UPDATE: THE VOTES ARE IN

Just learned from Tracey Harrington on Facebook that the County Committee is sending three names to the Governor: Michael Sirotkin, Deb Ingram, and Dawn Ellis. Ellis, a media consultant who may have been overlooked by some, was one of Vermont’s delegates to the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

You remember that exciting six-person race to fill the late Sally Fox’s seat in the state Senate?

Well, a seventh hat is now in the ring, and the other six are being hastily pulled out.

The new person, who is almost certainly Your Next Senator from Chittenden County, is Michael Sirotkin, who’d been married to Fox for 36 years. As reported by Seven Days’ Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz:

Sirotkin is no stranger to the Statehouse. The South Burlington attorney has worked as a lobbyist for more than three decades and is a partner in one of Montpelier’s most influential lobby shops, Sirotkin & Necrason.

While the contest to replace Fox includes a number of heavy hitters, Sirotkin’s late entrance will undoubtedly alter its dynamics. No favorite has yet emerged, and no candidate can make the case more persuasively than Sirotkin that he or she would carry on Fox’s legacy in the Senate.

Three of the original six candidates have already withdrawn: Jake Perkinson, Crea Lintilhac, and Kesha Ram. Perkinson and Ram have both urged Chittenden County Democrats to unanimously back Sirotkin. The County Dems meet tonight (Wednesday 1/22) to nominate up to three candidates; Governor Shumlin would choose the new Senator, who would fill out the remaining year on Fox’s term.  

in case you missed it (icymi), fyi:

16th Annual Homelessness Marathon Consciousness-Raising Radio Broadcast Live from Brattleboro, VT:

Wednesday, February 19th

Press Release (via Homelessness Marathon):

http://news.homelessnessmarath…

The 2014 Homelessness Marathon –

Wednesday February 19, 2014

The 16th Homelessness Marathon will originate from Brattleboro, VT on the night of Wednesday, February 19th. With this broadcast, we will be returning to our original nighttime format, airing a six hour broadcast from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m., EST.

CURRENT PRESS RELEASE 2014

For immediate release:

Contact: Jeremy Alderson

LIVE FROM BRATTLEBORO, VERMONT –

THE 16TH ANNUAL HOMELESSNESS MARATHON

The Homelessness Marathon will once again bring the voices of homeless people into America’s homes. “I wish we could get their bodies inside too,” comments Jeremy Weir Alderson, the broadcast’s founder, “but we’re doing the best thing we can, by showing America why this problem should be, can be and must be solved.”

The broadcast, which has previously originated from Detroit, Kansas City, and Katrina-ravaged Mississippi, among other places, features live discussions with homeless people. It is a rare opportunity to see life through their eyes. The broadcast even takes calls, so people in their homes can talk with homeless people on the streets.

The 16th Annual Homelessness Marathon will start at 7 p.m., EST. Wednesday, February 19, 2014 and will run for six hours until 1:00 a.m. Its audio signal will be available for free to all radio stations over the Public Radio Satellite System, the Pacifica Ku-band and Pacifica’s Audioport. Live video of the broadcast will be carried by Free Speech Television (FSTV), starting at 8:00 p.m., EST on Feb. 19th. FSTV has channel 9415 on the Dish Network and channel 348 on DirecTV as well as a webcast.

About the Homelessness Marathon:

http://news.homelessnessmarath…

A brief history of the Homelessness Marathon

I founded The Homelessness Marathon in 1998 as an offshoot of, “The Nobody Show,” which I then broadcast weekly on WEOS, an NPR and Pacifica affiliate in Geneva, NY. That first year, I was thinking of it purely as a matter of conscience. I was born and raised in New York City. There was no problem with homelessness there when I was growing up, and I was heartsick to see what was happening. So I basically just wanted to get on the air and say, “This isn’t right, and I want no part of it.”

