This week Morgan Henley brings you an comprehensive article about the controversial topic of fracking. She explains why fracking cannot be labeled as a clean energy source.
There’s a new epidemic that is ravaging the U.S. and it could come to your town next. Its street name is “fracking” – short for hydraulic fracturing. It’s a dangerous addiction and is transforming once thriving neighborhoods into wastelands. The dealers are tough and will go to any extreme to get their dollar. These pushers, instead of tempting junkies into filling their bodies with deadly drugs, are helping countries pump toxic chemicals into their own ground. This dangerous trend is only growing in popularity because as with drug abusers, these states somehow neglect to realize that this new shale gas fix is just a temporary and dangerous high.
The process of fracking begins drilling deep holes into the ground, at depths of 2 km or more. Then millions of liters of a water, chemical, sand combination are inserted into this hole at really high pressures in order to fracture the shale rock and release natural gas. But along with the natural gas comes out thousands of liters of contaminated water known as ‘flowback’. Flowback contains the original fracking chemicals along with other heavy metals and radioactive material that had been peacefully sleeping in the shale before these drillers came by and woke them up.
Where’s the harm?
Grist’s Ellen Cantarow put it well – “The industry that uses this technology calls its product “natural gas,” but there’s nothing natural about upending half a billion years of safe storage of methane and everything that surrounds it. It is, in fact, an act of ecological violence around which alien infrastructures – compressor stations that compact the gas for pipeline transport, ponds of contaminated flowback, flare stacks that burn off gas impurities, diesel trucks in quantity, thousands of miles of pipelines, and more – pumping carcinogens and toxins into water, air, and soil.”
So just like putting foreign drugs into your body is usually not recommendable, pumping your soil and water with questionable chemicals is reason to be concerned. To see some of the most shocking side effects, take a look at this flammable water from the documentary “Gasland”. Recently a group of independent scientists from the University of Texas Arlington found when looking at groundwater near fracking sites, “heavy metals, the main players being arsenic, selenium and strontium…Arsenic is a pretty well-known poison. If you experience a lot of long-term exposure to arsenic, you get a lot of different risks, like skin damage, problems with the circulatory system or even an increased risk of cancer.”
Communities that live in close proximity to fracking operations are seeing some serious health issues. As fracking usually takes place in rural farming areas, many people see the first effects in their livestock and animal life. Imagine sick dogs, dying horses, stillborn cows – yes, there are frack babies. Local citizens have cited problems such as skin rashes, never ending spells of coughing, headaches, and dizziness – and those are just the obvious issues. That doesn’t include the long term possibilities that being exposed to toxic chemicals in your air, soil, and drinking water can produce.
Who’s Got the Frack?
The United States has been on the frack for almost 25 years now thanks to relaxed environmental regulations and government subsidies created by President George W. Bush. Bush, with encouragement from Vice President Dick Cheney, exempted gas companies from the Clean Water Act – essentially making them free from government regulation. Specifically, companies are not required to list the chemicals they are using in their operations – therefore the public can’t even know what exactly is being pumped into their ground. This is all going on even with a President in office who champions clean energy development. In his last State of the Union address, President Obama stated fracking could be “bridge” to an American clean energy future if done ‘safely’ – although no new legislation to regulate the fracking industry have been put in place.
The idea of shale gas being a “bridge” is a term that has been used before as US politicians promote natural gas as being the answer to stop global warming. Compared to existing, dirtier fossil fuels, it does emit less CO2, but the extent of this is still being scrutinized by scientists. Since natural gas is still a fossil fuel that can heat the planet, it will contribute to global warming and the shale gas drilling process leaks out methane – a very potent heat trapping agent. The IPCC recently published a report stating that methane (natural gas is mostly methane) is 34 times stronger at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Frackheads
Today there is no commercial production of shale gas in Europe, but some estimate that it could come as early as 2015 forPoland and the UK. Additionally, in January the shale gas pushers celebrated a victory as efforts to create legally binding regulation of the shale gas industry in the EU were defeated in favor of a more relaxed version in which each country must simply issue a ‘guide’ – the equivalent of politely asking drug dealers to make sure their supply is clean and then walking away, assuming that they will do so.
The reason for the slack regulation is politicians like British Prime Minister David Cameron believe that more regulation would discourage “imminent investment” and would increase costs for the rising industry. It’s not just Cameron who has already been convinced by the frack pushers, there are plenty of other countries with their eye to fracking – Denmark, Germany, Poland and Romania are also in the exploration phases.
Cameron and Tusk
Poland was instrumental in leading the fight against binding regulations for shale gas. It’s got the itch for natural gas so bad that their Prime Minister Donald Tusk dismissed their previous Minister of the Environment, replacing him with someone who could develop shale gas quicker in Poland – all during the UN’s Climate Negotiations hosted in Warsaw. For countries like Poland who are particularly eager to be independent from Russian energy imports, the interest in fracking is very real.
So is Europe doomed to be a continent of frackheads? Not all of the European countries have bought into the frack dreams of industry. France was the first European country to pass a ban, later followed by “moratoriums” from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands. Germany has also put a hold on all further shale development plans.
Frack Dealers
Even today’s biggest and best drug cartels could learn a few things from the frack pushers. Protests in the Romanian city of Pungesti that took place last December illustrate the degree to which the fracking industry are becoming the thugs of the neighborhood. Local citizens of the small village began protesting a planned shale gas exploration by Chevron, ultimately dismantling a fence that Chevron had built around the proposed area. It was eventually the police that were sent into protect Chevron’s exploration ground and multiple cases of police aggression against protesters were reported. Even after the local government passed a resolution banning exploration for shale gas, Chevron continued their exploration with approval from the Romanian national authorities.
Additionally in a deal that would make any hustler envious, Chevron has the rights to all of the shale gas it acquires and thus the subsequent profits – therefore, the money that is made from the shale gas operations for Romania will only be a small fraction and some of the lowest in the world. Protection, provided by the police, with no strings attached? Sounds like a frack haven.
The Polish village of Zurawlow also knows a thing about Chevron’s dirty dealings. While the village successfully prevented proposed exploration in 2012 by using a European Union law protecting wildlife areas, the energy giant returned last year with security guards to proceed with their exploration activities. Chevron asserts it has the legal right to continue with exploration, while citizens are doubtful about these claims as Chevron was clearly defeated in 2012, and their doubts are only confirmed by the fact that exploration still hasn’t begun.
The protests in Pungesti and Zurawlow are just some examples of the protests that have rocked the fracking movement. Just like mothers who demanded justice for drugs corrupting their neighborhoods, it’s average, everyday people who fear for their health and homes and are going to the streets against fracking. This battle has gone beyond just a concern of the environmentalists and is becoming a household term in some countries and understandably so – no one wants flammable water. Now it’s time to show our decision makers how we feel and hopefully they will join many of us when we say – frack is whack.
Thanks for the Information and Pictures Kindly Provided By:
http://grist.org/climate-energy/fracking-ourselves-to-death-in-pennsylvania
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ApZkNsXfJE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/29/obama-says-fr…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/14/uk-defeats-european-b…
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/12/pungesti-romania-battle…
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/0724/A-Polish-village-says-no…
http://sustainability.umich.edu/events/hydraulic-fracturing-michigan-int…
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/ImageArchives?by=2483385§ion=117902…
http://www.polskatimes.pl/artykul/1082640,tusk-slowa-camerona-o-polskich…