What’s worse than wind turbines in your backyard?
Sep 26, 2010
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Hydrofracking (Fracking) for natural gas
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Editor’s note: We include “fracking” for natural gas on the website because natural gas exploration often goes hand-in-hand with industrial wind energy—many communities find themselves confronted by both horrors. Witness the experience of Meredith, NY, as described recently by NY Times columnist Stanley Fish. Big Wind and Big Gas employ the same sleazy techniques for “winning the hearts and minds” of local town boards and property owners.
Watch this video. Before you do, re-read Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” (1729)—it’s short— “for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public.” (Yes, Swift wrote “Gulliver’s Travels.”) Swift proposed that indigent Irishmen raise their children as a culinary delicacy for wealthy Englishmen.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.
Bizarre, right? Insane, right? Don’t worry, Swift (an Irishman) wasn’t being serious; he was lampooning the British government and aristocracy.
Fracking is right up there with Swift’s “Modest Proposal”—except fracking isn’t satire. It’s insanity that’s being performed as I write these words. It’s happening in the southern tier of New York State. (Nina & I live in New York State.) Fracking is used extensively out west, and is now invading the Marcellus Formation, a colossal shale seam (impregnated with natural gas) beneath the Appalachians.
Industrial wind turbines in our backyards and fracking compounds pouring through our faucets: a madness of Swiftian proportions. The only difference being that Swift’s madness was a harmless jest.
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Comment by Quixote on 09/26/2010 at 12:10 pm
If anyone watches this documentary and doesn’t come away with massive “alarms” going off in their heads can’t be considered even close to being “HUMAN”!
Comment by Tom Whitesell on 09/26/2010 at 9:08 pm
During the 1950s and 60s, there was a pervasive, if subtle, terror of the very real risk of a nuclear war. Natural gas “fracking” is not a risk. This is happening now, and is in the early phases of rapid, frenetic expansion, owing to the pressure (read: “corporate profit motive”) to produce virtually unlimited, free or cheap domestic energy sources, at (apparently) reasonable cost.
If you are reading this in conjunction with concerns about the wind industry, or even if you are not, I cannot emphasize enough the urgency of educating yourself about the immanent environmental calamity posed by fracking for natural gas. The best way to get a crash course in this subject is to see the movie Gasland, as soon as possible.
After you have seen it, ask yourself a few questions: Where is altruism in the big energy industry? Is this “green energy”? If natural gas is cheap, or affordable, or just plain available, what price are you willing to pay? Your health? Your aquifer? Your children’s future? The incalculable damages this technology cause to the environment are permanent.
For every one of, before long, tens of thousands of gas wells, about 2 million gallons of highly toxic water are violently exploded into underground rock, which contains aquifers, the source of all well water, waters used for irrigation, water which eventually is accessed by wildlife. Half of the obscenely toxic injection water is ejected back up out of each well, and (must be?) captured and dealt with “appropriately”.
Even if you see this movie just for something to do, on a whim, you will suddenly realize that something terrible is afoot, and hopefully be motivated to make good use of one of American’s most valuable constitutionally guaranteed rights, that of free speech. Perhaps you’ll say or do something to speak up, defend yourself, defend this lovely planet against the “powers that be”.
Comment by Gloria in Pittsburgh on 11/21/2010 at 12:21 pm
January 2011 – an Inauguration Day rally/protest is being planned in Harrisburg, PA. Our newly elected governor, Tom “The Million $ Man” Corbett, received almost one million $ in campaign contributions from the gas drilling industry. Many of our state senators & reps also received thousands from this industry.
The drillers forgot one thing, they may be able to buy politicians’ votes, but they can’t buy ours.