Of course, I did whatever I could to make it a good broadcast. I tried to bolster my argument with the opinions of experts and the voices of homeless people. And I got the idea to broadcast from outdoors in the dead of winter, because I thought it might be a way to dramatize the plight of people with nowhere to go in the cold. But it never occurred to me that this was something I’d ever do again. So I liken this to falling in love with a poor girl and then discovering that she’s rich. I was really surprised by the reaction I got.

People brought me coffee throughout the night, without my even having asked for it. And when I got off the air, people dug into their pockets for crumpled up bills to help defray my expenses. I really don’t think this was because the broadcast, itself, was so good (believe me, we’ve gotten a lot better since). But it was obvious that the concept had seized people’s imaginations, and how often does that happen?

So I decided to put the Marathon up on the NPR satellite, and we’ve just grown every year since. More and more volunteers have come on board, and more and more radio stations too. The 7th Marathon (in 2004) was carried on 80 stations with another 30 in Canada carrying a parallel Canadian Homelessness Marathon.

As the Marathon has grown, its philosophy has evolved. When I started, I thought I had to scold people and tell them why they ought to care, but now I know that Americans really do care, and that no matter how grave the failings of our society may be, homeless people aren’t on the streets because that’s where we, as a people, want them to be. So I’ve backed off a lot. I now mostly look at the Marathon as giving people the reasons for what they already know in their hearts.

Jeremy Weir Alderson

aka “Nobody”

Director, Homelessness Marathon

For more information, visit the Homelessness Marathon Website:

http://news.homelessnessmarath…

I’d say I never underestimate the power of Vermont’s largest daily newspaper to disappoint us… except that every time I lower my expectations, the Freeploid goes even lower. Two examples Ripped From The Headlines:

1. They’re not nearly done celebrating their new, scenic, smaller and cheaper headquarters. A couple days ago I chronicled the total wankfest that was the Sunday Freeploid, with eight solid pages devoted to intense self-pleasuring. In response, GMD commenter “minotaur” contributed the following:

As someone who uses Twitter as their primary news feed, the last 24 hours was basically me scrolling past spam. The local reporters I follow to find out what’s going on in VT (especially when I’m traveling out of state) decided (I assume based on editor/publisher directive) to stop reporting actual news, and instead tweet views of Lake Champlain from their new offices.

Brilliant. The ‘Loid didn’t do enough to rub it into our faces in the Sunday paper with seven color photographs of their new office’s viewscape; they had their staff spend their Monday Tweeting more pictures. Good God almighty.

2. Today’s prime example of civic journalism on the Freeploid’s homepage: the reader poll. Perhaps the thin atmosphere in their new seventh-story digs is getting to their brains, because if you judge by the poll question, somebody up there thinks it’s 1963:

Now, if that isn’t hate-trolling at its finest, I don’t know what is. Given the typical caliber of newspaper comment sections, the last thing the Freeploid needs is to Awaken The Trolls. BurlingtonFreePress.com is already well-infested, thank you very much.  

And its online readership — or at least the portion thereof that wastes its time answering online polls — doesn’t disappoint. As of this writing, 58% believe that King Day should not be a public holiday.

Good old progressive Vermont.

Well, to be fair, some of those 58% are probably less concerned with pissing on Dr. King’s grave than with shitting on public-sector workers. The question is phrased in a way that lends itself to the popular pastime of government-worker-bashing. Note, for instance, that the question curiously omits banks from its list of MLK Day Moochers.

But the very act of running this as a poll… what exactly is the point? What could this poll question possibly do to advance civic discourse?

I know, I know: the Freeploid doesn’t give a damn about any of that. It’s all about the clicky-clicks.

Honestly, maybe now the Masters of the Seventh Floor could dispense with the wankfest and turn their attention to producing a quality product that reflects a dedication to the public good.

For a change.  

