With knowledge comes responsibility

What is the point of learning about the world if we live for ourselves?  What the is point of research and of generating knowledge if we do not take what we learn to heart?

Scientists and engineers occupy a unique and powerful position in this culture, and they always have.  While kooks and quacks no doubt exist, scientists and engineers do important work in chemistry, atmospheric sciences, biology, physics, ecology, building and designing.  But if you're a scientist or engineer reading this, it is likely that you have been educated to (or at least told to) just doing the science and engineering, and leaving the decisionmaking that stems from it to others--policymakers, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians, many of whom do not have the best interests of people and nature at heart.  Scientists and engineers thus leave it to others, others who many not fully understand the implications of this knowledge, to decide what should be done about what we know, so scientists and engineers do not lose their "objectivity," so they do not cross the supposedly strict boundaries between scientific, reductionist research and the murky world of "values."

But in this glacier-melting, toxic tresspassing, obesity-inducing, mass-species-extinction, large corporate culture, scientists and engineers can no longer sit on the sidelines of decisionmaking.  Traditional means of scientific communication have led, for example, to politicians undermining and denying climate science (although in this episode of This American Life, it becomes clear that many politicians fully accept climate science, but just do not admit it).  Instead, given the incredible diversity of thought, skill, and knowledge they possess, scientists and engineers must take full responsibility for what they know and do, and that is to become front and center the faces of the radical social, political and economic change needed to align this culture and its laws with ecological holism and peace.

Fortunately, there are a handful of such brave men and women out there already, and Sandra Steingraber heads the list of courageous scientist activists.  A poet, essayist, author, environmentalist and ecologist, Steingraber has written extensively (in Orion magazine, among other places) about the links between industrial chemicals released into the environment and human health impacts, specifically cancer.  Recently, she has been intimately involved with the opposition to the extremely destructive practice of fracking, for which she was jailed.  In a conversation with Dick Gordon on The Story, Steingraber says,

In the absence of a powerful human rights movement behind the science, I don't think we can move this forward.  The world's most powerful industries are standing in our way.  And so I think science needs to be coupled with a kind of activism, similar to what we saw with [the] Civil Rights [Movement], similar to what we saw with the Abolitionist Movement.  And so, I feel inspired in the work that I do not just by the power of the data, whether it's on climate change, or on the growing evidence that we have linking childhood asthma to crummy air, [but also by how] Martin Luther King Jr. did what he did, and how my dad, at age eighteen, had to go off and fight global fascism even though at the time it looked like an overwhelming task...People under very desperate circumstances rose and said, "This is wrong." 

I carry around this German name, Steingraber, and my dad [was] also German...and what I learned from my dad was to not be a "good German."  If you see something is wrong because you have evidence, whether it is the kind of evidence that the French partisans had or whether it is evidence like I have as a biologist, we have a moral obligation to make sure that that evidence [leads to change].  You don't just say, "Here's the evidence," and that's your job, you're done.  But if nobody is coming to take the evidence and turn it into change, then you have to do that yourself.  It becomes your own responsibility. 

I hope to continue to develop these thoughts on the blog over the days and weeks to come; they formed an important part of my dissertation, and continue to be something I write about more academically.  I hope to translate more of that writing here.  I am sure many of you have thoughts on this very important issue, and I welcome them in the form of comments and even guest blog posts.  Until then, I encourage you to listen to Gordon's full conversation with Steingraber, which I have posted below.  You can also find the conversation on The Story's website, here.

Part 1 of Gordon's conversation with Steingraber.

Part 2 of Gordon's conversation with Steingraber.

The jagged edges of the Keeling Curve

This time it made the headlines.  Something as vague and intangible as an invisible, odorless gas is encapsulated in a concrete number.  400 parts per million, a level of carbon dioxide not seen for the past three to five million years.

The number is in fact not intangible.  It is very real, real because sea levels are rising millimeter by millimeter, submerging island nations such as the Maldives and heavily populated coastlines.  The number is real because the summer of 2012 was the hottest summer on record in the United States.  The number is real because of the acidification of oceans and coral bleaching; because of drier forests fueling larger fires; because of the ever-shrinking amount of polar ice; because entire villages in Alaska are needing to be moved because of thawing land, to the tune of $380,000 per person.  

