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.

War and the Environment - Analogies to trash

A few weeks ago, Serge asked me to define the words "trash" and "waste." I had a hard time doing that on the spot, probably because definitions can start getting blurry over time. It is interesting, how in many walks of life, when you start prodding for answers, you just end up with more questions. One definition of "trash" that I can think of is that trash is a byproduct of human activity in which natural resources have been concentrated and modified so much so that they cannot be re-introduced into the environment in a (close to) non-impactful way. 

 It is interesting to think that with most of the objects we use in our daily lives, it is the concentration of natural resources that makes that object useful to us - a few molecules here and there of iron oxide is utterly useless to us from a material standpoint, but when concentrated and modified, it can form solid iron, which can then be tempered and modified to form high-strength stainless steel. Such a concentration of material, resources and power is necessary in the age of modern warfare. One molecule here and there of a dioxin is harmless to the environment, but concentrated amounts of dioxins, such as in Agent Orange, when sprayed on vast swaths of land, can maim, disfigure and kill ruthlessly. Natural radioactivity from the heavy elements is natural, and radioactivity from our life-sustaining force, the Sun, is too, natural. But when concentrated, natural radioactive materials can be forged into forces of monstrous environmental, social and psychological harm. In the same manner, trash is generally made of resources that exist in diffuse natural states. These materials, when violently extracted and modified and treated, are morphed into objects that are functional in our society. Such a modification changes the inherent properties of the material in its natural state, either making the end product toxic or deadly to us, or to something else in the world.

It is also interesting to think of concepts of the "justness" of trash, in the same way people conceptualise "just wars." The concept of proportionality, which (somehow) dictates and regulates the amount of force that is "right" to be applied, can also be applied to something like trash. It seems like significant amounts of trash are created for objects of mostly little ethical or moral value, as is the case in a consumerist society. I contend that the value of many of the objects we create, which also end up as trash or waste, cannot fulfill the requirement of proportionality of use. Yet in spite of such violence, for most people, it is difficult to imagine a world without objects that end up as trash. The remains of both modern warfare and trash are degraded natural landscapes, degraded human landscapes, polluted air, polluted water, and injustice served to people least deserving of it.

War and the Environment - Depleted uranium, a radioactive waste

While talking to Matt the other night, the topic of depleted uranium came up. Depleted uranium is a byproduct, in essence a waste, of uranium enrichment processes for nuclear fuel and nuclear arms. I am sure you would not be terribly surprised to hear that the US and other nations produce vast amounts of depleted uranium, given that nuclear reactors are now commonplace. What I am sure you will find shocking, just as I did last week, is that depleted uranium, a radioactive waste substance with a physical half-life of 4+ billion years, and a biological half life of 15 days, has been used as ammunition in Iraq, as well as in Serbia (please click here, here, here and here). Depleted uranium is denser than lead, and therefore can more readily penetrate armour, making it particularly useful to violence. While making it much easier to blow the "enemy" up, it can also be aerosolised into sub-micron size dust that is easily inhalable. The US has used several thousand tonnes of depleted uranium in Iraq. I do like to think that I believe in the precautionary principle - if I don't know whether or not something is harmful, especially considering my judgement and gut instinct, I won't do it. (Of course, the world has thrown the precautionary principle out of the window with most environmental and public health harms.) Any level-minded person would think that any sort of radioactive substance, which is a byproduct of human activity, is likely to be environmentally damaging and toxic to both humans as well as plants and animals. (Of course, there is natural radioactivity.) It is therefore not surprising to me that investigative reports by the BBC (do not click there if you are queasy) have shown that depleted uranium has caused increased levels of cancer in new born babies in Iraq. Efforts to make toxicity information public were, of course, stamped down upon.

I think it is particularly telling of the morality and ethics of a government and state to use obviously toxic materials in war. What is more toxic than these materials is the fact that war itself is accepted and condonable. These last few posts have been dealing as much with peace as they have been with the environment, and these two issues are not mutually independent. A society and culture that condones violence to the environment, to the land, air and water that sustains it, is likely to use violence as a means to an end in dealing with other creations of our environment, namely humans. Peace with humans will only come out of a sustained and thoughtful peace with our environment - an environment that is thought of as a life-sustaining force, greater in emotional and spiritual value than any priceless monetary value we may be able to comprehend.