The Salem-Times Register published a November 23 commentary by Robert L. Bradley Jr. He gushed with praise of FERC going full throttle to approve the giant 42″ Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley pipelines that will destructively cross Virginia’s wild lands, farms, wildlife sanctuaries, historic districts and an active seismic zone. I looked him up.
Wikipedia states Bradley is a former Enron executive and is associated with the Cato and Energy Research Institutes in D.C. where I assume he lives. Bradley bombards us with nonsense such as “ACP would create 10,000 jobs” and the local MVP 9,000–not mentioning that the few jobs created are temporary and non-local hires. The first number comes from President Trump, whose team members are invested in companies backing and lobbying for the ACP. Virginians’ energy supply is currently sufficient and can be serviced by a much smaller non-fracked gas pipeline.
Evidence shows that ACP/MVP gas is destined for LNG export, hence the need for these ridiculously big and dangerous pipelines crossing Virginia’s wilderness and communities in highly hazardous routes.
Bradley mentions FERC having $50 billion in project backlog. The dollar signs are piling up in his dreams of extracting every last bit of fossil fuel – Planet Earth be damned along with environmental concerns to locally protect our water, wilderness and property rights. Bradley ignores that our planet, warmed by fossil fuels for 200 years, is causing superstorms and destructive hurricanes in the U.S. Transitioning soon from fossil fuels may allow our grandchildren a survivable world with sustainable green jobs – not fossil fuel’s boom-bust job market.
He’s a troll for energy interests and includes a nasty smear of anti-pipeline activists in his piece. Perhaps he saw that the Salem City Council took some modest and reasonable measures on November 13 to protect Salem’s drinking water from increased sediment and associated costs that the MVP will produce as it crosses tributaries of the Roanoke River 120 times before Salem’s water intake. As for Bradley’s claimed local consumer “benefits,” fracked gas industry’s longterm interest is to claim that pipelines fill local energy needs when they’re really built for export while ratepayers shoulder construction costs. Years later, the industry will supply Americans at a much higher rate. Virginians and the environment lose several ways while corporations cash in. For fossil fuel shills like Mr. Bradley, corporate profits will always trump environmental and local concerns.
- Cynthia Munley