Well, not really. But it’s safe to call it for Our Eternal General, after Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovah announced he will not challenge Bill Sorrell in this year’s Democratic primary. Donovan nearly knocked off Sorrell in the 2012 primary; only a late infusion of out-of-state money for Sorrell prevented Donovan from notching an upset for the ages.

But he won’t try it again this year, perhaps because he’s lost the element of surprise. Unlike in 2012, Sorrell is actually going out of his way to fundraise this time around. It’s safe to say he’d be harder to beat, now that he’s got his eyes open. (He’s already raised over $20,000 and will hold a fundraiser in Florida this week at the annual convention of the Democratic AG’s Association, which bankrolled his last-ditch push in 2012.)

Before we go on with the speculative analysis, let me pause to consider journalistic ethics. This story was broken by Paul “The Huntsman” Heintz; he got the word from Donovan on Monday and posted it at 8:00 am Tuesday. Since then, the Associated Press and Vermont Press Bureau have picked it up, and the Freeploid has posted the AP story. Both the AP and VPB quote Donovan as revealing his decision “Tuesday,” i.e. today.

I’m sure the standard journalistic explanation is “Well, we contacted Donovan ourselves and got the story from him.” That’s technically true, but still, Heintz deserves credit for the scoop, and he didn’t get it. (His story also has a whole lot more detail than the other two.) Personal foul, unsportsmanlike conduct on the AP and VPB, 15-yard penalty and loss of down.

Now, back to the Donovan/Sorrell saga. Maybe it’s just my overactive blogger’s imagination at work, fueled by a possible CO buildup in our Mom’s Basement headquarters, but all the signs point to a nice friendly backroom deal: Sorrell gets a victory lap in 2014 and retires in two years. Donovan bides his time and gets the nomination in 2016. All neat and tidy; put a bow on it and set it under the tree.  

Aside from all this highly convenient collegiality, which sets the stage for a stress-free Democratic primary season for all concerned, I’d also point to Sen. Dick Sears’ introduction of a bill to make the AG’s position a gubernatorial appointment starting in 2016. If that wasn’t a warning shot across Sorrell’s bow, delivered by “the powerful chair of the Judiciary Committee” and “a close friend of Gov. Peter Shumlin,” I don’t know what is.

Not that anyone will admit to it:

Both men denied they’d struck a deal to avoid another match-up.

“No, whatever he’s going to do, he’s going to do,” Donovan said when asked whether Sorrell had pledged to retire after serving one more term.

And Sorrell dismissed any talk of 2016, saying it would be “presumptuous” to assume his re-election in 2014. Heintz does not indicate whether Sorrell kept a straight face.

In withdrawing from the race, Donovan delivered a pretty clear slap to Sorrell, which I take as a sign that a future challenge is not out of the question:

As to whether he’ll endorse Sorrell’s reelection bid, Donovan said “I have no idea,” adding, “I will say I think Bill’s been a lot more active in the last couple of years, and that’s a good thing for Vermont.”

In other words, “Sorrell was sleeping his way through the job and I woke him up.” And “I’ll do it again if I have to.”

Nah, I’m sure this is all a product of my imagination. We’re all friends here, aren’t we? And we all love our Eternal General, don’t we?

Note: Credit where credit’s due. “Eternal General” was crafted by the late great Hugh McDiarmid, longtime political columnist for the Detroit Free Press, and the closest thing Michigan has ever had to a Peter Freyne. McDiarmid used the term to describe Frank Kelley, who served 37 years as Michigan’s elected AG. (He was both the youngest and the oldest person to hold the office.) Hmm, by that standard, Sorrell’s a rookie.  

(originally posted to Vermont Watch, here)

Received the following information from a legislative council staff member this morning in response to an inquiry of mine from earlier this month that included questions concerning legislative pay and the like for members of the Vermont Legislature:

Member’s salary for 2014 will be $660.06 per week, last year it was $647.12. In addition, pursuant to 32 V.S.A. § 1052(b), all members are entitled to an allowance for meals and, if they rent a room, for lodging. In addition, members who drive to the State House are entitled to reimbursement for mileage. The amounts are established by the federal government’s General Service Administration. For 2014 they will be:

• Meals: $61.00 per day
• Lodging: $107.00 per night
• Mileage: 56.00 cents per mile

During the interim members may receive $118 per day for their salary, and actual expenses.