In spite of all of this very real evidence of the effects of climate change, nothing new is being said that can wash away the line that have been drawn in the sand that divides the "believers" from the "skeptics".  (If you don't "believe" in climate science, perhaps you might question your beliefs in most any science that you rely on in your daily life.)  Perhaps it is time for a new story about climate change, a new story that connects old facts.  Perhaps our sole focus on the emission of greenhouse gases as a technological deficiency is distracting us from the real issues; framing climate change as a “carbon” problem is “possibly the greatest and most dangerous reductionism of all time: a 150 year history of complex geologic, political, economic, and military security issues all reduced to one element.” [1]

As a postdoctoral researcher, I wonder if Charles Keeling thought about the symbolism of his scientific endeavors in the thin air of Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawai'i.  The jagged edges of the Keeling Curve are symbolic of the sharp divides and fractures in our politics, and under our feet in the fracked Marcellus Shale.  The jagged edges show how cruelly we continue to cut and lacerate this earth, just as is being done in the forests of Canada to access tar sands.  The curve is symbolic because not only does it show that carbon dioxide levels are rising, but that also our hubris is, too--the hubris of thinking that we may be able to engineer ourselves out of this problem.

From The Scripps Institution of Oceanography

 

[1] Thomas Princen, “Leave It in the Ground: The Politics and Ethics of Fossil Fuels and Global Disruption” prepared for the International Studies Association International Conference, Montréal, March 16-19, 2011; to appear in State of the World 2013.  

FRACK YOU: "Get used to it."

Jeff Dick is the Chair of Geological and Environmental Sciences at Youngstown State University, and a proponent of fracking. His past with the oil and gas industry has led him to trust them so much so that he has leased his own land to a company to frack for natural gas. He believes that the environmental regulatory agencies of Ohio are doing a good enough job to keep him safe from the potential ill effects of fracking. In fact, he believes that fracking causes little to no ecological harm or pollution. To those people who oppose fracking in rural Ohio, in what Dick has called his little "patch of paradise", he says, well, "Get used to it."

...[J]ust like in those other states [like Texas] where the culture of the people is very accepting of it, I believe with time, the culture of people here in Ohio is going to shift to where they say this is acceptable. Obviously to a lot of people it won't be acceptable, but probably...a good number of people, and I'd suggest probably...a majority of people, because that's where we're at right now, I believe, are accepting of this industry. You have to keep in mind, and this is very important, that eastern Ohio has been economically depressed for a very long time. And so, this is a big opportunity for new industry to come into this area and provide new jobs and all sorts of economic growth opportunities. And that's quite frankly why the majority of people throughout this region are behind this oil and gas development.

So, let us take sand from Leopold's Sand County in Wisconsin so that those in Ohio and North Dakota and Pennsylvania and New York can shove it, mixed with proprietary chemical blends, deep into the ground so that we can the energy we want today. Let us take so much sand away that sand no longer remains in Sand County. The lure of temporary jobs paying eighteen dollars an hour that result in nearly permanent geologic and ecological degradation can be too much for county boards to resist. And be sure to know that your wastewater treatment facility is doing all that it can to keep your drinking water safe from the chemicals.

You see, it just takes getting used to. Just like people in Delray eventually got used to noxious fumes from an incinerator in their backyard. Just like the people in the Maldives will get used to their country being submerged bit by bit into the ocean because of climate change. It'll be a few years before their country is entirely gone. By that time, they will have gotten used to it, because when it comes down to it, oil and gas is here to stay.

FRACK YOU: The tyranny of energy

As an engineer, you are trained to think about the flow of energy. Efficiency, a key concept in engineering and design, is basically an accounting of energy. But energy isn't only something that is confined to engineering. Rather, it is a basic feature of all of nature. We live because of the energy of the sun. Food provides our bodies with energy to keep us alive, breathing and warm. Weather is Earth's response to the flow of solar energy. The fossil fuels we burn is stored energy from eons ago. To live, energy must flow through us. But for the past few hundred years, we've wanted more and more of it, and our living has been conflated with how much energy we can use.

This world is using more energy than ever before, and we're looking for newer and newer ways to extract it from this Earth. The less abundant it is, the more we have to search for it, and the more we are compelled to do whatever it takes to find it. As you can imagine, none of this is benign. For all the hullabaloo, natural gas, which "clean" burning, is in no way cleanly obtained. Fracking has been the latest type of energy extraction to tyrannize this Earth and its people. Here are some responses to Sandra Steingraber's recent piece in Orion, When Cowboys Cry.

"While reading Sandra Steingraber's column, I thought of a recent visit to my father's ranch in Montana, where I confronted the aftermath of hydrofracturing. The land had an alkali sheen to it; little pipe installations were everywhere, and the ranch and road had obviously been flooded many times. I had seen this place once before - when it was a retreat for the coal company that owned it - and it was beautiful. Now, my father would cry to see it." ~Iris Blaisdell, Gardnerville, Nevada

"Sandra Steingraber is right to point out the threat hydrofractuing poses to groundwater. The implications are especially worrying in the Upper Peninsula of my state, Michigan, which is crisscrossed by spring-fed waterways from west to east. All through the state - along roadsides and deep in the woods, where people stop to collect water in containers - an amazing number of these clear, drinkable fountains erupt from hillsides. Others babble forth from smaller openings in the earth and join together to make drinkable creeks and tannin-colored rivers - all of which end up in the Great Lakes, which hold almost one quarter of all the fresh water on the planet. In the midst of this network are hundreds of old farms whose owners and families straddle poverty, and whose acreage is targeted by energy companies for fracking. What dispossessed farmer could resist the cash?

I was out recently at my favorite hillside water fountain, lively with frogs and trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit. The beech trees, too, are still there, along with their store of nuts that feeds nearly everything in that forest. I approached the water, and I drank. I still can - but for how long?" ~Bob Vance, Petoskey, Michigan

"The tyranny of energy corporations described the Sandra Steingraber has also visited my community in rural Ohio. The township where I live has more signed leases for hydrofracturing than any other in the state, and local politicians and lease signers are happy to believe the claim that fracking has been going on harmlessly for decades. Nothing seems to matter except quick cash. My neighbors have signed leases, and as a result, the spring-fed pond and well from which I drink are in peril. When my well and all those surrounding me are fouled, none of us will have the "opportunity" to sell our homes and farms and move elsewhere - no one, after all, wants to live in a toxic dump." ~Karen Kirsch, Marlboro Township, Ohio

Government, industry, and proxies

In a recent comment on a previous post, it was argued that with the US Environmental Protection Agency, the government is on our side. This may be true to a certain extent; indeed, the US EPA has jurisdiction over some of the most important pieces of legislation to ever come out of Congress - the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (part of it). It is also clear that there are employees of the US EPA that truly do care about the environment, and value the data and numbers that science provide, and want to see those data and numbers effectively understood and acted upon. (I know of one personally.) Yet a government agency that works within a government-industry system of violence towards nature can in no way put a halt to environmental destruction; it may only serve to quell it at times.

As I have written about previously, we have surrounded ourselves with proxies of all sorts - we rely on others to grow our food, we rely on others to make sure we are drinking safe water, we rely on others to make shoes for us, we rely on old white men sitting in rooms making decisions about where our money is spent, whether for education or war. As soon as we give proxies, we lose our ability to have adequate control over what is done with our confidence. So, we end up with genetically-modified foods whose impacts are uncertain, we end up with potentially toxic chemicals in our water because of a 'risk-based' approach to chemicals, we end up with sweatshops in foreign nations, we end up with perpetual war. And when I see permits continually granted for fracking in eastern US and mountaintop removal continuing unabated, I conclude from these data that however we've structured our society and government so far just isn't working. How is it that our land can be allowed to be scarred permanently? Any moderately concerned individual would think that such behaviour just isn't right, even if you can't scientifically prove it (because you probably don't have the ability and access to do so). Our best interests, yours and mine, are not in mind, particularly if you have a government and industry adopting a utilitarian approach to promotion of "welfare."

If there is any hope to move away from a continuing destruction of nature, it is this paradigm itself that must be changed. This is the paradigm that allows pollution of air and water and degradation of land. And this is the very paradigm that is being perpetuated elsewhere - we now have "industrialising" countries, where environmental and ecological norms are blindsided by the euphoria of "growth" and "development." This paradigm shift needs to happen first and foremost in our minds. If we delegitimise industrial capitalism, violent extraction of what nature provides, and the social norms that constrain our actions in our minds, we may be on the road to a meaningful collective action that respects nature and its people.

FRACK YOU - The government-industry-university complex

I came across a piece on Dot Earth today about a recent report out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the future of natural gas in this country. What is written and recommended in this report is all that you'd expect from the government-industry-university complex that holds neoclassical/neoliberal economics as key, that is technocratic and technology-driven, that is committed in continuing behaviour that has led to ecological degradation, and that will continue to tradeoff the environment and local peoples in pursuit of broader policies. The fundamental question the study asked was, What is the role of natural gas in a carbon-constrained economy? What a lousy, narrow, and short-sighted question to ask. I fully recognise that the answers that come from such a question are those that the question askers want to hear - investing in fracking is the way forward. What is more disturbing though is the power such documents wield in policy-making and politicking, as well as the recommendation that there must be a reliance on industry best-practices, given that regulation is difficult, with an eternally constrained and curtailed EPA. Here are some key bullet points, with emphases and comments added by myself.

• In a carbon-constrained economy, the relative importance of natural gas is likely to increase even further, as it is one of the most cost-effective means by which to maintain energy supplies while reducing CO2 emissions. This is particularly true in the electric power sector, where, in the U.S., natural gas sets the cost benchmark against which other clean power sources must compete to remove the marginal ton of CO2. (So it's not that continued energy use is the problem. It's just the source.)
• The current supply outlook for natural gas will contribute to greater competitiveness of U.S. manufacturing, while the use of more efficient technologies could offset increases in demand and provide cost-effective compliance with emerging environmental requirements.
• The environmental impacts of shale development are challenging but manageable. (?) There has been concern that these fractures can also penetrate shallow freshwater zones and contaminate them with fracturing fluid, but there is no evidence that this is occurring. (?) There is, however, evidence of natural gas migration into freshwater zones in some areas, most likely as a result of substandard well completion practices by a few operators. There are additional environmental challenges in the area of water management, particularly the effective disposal of fracture fluids. (to where?) Concerns with this issue are particularly acute in regions that have not previously experienced large-scale oil and natural gas development, especially those overlying the massive Marcellus shale, and do not have a well-developed subsurface water disposal infrastructure. It is essential that both large and small companies follow industry best practices. (How do we trust them? Why should we trust them? Please some one try to convince me.)
• Government-supported research on the fundamental challenges of unconventional natural gas development, particularly shale gas, should be greatly increased in scope and scale. In particular, support should be put in place for a comprehensive and integrated research program to build a system-wide understanding of all subsurface aspects of the U.S. shale resource. In addition, research should be pursued to reduce water usage in fracturing and to develop cost-effective water recycling technology. A concerted coordinated effort by industry and government, both state and Federal, should be organized so as to minimize the environmental impacts of shale gas development through both research and regulation. 
• The U.S. should support unconventional natural gas development outside U.S., particularly in Europe and China, as a means of diversifying the natural gas supply base.

