Lady Gaga backs Yoko Ono's anti-fracking coalition

Pop star and social media powerhouse encourages her millions of fans to support Ono's Artists Against Fracking campaign.

Tue, Oct 09 2012 at 11:20 AM

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Celebs, Natural Gas

Photo: INFPhoto.com

When Lady Gaga tweets or posts to Facebook, she instantly connects with tens of millions of people hooked into social media, thrusting whatever issue she supports into the spotlight and raising instant awareness for a cause.

Unfortunately for the natural gas industry, the 26-year-old has chosen to use her power to promote Yoko Ono's Artists Against Fracking, a coalition of more than 180 musicians, artists and filmmakers firmly against natural gas drilling in New York state.

Yesterday, Gaga reached nearly 90 million people by urging her fans on Twitter and Facebook to support the organizations and sign a petition asking New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to ban fracking.

"Hey!!! I'm gonna see Yoko tomorrow and this organisation is really important to her and interesting www.artistsagainstfracking.com," she wrote. "If you read up on 'fracking' this might be of interest. For those of you concerned in environmental affairs ..."

On Oct. 9 in Reykjavik, Iceland, Lady Gaga and the feminist punk rock band Pussy Riot will receive the fifth LennonOno Grant for Peace. The award honors those who stand firm in their belief in freedom of expression.

"Lady Gaga is one of the biggest living artists of our time," Yoko says. "She is not only an artist, she is also an activist, using her art to bring better communication to the world. She is being acknowledged for her activism, and how her album, 'Born This Way,' has widely changed the mental map of the world. And how it has made us deal with the future world, which happens to be here already."

Gaga has announced that she plans to use the cash award that comes with the honor and donate it to the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

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Comments: 6

Enter your name Oct 12 2012 at 4:04 PM

it is a Nationwide problem as well as global...but N.Y. is a start. On another note Adelphi University has invested in this as well as companies in Norway and else where.http://nonoxltd.com/AboutUs.html
I have no personal interest in this company butb believe in it's mission.

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leoland Oct 10 2012 at 1:30 PM

well well well.. so, don't frack in NY but you can do it anywhere else in the rest of the world... sigh..

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mg81992 Oct 11 2012 at 9:51 AM

If we could accomplish a national ban, or even better, an international ban on fracking, we would. Not only are we trying to ban fracking in New York, we're also fighting against the build out of a new natural gas infrastructure that would bring fracked shale gas to our state from Pennsylvania. Check out Occupy the Pipeline, for example. Those people are engaging in brave acts of non-violent civil disobedience in downtown Manhattan almost every day. We realize that fighting for a ban on fracking

.... More

isn't enough. We have to stop the expanding demand for gas. In New York City, for example, apartment buildings heated by cheaper, dirtier heating oils are being asked to convert either to more expensive, cleaner oils, or to install new boilers that run on natural gas. There's a bill in Congress that would create tax incentives for vehicles, including fleets of trucks to run on natural gas. All of this will cause demand to skyrocket, drive up the price of gas, and make fracking more and more difficult to fight. Here in New York, we understand that this is a three-pronged fight - ban fracking, stop the increasing demand for gas, and make sure that renewable energy, like wind and solar, receives the government support it needs to expand capacity and drive down costs. In just a few years, if renewable sources of energy continue to receive the support they need, they will become price-competitive with fossil fuels, and that will be the end of coal, oil, and gas (and nuclear). The Koch Brothers and their Tea Party allies in Congress have so far successfully killed the extension of the Production Tax Credit (PTC) for wind energy, which expires at the end of this year. As a result, wind energy businesses have already seen their orders decline and have started laying off workers. If you want to see an end to fracking, it would be really helpful if you could educate others about the need to extend the wind energy PTC. There's a bill in Congress that would extend the wind PTC through 2016, but we need Speaker Boehner to bring it up for a vote in the House of Representatives. The Sierra Club has created an online petition for this: https://secure.sierraclub.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&...