The Speaker of the House and President Pro Tempore of the Senate, receive $730.66 per week during the session, and a Biweekly Salary of $434.47 annually.

     During the 2014 Legislative Session there will be discussion of the same longstanding economic problems. How can we balance the budget while fulfilling the essential functions of state government? How can we prevent property taxes from going up? How can we stimulate economic development? A Vermonter might wonder why such problems are never really solved. I think that the primary reason is that the formation of these economic policies is dominated by politics rather than by economic reality, therefore they never really work.

   One of the weaknesses of the representative form of government is the tendency for elected officials to promise more spending programs without setting up tax revenue to finance them. Another weakness is the tendency for the tax code to be riddled with special provisions that reduce tax payments for particular interests. It is politically advantageous to provide new spending and tax cuts but politically unpopular to finance spending with taxes or to reduce tax subsidies.

    Vermont is trapped in vicious cycles due to these weaknesses. Ambitious spending programs are promised without sustainable funding. Programs therefore fail to achieve their goals due to lack of resources. There is continual pressure for spending greater than tax revenue, creating perpetual budget gaps that are hard to close.  Particular groups receive special reductions in taxes. This then means that to raise the same amount of revenue tax rates have to rise, leading others to ask for special tax reductions, and so on. The costs of entitlements and special tax provisions grow out of control because if requirements are met the statutory benefits must be provided, without further direct governmental management.

   Examples of spending difficulties include numerous programs within the Agency of Human Services in which costs outstrip funding repeatedly. There is also the proposed state financed health insurance program, in which universal insurance and health care have been promised without specifying taxes to fund the cost of up to $2 billion. There are about $3 billion in state unfunded liabilities in retirement funds. Then there are about $1.3 billion worth of “Tax Expenditures” – special tax provisions that reduce payments by those who qualify – that are spread throughout the entire tax code.

   We can transcend these vicious cycles. We could develop a budget that would be sustainable if we restricted entitlements to the basics rather than making new promises that we cannot keep reliably. We could lower all tax rates through the elimination of many special exemptions. I think that property tax rates could come down by 20 cents and all income tax rates could be reduced several percentage points each. Even those who lose special tax treatment would benefit from the much lower rates. Basic but effective government programs and low and stable tax rates would create favorable conditions for economic activity.

   There has been some Legislative interest in such reforms, but too little progress has been made. In part this may be because the Governor has shown a preference for rhetoric over reality in both budget and tax matters. He has chosen to make ambitious promises for programs in education and health care for which he has specified no new funding sources. He has claimed that he will not increase “broad-based taxes” while taking actions that increase the gas tax and property taxes. The only tax expenditure that he has suggested eliminating was one that benefited the working poor.

  The Governor’s political success is such that he has no announced opponent.  I have no confidence that any future Republican or Progressive candidate would be any more willing to face our economic realities in terms of BOTH spending and tax reform than he is. My disappointment and frustration at his failure of economic leadership is so intense that if I could I would run for Governor myself.

  However, armed only with uncomfortable economic realities and without an established base of support, if I tried to run for Governor it would be a joke.  I will continue to work in the Legislature to bring economic analysis and creative common sense to bear on the problems before us, so that our solutions might strengthen Vermont.

Cynthia Browning represents Arlington, Manchester, Sandgate, and Sunderland in the Vermont Legislature.    

Here’s a question for you.

Let’s say you’re a reporter, and you’ve discovered a nice juicy story. One that sheds unexpected light on its subject, and touches on broader social themes. It’s a great story; it’s a lot of work to research and write, but the end product is personally and professionally rewarding.

