Announcements 




Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.



Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.



The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement



SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris




SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018



SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018




SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018




SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017






SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017




SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017



SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017




SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017




SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven



2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.


Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling


resist (Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.


Between The Lines on Stitcher

stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

inequality
"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.





Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.


JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

Between The Lines Blog  BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Between The Lines Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Podcasts Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts:  direct  or  via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

RSS feed  twitter  facebook

donate  Learn how to support our efforts!

Yale University Forum Debates Natural Gas Boom's Impact on Climate Change

Real Audio  RealAudio MP3  MP3

Posted April 10, 2013

Excerpts of Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies’ panel discussion on climate change: U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale, and Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale School of Forestry's Project on Climate Change, recorded and produced by Melinda Tuhus

fracking

The Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, along with the Sierra Club, sponsored a March 27 panel discussion on energy policy and climate change on the Yale campus. Speakers included Connecticut's U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal; Nadine Unger, assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry at Yale, and Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Forestry School's Project on Climate Change Communication.

During the forum, each panelist made a short presentation, followed by questions from the audience. One important question posed to the panel dealt with the method of natural gas extraction known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking. In fracking, large amounts of water and chemicals are pumped underground to break up tight shale formations and release the oil or natural gas within. Critics opposed to fracking point to evidence of groundwater pollution resulting from the injection of a proprietary brew of toxic chemicals.

What follows is an excerpt of the panelists’ response to this question: "The natural gas boom and fracking are rapidly changing the energy picture in the U.S. Is this ultimately going to be a positive or negative development for those worried about climate change?" Sen. Blumenthal responds first, followed by Unger and Leiserowitz.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: Number One, I think fracking obviously has great perils; safeguards are necessary, but the potential for more natural gas, I think, is real opportunity. But what we really need in this country is an energy policy that incentivizes and drives renewables of all kinds: solar, thermal, wind, fuel cells. The state of Connecticut is the fuel cell capital of the country; we make fuel cells here in greater numbers than anywhere else. We could be the fuel cell capital of the world – again, another way environmental protection, smart energy policy can be an economic boon if we just had an energy policy that favored tax credits. You know, I spend time with the fuel cell producers of Connecticut and the U.S., and other countries are encouraging manufacturing of fuel cells. We need to look beyond fracking to those sources of energy – renewable energy, clean energy – that can not only benefit us in terms of the environment going forward, but can offer even greater opportunities than new sources of natural, as good as they may be because natural gas is cleaner, but other sources where we can lead the world, and lead by example. That's what the U.S. can do, is lead by example.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Blumenthal was followed by Nadine Unger.

NADINE UNGER: Yes, so in terms of natural gas and fracking, the latest climate science is clear that natural gas is not any better for the climate than coal; it is better for air quality, but not for global warming. A serious problem with natural gas is leakage of methane, and there is a serious lack of measurements of methane emissions and volatile organic carbon emissions from fracking sites and natural gas extraction sites in the U.S. In fact, this industry has grown so rapidly that these emissions are not even included in the U.S. EPA emissions inventory – they're not on the map. So we certainly need to have a more extensive measurement campaign before we can say anything more definitive about natural gas in the U.S.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Unger was followed by Anthony Leiserowitz.

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: I'll just very quickly channel my colleague, Jim Saiers – we had a whole panel on this, a fascinating panel, last year – and he was very clear that the science is still very new about the ultimate consequences of this rush into fracking and into natural gas. Yes, when you burn it in a power plant, it produces half the CO2 of coal, and that's important. However, when you do a whole lifecycle analysis from the well to the pipes through the distribution system and into that plant, it's not clear yet. We actually just don't know, and yet we're rushing into this boom without having that scientific basis of knowledge, and that's of course of concern to us in the scientific community. So we don't really know yet, and we don't know how solvable this is. Even if we do find out that the wells leak, or the pipes leak, are those fixable, or is there something fundamentally wrong?

The other is of course that this is a huge question of tradeoffs – coal is an old and dirty and polluting and terrible energy source for all kinds of reasons. And yet, natural gas does burn cleaner. It's better for health; it may be better for climate change, too, and it's a lot cheaper. I'm just saying that we don't fully know. And there are all these other tradeoffs – these communities that have to endure this fracking boom, it's an incredible transformation of the local landscape, the local soundscape, the local smellscape, and everything else.

And I think the one other concern that I think many people would point to, is that this incredible new energy source, which is American – it's not imported – however, it's so cheap that it's making harder for renewables to compete, that it's actually making it harder to have the market incentives for solar and wind and geothermal and all the other things that we know are much cleaner.

This segment was recorded and produced by Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus. For more information on the Yale School of Forestry's Project on Climate Change Communication, visit Environment.yale.edu/climate.

Related Links: