Three weeks ago, Aubrey McClendon, co-founder of Chesapeake Energy Corp (a major player in shale gas) was accused of rigging bids for oil- and gas-drilling rights. McClendon slipped away from his security team and climbed into his 2013 Chevy Tahoe. He sped north along a lonesome two-lane stretch of Midwest Boulevard, toward the prairie-scrub city edge, where he drove his SUV into a wall at high speed.
I’m assuming suicide. When I read about this I was reminded of the huge (well .. it should have been huge) scandal discovered by Time Magazine in 2012.
“between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.”
The problem with the “Beyond Coal” campaign is that it wants to replace coal with super-expensive renewables (instead of cheap natural gas) despite the bribes from McClendon.
China has 150 new coal power plants planned “a capacity of 123GW, more than twice Germany’s entire coal fleet”.
Not only will killing coal in the USA put 10s of thousands of people out of work (many of whom will probably vote Trump) … replacing coal with renewables will make manufacturing and home electricity even less competitive.
And even more coal will be burned in China (and India etc) than is not burned in the USA.
McClendon was an idiot to fund the Sierra Club.
sunshine hours 