All that being said, the story might also have unintended consequences for the person or people involved. What do you do?

We have two case studies, one in big capital letters and another in smaller type. One national, one local. In the former, we already know the repercussions; in the latter, they remain to be seen.

Story #1: “Dr. V’s Magical Putter” by Caleb Hannan, posted on Grantland.com. It begins as a sports story about a new type of putter (yes, the golf club) that’s attracted a lot of favorable attention, and about its reclusive inventor, Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt.

She initially consented to the story on the understanding that it focus on the putter, not on her own story. But while conducting research, Hannan discovers an entirely unexpected life story — including the fact that Dr. V is transgendered. He decides he can’t write the article without including her story. When he informs her of that, she reacts angrily.

And then kills herself.

It’s a damn good story, very well written, and received widespread initial praise from the sports journalism community. And then came the backlash: some journalists and many activists lambasted Hannan for telling a very personal story against the subject’s will.

That’s the big national story and I think the answer is clear, at least in retrospect: Even though you’re a journalist who’s done your job, you don’t always have a “right” to tell a story, and your readers don’t have “a right to know,” if the consequences are so immense.

Now for Story #2. On Sunday January 12, the Burlington Free Press published an article by Mike Donoghue about a woman who claims to have been hospitalized against her will in the psychiatric unit at Fletcher Allen Health Care.

That, in itself, would not attract the Freeploid’s attention. But the patient is Christina Schumacher, whose teenage son Gunnar was killed in a murder-suicide committed by her ex-husband, Ludwig “Sonny” Schumacher Jr. That makes her story, and her hospitalization, a matter of interest to the Freeploid and its readers.

Donoghue assiduously reports her side of the story, and recounts his repeated efforts to get the hospital and other officials to respond.

Which they can’t. The law prevents them from releasing information about patients, the circumstances of a hospitalization, and the reasoning behind their actions. Donoghue damn well knows this, but he doesn’t do a lot to make it clear in his story: he depicts a stonewall of “no comment” from official sources.

The problem is, there are very good reasons for this legal restraint. And there are very good reasons to wonder whether Donoghue’s story will have unintended consequences for Schumacher in the future. Very personal details of her hospitalization and her life have been published in the state’s largest newspaper and posted online for any and all to read.

Schumacher voluntarily spoke to Donoghue. But hell, she’s in a hospital for psychiatric problems. Is she capable of granting consent, of deciding whether to speak with a reporter? Will she ever regret Donoghue’s story in the future? It’s obviously too soon to tell, but I think there’s a very good chance she will. Let’s say she enjoys a full recovery, moves to another state, and tries to resume her career. When prospective employers Google her, they will certainly find Donoghue’s article. What then?

In terms of black and white, Donoghue was absolutely within his rights to interview someone who wants to talk with him and to write her story, and the Freeploid was within its rights to publish. In this case, unlike Caleb Hannan’s, the subject gave her consent.

But there’s a substantial gray area surrounding this story. Should he have considered the quality of Schumacher’s consent? Should he have considered the reasons why patients are accorded broad privacy protections? Should he have considered the possible future impact on Schumacher, to have her publicly identified as a psychiatric patient with the full details of her case, so shortly after her family was destroyed?

Regarding Caleb Hannan’s article, Jeff Chu, a reporter for Fast Company, had this to say:

Sometimes the right thing for us to do as journalists is to honor a life by not telling a story. It’s not always ours to tell.

I wish Mike Donoghue and his editors had pondered that idea before publishing Christina Schumacher’s story. As for me personally, I wish they’d made a different decision. Journalism — even first-rate journalism — ought to be tempered by humanity.  

If you were so unfortunate as to spend your money on a copy of the Sunday Freeploid, sorry about that: you wasted your hard-earned cash on a prolonged orgy of self-congratulation. Must have been plenty of dislocated shoulders around Freeploid HQ after all that furious back-patting.