Sweet! So there'll be money to be made, so industry is happy, there'll be more jobs, so the government is happy, and of course, there will need to be research, so universities are happy. If you were to take a look at the participants and advisory committee members in this study, you would find only those names on it who stand to profit from fracking. Indeed, the report was written at MIT, not at Lehigh University or Bucknell University or West Virginia University or any university close to the Marcellus Shale (picture below), where much fracking is going on and anticipated. The ill-effects of fracking I've written about previously, with much more to be found in the work done by ProPublica.

http://www.marcellusshales.com/marcellusshalemap.html

Broad concerns on the bridge in Detroit

I want to address some very broad and very specific and fantastic questions that were raised by Matthew in response to my previous post on the new bridge being proposed between the US and Canada, the focus of our time here in Detroit. Matthew and I generally agree on most things, yet there are differences in approach that makes discussion with him great...

His broader concerns are the following:

Most of your specific criticisms seem to be condemnations of our society as a whole more than specific problems with the bridge (i.e. choose your battles wisely so you can be sure that you are addressing the main source of the problem). 

Agreed. My criticisms are condemnations of our society as a whole. The main source of the problem as I see it is the very foundation of society that leads us to make choices that do result in injustice towards the environment, and consequently towards people. Ours is a society of tradeoffs and compromises, in which those that lose lose, and those that gain gain. What I mean is that many times, regardless of how you might do the accounting of "costs" and "benefits," the costs are born by people who have no other choice. What the bridge is is a manifestation of such an ethic.

I think the best strategy for building momentum in the environmental movement is to attack the very worst offenders first. By choosing battles that most people can agree on we get to solve some of the most important problems without giving fuel to distracters who accuse us of being anti-progress. 
Absolutely. There are so many easy targets for this - polluting incinerators, mountaintop removers, fracking companies. The list goes on and on. There are so many targets, though, that rather than providing a hit-list of entities to take action against, we are overwhelmed by how ingrained ecological degradation is in our behaviour, and how our choices encourages and patronises their existence. We may also convince ourselves that we are trapped with their existence, that there is no way out. For example, many people probably don't like sitting in traffic for many hours each week along their fifteen-mile drive to work, but we have do bear it because work is fifteen miles away. Now, we can try to take down the very worst offenders, of course. As much as I support it and advocate for it, I feel that this won't adequately address the foundational problems that result in such industries. It will only allow others to come up with new ways to harm nature, and consequently people. I agree with Matthew that maybe my writing can serve as fuel to distracters who accuse us of being anti-progress; I am hoping that by trying to address his concerns, I may be able to straddle this line a little bit better than I do.


I will address more specific concerns of his in my next post, with some very interesting material from a discussion with Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision and Southwest Detroit Business Association today. 

FRACK YOU - Innocent until proven guilty

There a couple of themes from previous posts I'd like to pull together with this post, namely proactive law, the precautionary principle. I just read another article in Orion about fracking, When Cowboys Cry, by Sandra Steingraber, in which she talks about the continuing efforts of oil and gas extraction companies, like Halliburton, Chevron, and Exxon to frack in places like plains of Montana, the south of France, the vales of England, and the forests of Poland. More disturbing, however, is the part when she writes,

That was the week that stories about fracking broke in the international press, and the European environmentalists were scrambling to figure out what laws in the European Union might apply to this new technology. Like the sons and daughters of Montana's cowboys, the sons and daughters of the Allied Forces were having a hard time finding legal traction.

The British journal The Ecologist reached a similar conclusion in an investigative report about the European plans of Halliburton, Chevron, and Exxon and others. Although fracking in the United States is linked to toxic pollution and social conflict, notes The Ecologist, the technology is being rapidly exported. Fracking "exceeds the government regulatory process." It is "set to continue." It is, perhaps, "too powerful to oppose."

My former lab mate Paul, who graduated just last week, and I would talk many times about socio-environmental issues. He always has insightful things to say, and he said one thing that put a different perspective on things I've written about previously (here, here), including trust and faith in large organisations such as government and corporations, I believe on the day of the one year anniversary of the BP-Macondo well blowout and oil spill. He said, with regard large companies and corporations, "The companies are innocent until proven guilty." This statement puts a twist on a commonly held legal dictum, particularly because companies are not just "potential" criminals - they have been implicated and proven guilty time and time again. Each time, they have paid a small fine, and have moved on to commit the next crime. These companies are serial criminals, manic criminals. The statement also lends credence to how the precautionary principle operates in our society today - it is not that a law is implemented if a bad socio-environmental outcome is possible; rather a law is not implemented if it maybe possible to hurt the profits of companies. Society and environment be damned.

