many other means, especially legal, to protest or halt the sale of the leases.

2) Focus on the real problem. The marginal information used by all the New York politicians must have come from some external press release because it was so universally parroted and so completely unrelated to the very real dangers that can occur from poor drilling regulation, oversight and drilling. These include the disposal of the “salty” waste water that comes with drilling and the subsequent extraction (much worse and in much greater volume that hydro-fracturing fluids), the preventable careless overuse of local water supplies to drill and frack (a million gallons per well – which can be recycled if the companies are pushed), and the lack of adequate oversight or emergency and clean-up plans. Surely Mr. DeChristopher is not (and was not) the only one extremely concerned about the wholesale land sale by the Bush administration, its lamentable environmental record, and excessively cozy arrangements with energy companies. Mr. DeChristopher might have worked to rally people of the West, who have vastly inadequate legal, regulatory, and environmental protections and sought legal challenges. Plenty of people in Western states are working on the same issue: he ahd a ready-made constituency.

3) Understand the entire picture. No matter how New Yorkers City demands a moratorium on leasing upstate, it will not protect the water supply in total, because Pennsylvania also shares the watershed and is unaffected by any New York regulations.

4) Be honest about why you’re doing it. Is it concern about the environment or a distrust and dislike of oil or gas companies? Is it water protection or is it you don’t want your bucolic country retreat less bucolic? In short, are you representing your own interest or a genuine public one? Nothing wrong with self interest — but any argument is strengthened if you are coming from a legitimate place, and self interest is quite often as legitimate as anything else. And honesty usually makes for a better solution.

4) The solution is public and legal, hire a specialist, and expect the fight will cost money and take time. Both Mr. DeChristopher and the City protesters are right to be concerned — the problem is that each acted in a way that would have been better for the other scenario — Mr. DeChristopher in a public fight using a legal or state challenge, the city people in offering to buy the most risky sites. Fortunately for the people in Western states, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has begun to smell a rat in how oil and gas leases were distributed under the last administration. At the end of last month, he resumed shale oil leasing in the West with dramatic curtailments of the previous leases.

Not all gas leasing can or should be stopped. Energy is essential for the country too and the overwhelming majority of gas wells have not been damaging to people or the environment in any meaningful way. (Leaving global warming out of the immediate equation.) But oversight is critical.

The best ways to challenge leasing for oil and gas is to get all the information, figure out the realistic costs and benefits and dangers, and weigh the best legal and economic options. Certainly the man who spoke up for the local people of upstate New York’s Sullivan County made sense. He had requested a state list of the previous accidents and problems from drilling, demanded that protections and environmental considerations be put in place first, and that New York State regulations be re-thought and re-written. He had a worthwhile point.

For at least three decades now, personal wealth has been a political asset. In both the industrialized and developing worlds, in the words of Deng Xiaoping of China, “to get rich is glorious.” Money was access to political power, political power (especially in the developing world) access to money. I remember about four years ago, when Michael Bloomberg ran for a second term as New York City mayor, a Nigerian editorial,  voicing the people’s fury about oil corruption, that complained that in Africa people sought political office to get rich, whereas in America, you first had to be rich to run for office.  It was not the right lesson to be learned.

This past week, hopefully, has been the beginning of a political sea change.

Money has always been and will always been vitally important in real life and in politics, but something seems to be shifting ideologically. Michael Bloomberg squeaked out a win for his third term only after spending $90 million of his own money, against a pleasant, little-known man who spent $6 million. Governor Jon Corzine of New Jersey lost to a man who does not reflect New Jersey’s social or cultural beliefs. The public turn against these two for the same reason: being a self-made billionaire doesn’t mean you’re so smart anymore.

Both Bloomberg and Corzine had always run on the platform that, as giants in the business world, they could provide jobs and sound economies if they governed. In Bloomberg’s case, being rich had seemed to mean he could also override election law and run again — ostensibly because his financial acumen was needed to save the city in the recession. Needless to say, the past year has given lie to this. It was the guys who spoke to change, willing to face problems on a humble level, who mattered.

For the decades since the 1980s, when we in the West promoted the ideas of free market capitalism to the rest of the world, we have been fairly sheltered from the wildness and dangers of what we preached. Communism died, but Russia descended into chaos for a long time. Much of the world got a terrible taste of the risks during the Asian financial crisis of the mid-1990s.

The idea of make-money-at-all-costs has dominated the developing world as it races to catch us. Too often this means survival of the financial fittest: corruption has always abounded, but rarely so universally and so proudly as recently. Developing countries have too often been willing to sell anything that isn’t nailed down (oil, gas, minerals, land, timber, etc) to make a quick buck for themselves.

Commodities had been one of the two forces that led to the crash in 2008 (with derivatives being the other). During the crash and last winter’s terrible losses, commodities sold at record low prices, and as China snapped up everything available, it looked like commodities would lead the world back out of the slump. Now most commodity prices are no longer a steal and inflows in the third quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal, are half of what they were during the first.

“Investors plowed a record $50 billion into commodities this year, helping drive prices for crude oil up 79% and gold 23%, but just $2.2 billion of new money flowed into commodities in October.”

As at the end of the 1920s, another time when greed trumped honesty, when stockbrokers, financiers, bootleggers and gangsters had assumed near heroic status, we are awakening from that dream. We now look at those mired in corruption as a public threat. It isn’t just American bankers and mortgage brokers. In the past two weeks, huge corruption probes have arrested thousands of accused crooks in China (9,000+ suspects) and in India (telecommunications, iron, oil and gas).

Let’s hope for the end to the day and belief that businessmen are  the saviors of the world and should be trusted with our economic and political future. Stability in business and finance would be a welcome relief.

Former President Bill Clinton and Mayor Bloomberg appeared at a press conference on the Empire State Building’s 80th floor today to announce a cooperative initiative between the Clinton Climate Initiative and other partners to help green New York’s 78-year old signature building.

This phase of renovation, expected to take about 18 months. Under the plan, the building owner’s energy costs will decrease by $4.4 million a year, or 38 percent of energy use. An expected 105,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions will also be saved from as a result of the efforts, over a 15 year period, which equals 175,000 cars. The team hopes to reach an “Energy Star” rating of 90 from the US Environmental Protection Agency, making it among the top decile in energy efficiency.

To get there, the team plans to replace 6,500 windows with triple glazed ones that provide better insulation. Under the scheme, the building will also get an HVAC system upgrade, better insulation for the building’s radiators, and a redesigned lighting system that includes occupancy sensors and enhanced day lighting. Additionally, the building’s tenants will be given Web-based power use systems to more efficiently track and manage energy use.

…..click here to read more