Yep, the Freeploid seized on its move to much smaller and much cheaper digs as a pretext to fill its meager news hole with page after page of news… about itself. And lots and lots of space-eating pictures, too!

How did they wank? Let me count the ways…

The front page, of course, with a photo of a guy washing windows at the new FreePressMedia space overlooking Your Fair City from seven stories up. And if you liked that picture, just wait till you turn to Section B. You’ll get lots more. Lots and lots more.

Section B is dedicated to Vermont news. Well, it usually is; today, it’s mostly dedicated to Freeploid wankery. It starts on page B4 with the egregiously egotistical headline: A CHANGE FOR THE AGES.

The ages. Really, now.

Reminds me of when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and President Nixon called it “the greatest event since creation.” Which, as I said at the time, certainly put Jesus in his place.

The narcissistic headline tops a lengthy meander down Memory Lane by Freeploid stalwart Sam Hemingway, which includes no less than eight reproductions of past Free Press front pages. Hemingway’s article, with all the front pages and other photos, takes up an entire four pages.

And then you get to the hard-core wankery: A tour of the new Freeploid offices on Bank Street.  

Reporter Dan D’Ambrosio somehow wangled an interview with Publisher Jim Fogler, in which he waxed ecstatic about the move and how it sets the stage for a brighter, more prosperous future. The two-page story is larded with photos of the new space, most of them featuring its very nice views over downtown Burlington and Lake Champlain. The message, apparently, is: “Your daily paper may suck, but look — we’ve got scenic vistas out our office windows! Thank you for supporting your local paper!”

As if anyone gives a hot damn what the Freeploid’s offices look like.

Add it all up, and you’ve got seven pages of precious newspaper space given over to an unpaid advertisement for the past and present glories of the Burlington Free Press, as seen by itself. Well, seven pages of “content” plus a full-page ad paid for by some of the contractors who worked on the new offices. As Barney the Purple Dinosaur might say, “I wank you, you wank me, we’re a wanking family…”

Really, the Freeploid’s overweening self-regard is sickening. After all, what they’re celebrating is a failure, a retreat: the move came about because the paper’s staff has shrunk so much that it needs a lot less space. And because its corporate masters at Gannett are eager to cash in its real estate holdings. I’m sure the $2.8 million sale price will help boost quarterly earnings for shareholders. I’m even more sure it won’t be plowed back into the quality of the local product.  

It certainly didn’t do anything for the quality of the January 19, 2014 edition.  

(This has long been one of my biggest issues with Woolf’s doomsday take on our “failure” to grow in population.  The model is all wrong.  We should be striving toward a model called “sustainability.” – promoted by Sue Prent)

To hear Economist Art Woolf tell it, Vermont’s population problem is that it isn’t growing.  As he put it in a recent Burlington Free Press appearance:  

a very slow-growing population presents challenges.  For one, it limits economic growth and hence the opportunities for Vermont businesses to expand and for Vermonters to obtain jobs. Larger populations also make it easier for people to meet and communicate and to come up with new business ideas.

This is all true.  BUT–and this is a huge but–that doesn’t mean that the most cost-effective (the most economical) solution is to promote population growth.  

A reader of Woolf’s piece could be forgiven for thinking that this is the conclusion they’re meant to draw. He goes on:

Vermont is not headed for disaster if our population growth remains at current low levels. But it will present challenges for businesses, government and individuals, and it will limit everyone’s opportunities.

Yes, a population that doesn’t grow limits some opportunities.  The problem is what Woolf leaves unsaid:  a growing population limits other, very important opportunities even more.

Many Americans think that the government is too large, that its reach into our lives is too deep.  But imagine:  what if every single act of yours that might affect the health of ecosystems had to be regulated by public authority?  Economic growth used to be widely perceived as the necessary companion to increasing democratic freedoms; unfortunately, on a finite planet on which human civilization has built out to (and beyond) the limits of what’s ecologically sustainable, continued economic growth is now the enemy of democratic freedoms.  