It is clear that regardless of the future applicability of retrospective law, those with power have the ability to subvert the law. Indeed, it doesn't matter what the sentiment of the law is, loopholes in law are treated as not an overlook in the law, not a space in which the sentiment of the law can pervade, but rather a space within which detrimental activities we thought would be regulated against can operate freely and without conscience. It is as if the outcome is not criminal or regulated against, but rather the mode of crime. This is contradictory to how the law operates in other (related) arenas. When someone commits first degree murder, it doesn't matter how the murder was committed, but what is important that the crime occurred. There is no legal loophole that says, "Oh, you used a stone to commit the crime rather than a gun. You're okay. You're free." But with ecological degradation, it is not the first degree crime that is illegal, rather it is just the manners in which the crime is commited that are deemed to be acceptable or not. There is then a legal discrepancy, a cultural schizophrenia, that is obvious.

What might be an approach to prevent this from happening, given the legal system we have? I heard a provocative Speaking of Faith episode from a few years ago, Reflections on the Death Penalty in America, in which a guest said that we must look into laws that maintain the dignity of humans. This can be easily extended to the environment. Rather than have a legalistic framework that is full of loopholes, why not have a legal framework that is inherently holistic and inherently proactive. Given the arguments made for and against even well-worded laws, why not have debates on the heart of the problems?

What "development" means for sustainability

I have written about the family of notions surrounding "development" on several occasions. Previous posts have talked about how the word is used as an adjective, e.g., "developing" countries, how tracts of land should be "developed," natural courses of "development," and how sustainability has come to mean sustainable "development" (here, here). I want to elaborate today on the arrogance of the word "development" when used in the context of describing countries, communities and just groups of people, and what this means for sustainability.

As you probably know, the meanings and connotations of words have a way of changing over time. The term "Third World," was initially used to describe countries that were neither leaning towards capitalism (and NATO) or communism (and the Soviet Union). Nowadays, many people in the West use that phrase to describe a country that is (according to Western standards) "undeveloped" or "developing." Furthermore, these "Third World" countries have economies that are "developing," according to Western-defined Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) standards.

There are several issues that come to mind because of these words and their connotations. First, it implies that Western standards are those that should be met. Since the standards on which countries want to be judged are these standards, it means that countries would prefer to graduate from being "developing" to being "developed." What does this mean for sustainability? What it means is that since the standards to be met are economic standards first and foremost, countries may lower their environmental standards so as to attract investments from "developed" countries. This most likely leads to the rapid and unthoughtful industrialisation of these "developing" countries. What it also means is that if there is any hope for a sustainable future, that necessarily comes from being "developed," i.e., if you are not developed, there are no standards on which a country can be judged to be "sustainable." This seems to me a different approach under which to view "sustainable development."

What the word "developing" connotes today is backwardness, and the sense is that there isn't much in these countries, and the people living in these countries are less fortunate than those that are in the "developed" world. But what this word masks, however, are the problems that come with being "developed," particularly under a capitalistic, competitive mindset. In my mind, there are very clear threads of reasoning that trace social issues such as the fracturing of families and declining neighbourliness and increased mental illness back to the very foundations upon which the country claims itself to be "developed." If you were to go to most any of these "developing" countries, I am sure you would find integrity in family life, and a greater spiritual and material contentment of the people. What does this mean for sustainability? It means that maybe these definitions aren't as clear cut as we think they are. Of course, while many "developing countries" are very polluted, many of them are not, and do not have to deal with toxic chemicals in their water; the serious environmental problems that we face here in the US, because of say, fracking (here, here), are just completely non-existent in these places. More importantly, what it means is that we shouldn't propagate the connotations of these words by using them in the manner that we currently do. It also means that maybe we shouldn't be using these words nonchalantly, and that we should be mindful of the full implications of using such words.

