by Gal Fawkes / Earth First! News Wire
Poisoned Water Supply Got You Down? Eco-Capitalism to the Rescue!
Michael Klein at a meeting of the board of eco-industrialists of the Rainforest Action Network.
What if there was a man, an environmentalist lets say—as well as an oil, gas, mining, double d-bag executive—that could turn the toxic nature of fracking into something delicious, into something that marketing professionals could label “green” and would be, of course, highly profitable? Would you then stop, for the love of all things industrial and status-quo, with your damned anti-fracking movement? Please?
Michael Klein, the former major donor and chair of the board of the Rainforest Action Network, who is also a yuppie Deadhead, the owner of mining, oil and gas interests, has come up with a solution. He is now working with a company called Hydrozonix which sells water treatment systems for the fracking industry, offering technology that, according to their website, makes two of the nastier chemicals in fracking fluid unnecessary.
Right now, according to Klein, the company has 12 systems up and running in Texas. Texans should rest a little easier knowing that amongst the hundreds of poisonous, cancerous and even radioactive chemicals present in fracking fluids seeping into their water table, there children won’t be sucking down two that are still being used in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Colorado, California, yada yada and so on…
Here is a “green” fracking set up that Hydrozonix sells. Maybe some of that money will go to RAN.
Environmental organizations are pushing for a complete ban on fracking in California. In recent weeks the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and others have pushed forward with lawsuits challenging the legality of oil and gas leases and won a small victory when a federal judge ruled that the Obama Administration violated the law when it issued oil leases in Monterey County, Calif., without considering the environmental impacts of fracking.
Klein, according to a report in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, is opposed to a ban in his home state of California. Why? You can rest assured that he intends to get fucking rich,–dirty-yuppie-hippy rich–on what many are calling the next big fracking boom destined for the Golden State’s Monterey shale.
A protester being dragged away from an Everglades Earth First! blockaded that hurt Michael Klein’s bottom-line back in February of 2008.
[eds. note, in full disclosure, three recent editors of the Earth First! Journal have had some “serious differences” with Michael Klein that have arisen from encounters in Florida. Back in February of 2008, members of Everglades Earth First! blockaded the construction site to what has become the largest fossil fuel power plant in the United States—the West County Energy Center--that was underway in the northern Everglades. Klein is on the board of the Palm Beach Aggregates, a rock mining company that sold the land to Florida Power & Light for their power plant. The mine is a neighbor to the power plant. Incidentally, we blockaded Klein’s mining company in the process costing them, as he put it, a great deal of lost revenue. Weeks later, Klein visited members of Everglades Earth First! in a trailer park and, after boasting his environmental background he went on to explain that he would urge his company to sue if we proceeded with our protests. Though several county commissioners went to jail over the land deal that involved Klein, he has never been charged with any violations.]
Want to read a bit more about some of the capitalist crack-pots involved with some of the other big greens? Check out A Mining Executive, a Missing Millionaire and the Weird Politics of U.S. Jaguar Conservations and also be sure to read Big Greenwashing 101: Or, How the Sierra Club Learned to Stop Worrying about the 99% and Love Wall Street