We face loss of opportunity because of population growth:  The opportunity to have and keep our civil freedoms, and our sense that there is some behavior that is private and therefore not a fit subject for regulatory control.  

As I’ve argued in a recent book, democratic freedoms and civil liberties depend on our human population being below some critical point–a point below which  nature can absorb and adapt to our freely-chosen acts and ways. Many of us who are concerned about ecological sustainability fear that we’ve long since passed that point.  

The prospect if our population and economy continue to grow?  

The collision of the economy with its resource limits will give us an anemic economy–one in which unemployment is endemic and the rich grow richer, while middle and impoverished classes swell because of broken promises (like pension fund collapses) and higher effective taxes for poorer services.  Pressure will increase to promote economic growth (or even simply recovery) by doing  away with regulatory regimes that protect environmental quality and human health–like the regulatory regime that could have prevented the horrible spill of coal-scrubbing chemicals in West Virginia.  And if we don’t choose to continue to degrade our environment in the effort to maintain an unsustainable economy, then environmental regulation will necessarily get broader and broader in its scope and in the depth of its reach into our lives.  

The alternative?  Limit the matter-and-energy throughput of the economy, bringing it down to a flow that the planet can sustain.  This is the steady-state economy model.

Transforming our economy from an infinite-growth model to a steady-state model need not mean that we diminish the quality of our lives, or even the quantity of our material wealth.  In part the quality of our lives could be improved in a steady state economy by a trade-off of material stuff for immaterial benefits, like more leisure time, more satisfying work environments, a healthier environment.  In part the quality of our material lives could be improved in a steady-state economy by doing more with less:  we can expect that technological innovation will continue to let us wring more economic value–more human wellbeing–from a constantly-sized flow of throughput.  

Both of these sources of genuine economic progress are threatened–even made impossible–by population growth.  

If, under a given set of technologies, the amount of material wealth that an economy can sustainably create is finite, then the larger the number of people that share that finite amount of wealth, the smaller will be each person’s share. In a world that has reached the ecological limits to economic growth, continued population growth can only diminish the average quality of life.

Controlling population growth is now the most cost-effective way of increasing humanity’s standard of living–on the planet as a whole, in this country, and in the state of Vermont.  Far from sending up cautions about our population’s failure to grow, economists in Vermont should be celebrating our state’s near achievement of the steady-state ideal.

(Valuable science perspective on a timely issue! – promoted by Sue Prent)

(Cross posted at minorheresies.com)

“Eventually, the politics of energy has to surrender to the physics of energy.” Randy Udall

Two pieces of news have come together in my mind recently. One is the Vermont Public Service Board approval of a new natural gas pipeline through Addison County. The other is a Wall Street Journal article about investments in shale gas production.

The PSB approval and pipeline story is straightforward. Vermont Gas, a subsidiary of Canadian Gaz Metro, is extending its pipeline from Chittenden County and the population center around Burlington southward through Addison County. Phase 2 of the project will have the pipeline cross the narrows of Lake Champlain and serve the Ticonderoga paper mill in New York. In theory, Phase 3 will bring natural gas to the city of Rutland around 2020.  

There are objections to the pipeline by many residents of Addison County, generally on two grounds: First, that this will encourage the use of hydrofractured (“fracked”) gas, which is controversial due to its threat to ground water and the general environment near drilling sites. Second, that it will detour us from the pursuit of renewable energy and energy efficiency. A number of people simply don’t want a natural gas pipeline on or near their land.

The proponents of the pipeline argue that it will bring cheap energy to western Vermont, with the resulting economic benefits. Phase 2, they say, will bring far cleaner, cheaper energy to the Ticonderoga plant, with resulting environmental and economic benefits.