FRACK YOU - A toxic child worsens a toxic legacy

Fracking seems like the dirty lovechild of mountaintop removal (e.g. for coal) and drilling for oil, a child that is just way crazier than what the genes of its parents would make you imagine.

Like drilling for oil, the natural gas that fracking tries to reach is stored underground, thousands of feet underground. But rather than having the pressure of the oil well pump oil to the surface (think of how the Macondo well spewed high-pressure oil into the Gulf), to get the natural gas, you have to fracture the rock structures in which the gas is trapped. This fracturing requires significant amounts of water, and of course, toxic chemicals (I mean, it just wouldn't be fun without toxic chemicals, right?!). This is a trait inherited from fracking's other parent, mountaintop removal. Just like mountaintop removal, we basically need to blow apart rock to release what it is we want. Mountaintop removal exposes coal, and fracking releases natural gas. What mountaintop removal is capable of doing, and has done to wonderful effect, is contaminate streams and on-land water sources (while at the same time potentially burying them altogether, drastically changing ecosystems). Fracking takes this a step further; fracking contaminates surface water and ground water and aquifers. The toxic brew of chemicals and water from the fracturing of rocks is either stored in containment ponds (basically a liquid landfill, actually just like the storage of sludge from mountaintop removal! Like parent, like child!), or released into streams and rivers. Of course, water treatment facilities are not equipped to treat water for the chemicals used in fracking.

Hmmm, so we're told that fracking is different, that it is safe, and that it is "better" for the environment. Well, it is hard for me to see the difference between what we've done in the past, and what we're doing now. Indeed, a toxic child is continuing and worsening a toxic legacy, just with a different face, a doe-eyed face. So in the end, while natural gas is "cleaner burning" than coal or oil, and releases more energy per unit mass of fuel, it still doesn't address the issue of what it is that is driving ecological degradation - a constant thirst for energy at any cost, a constant appetite to dominate nature, a willingness to treat air and water as dumping grounds. I would hope that people that are pressured into leasing their land for fracking can understand this. And I hope that my parents and their neighbours can fight the companies trying to get their land to frack it up.

FRACK YOU - Not learning from our mistakes

The issue of hydrofracking has all of the essentials of a prime example of how we treat the environment and other humans. It is a most visceral example of ecological degradation, too, because of the potential and already existing impacts it has resulted in. More on that later.

As with much environmentalism in this country, environmentalism is viewed under the lens of energy. There is a sense that if we can just find "clean energy," all our environmental woes will be things of the past. It is this mentality, coupled with our tolerance of high-risk corporate behaviour, that has led to the acceptance of hydrofracking as a way to find "clean energy." Add on top of this that this energy is not coming from the Middle East, and many have a reason to smile. Of course, it has helped the hydrofracking establishment that the hydrocarbon obtained from the process is natural gas, basically methane. As someone who has a little understanding of combustion, if you did want to burn something, methane is probably your least bad choice in terms of flame characteristics and the simplicity of the chemistry. What people are not thinking about is that the companies that are involved in the fracking are the very companies that have acted irresponsibly to people and the environment so far.

I think the issue of hydrofracking is less about these companies and their behaviour, which will not change as easily as we would hope, and more about what we think about what our lives need, i.e. energy. Many people are "techno-optimists" - they believe that these "breakthroughs" in "clean energy" will come; we just need to sit tight and believe. Given this techno-optimism and our inability to function without copious and excessive amounts of energy, we are willing to give free reign to those who will provide us the energy. But we are then shocked that they would take part in actions that lead to contamination of aquifers and rivers and pools full of radioactive wastewater and seas full of leaked oil. It is easy for us to tell these companies that "...hydraulic fracturing must be done in a way that protects the environment and public health,” but it is much harder for us to accept our complicity in their behaviour. Each and every one of us can reduce our patronage of these degrading entities. We can show that it is possible not to be defined by their existence and by what it is they sell us.

FRACK YOU - A series on the rape of the Earth and its people

"I have come to believe that extracting natural gas from shale using the newish technique called hydrofracking is the environmental issue of our time. And I think you should, too." ~Sandra Steingraber in Orion

I didn't expect to be writing about the toxic process of hydrofracking, which I have read about over the past months, until I read this horrific article by Ian Urbina, "Millions of Gallons of Hazardous Chemicals Injected Into Wells, Report Says" in the NYTimes today. The article was written as a part of their Drilling Down series.

I do not want to go into the details of how hydrofracking is conducted right now, apart from saying that toxic chemicals, and a lot of them, are pumped into the ground at high pressure to crack rock formations underground, releasing natural gas. (You can read more about the entire process through a fantastic multimedia graphic here.) In the end, we end up with wastewater at the surface that contains obscene amounts of radioactive materials, carcinogens and corrosive salts. (You can look at a detailed interactive graphic of contaminated sites in Pennsylvania here) Sometimes, this wastewater is sent to normal treatment plants that do not have the capacity to treat for this toxins and radioactives; nonetheless the water is released into rivers. At the same time, there is contamination of groundwater and aquifers and wells with these chemicals. There has been so much talk about hydrofracking recently, and recent episodes of the The Story (here, here, here) have discussed the issue in various parts of the country, from various perspectives. You can also find documents about the politics of this process here.

Over the next few days and weeks, I will be writing about hydrofracking, in a series I am titling FRACK YOU. I will be tying together various threads of thought that have emerged in this blog over the past months, including rape of the Earth, risk, vulnerability, government regulation, corporate competition, care, respect, proxies and anecdote.

"A sign warns against swimming in a holding lake in Texas, where Fountain Quail Water Management separates and cleans hydrofracking water." From nytimes.com.

On ownership

One of the defining concepts of our society is the notion of ownership. This goes far beyond the territorialism that animals may display to mark and guard their places of habitat. Human notions of ownership stretch beyond the bounds of their habitat. We have a system in place which monetarily values places other than habitat in a way that drives humans to "own" or "buy the rights" to those places. For example, much of the land in the US is actually leased to oil and gas companies for drilling (and this has not stopped those companies from trying to drill offshore, in virgin waters). But we also want to stretch our influence to the habitats of other humans, too. Fracking for natural gas is a great example - people from elsewhere are trying to buy off people from elsewhere because those people are unfortunate enough to have natural gas bound up in geologic structures under their land. In fact, our knowledge revolves around how we can own what nature hides - physical laws, chemical reactions and photosynthesis. In this sense, ownership leads to another sort of exploitation - how might we use nature and modify how it works such that we can derive the most monetary gain? Our need for ownership stretches far beyond land on Earth. Here is a woman that claims to have bought the rights to the Sun (thanks for this, Sherri!), and she fully intends to charge all users of the Sun.

It is fascinating how humans, that live individually on time scales of decades, can "own" something that has existed long before they did, and will continue to exist long after they are gone. Notions of ownership have in fact produced just the opposite of what we would want - what we would want is for our nature to sustain us for as long as possible, but in our quest to own, we have degraded. Just the reverse of how we think is what might be more logical- we are owned by this land, this air and this water, and our fate is tied to our respect to those forces.

Ownership also plays a significant part in our daily lives, and its influence also leads to much waste and trash. My laptop computer is now seven years old; it hobbles along, and at times sounds like a jet aircraft at full throttle trying to take off. I have not yet bought a new computer. In fact, I have used the computer just a couple of times in the past four or five months. Many of you might say, "How have you been living so long without a computer?" My answer is simple - there are computers in my lab, and all around campus, and so I don't need one of my own. I guess it would be more "convenient" to have one of my own, so I would not  have to bug my housemates to look something up every now and then (although I think I may have asked them just a few times in the past few months). Had I felt the need to own a computer of my own, I would have had to acquiesce to all of the trash and violence associated with such a purchase. (I know there are tons of people who hoard used computers and sell them - that may be an option.) But in general, there are things that all of us don't need to have, and maybe we can make due with just one lawnmower for a row of five homes, or and older family may be able to hand toys down to a younger family. A refusal to have one's own may in fact lead to stronger, more resilient social bonds.