A sidebar on shale gas production:

So-called conventional oil and gas generally reside in underground sandstone formations, like sponges made of rock. The oil and gas are in the holes in the sponge (porosity) and the holes are connected to some extent (permeability) so that the oil and/or gas can flow through the sponge, much the same way that water can soak through from one end of a sponge to the other. These conventional deposits can be miles across and hundreds of feet thick.

Shale oil and shale gas deposits can be described the same way, but with different measurements. A shale deposit might have one one-thousandth the porosity and permeability of a sandstone deposit. A shale formation like the Bakken in the northern Midwest covers thousands of square miles but is only ten to maybe 150 feet thick. To imagine the scale, picture a layer of plastic wrap over a couple of football fields. This distribution means two things. One is that there is a lot less energy per horizontal acre in a shale field. The other is that the oil and gas won’t travel from one part of the field to another without a lot of help.

Horizontal drilling is the process of controlling the drill bit so that after going straight down it curves sideways and follows the thin shale formation. Drillers make a number of these horizontal boreholes out from a central drilling point in order to get access to a large area of shale.

Hydrofracturing is the process of injecting a mixture of water, chemicals, and then sand at extremely high pressures to blast open the cracks and pores in the shale. The sand is a “proppant”, keeping the blasted shale from collapsing back on itself. These two operations are an expensive proposition.

A horizontally drilled, hydrofractured well has a relatively short productive life. After a massive initial rush of production, output could drop by 40-50% in the first year. It might drop another 30-40% in the second year, and 20% or more in the third. The key to maintaining production levels is drilling intensity – quickly drilling more wells to replace declining ones. This is also an expensive proposition.

Investor Flight

The Wall Street Journal Article (paywalled), as quoted in the ASPO-USA Peak Oil Review (http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=e230969c7ec1dec75cc347eaf&id=d61ea0ac6b&e=7b1d4340e6), casts doubt on the cheap energy claim by Vermont Gas. There has been a huge rush into shale gas drilling over the past decade. With that rush came a huge rush of natural gas, driving the price down to the historic lows of the past few years. Those low prices, bottoming out below $2 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf), were below the cost of production. Shale gas exploration companies lost tens of billions annually. As far as I can tell each company’s strategy was to hold on to the mineral leases and produce at a loss until their competitors went out of business. Then the remaining companies could clean up as supply declined and gas prices rose. The industry has been running on continued injections of investor cash.

Recently the investors have been getting cold feet. Here’s the key quotation from the WSJ article:

  “Since 2008, deep-pocketed foreign investors have subsidized the U.S. energy boom, as oil and gas companies spent far more money on leasing and drilling than they made selling crude and natural gas. But the rivers of foreign cash are running dry for U.S. drillers. In 2013, international companies spent $3.4 billion for stakes in U.S. shale-rock formations, less than half of what they invested in 2012 and a tenth of their spending in 2011, according to data from IHS Herold, a research and consulting firm. It is a sign of leaner times for the cash-hungry companies that have revived American energy output. The value of deals involving U.S. energy producers plunged 48% this year from 2012, to $47 billion, the first annual decline since 2008. So U.S. oil and gas producers have started to slash spending.”

                             — (The Wall Street Journal, Jan 2)

Remember that the key to low prices is continued high production and the key to continued high production is drilling intensity. The key to drilling intensity is investment, and that is going away, dropping by a factor of ten in just two years. Investment will only come back when the price of natural gas rises enough to make shale production profitable. Industry analysts argue endlessly about what the breakeven price of shale gas is for various fields, but my general takeaway is that it could mean a doubling of wholesale prices.

Back in Vermont, the residents and businesses of Chittenden, Addison, and Rutland Counties are being promised a bounty of cheap natural gas. The geology of shale gas dictates the economics, and the economics, via investor flight, indicates that this is a false promise. Just about the time that consumers find themselves hooked up to the pipeline and paying for their new appliances the price will start heading for a profitable range. The politics of energy will surrender to the physics of energy before Rutland ever sees a cubic foot of natural gas.