Destroying Precious Land for Gas

[TalkingDog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/opinion/sean-lennon-destroying-precious-land-for-gas.html

A few months ago I was asked by a neighbor near our farm to attend a town meeting at the local high school. Some gas companies at the meeting were trying very hard to sell us on a plan to tear through our wilderness and make room for a new pipeline: infrastructure for hydraulic fracturing. Most of the residents at the meeting, many of them organic farmers, were openly defiant. The gas companies didn’t seem to care. They gave us the feeling that whether we liked it or not, they were going to fracture our little town.

snip

Natural gas has been sold as clean energy. But when the gas comes from fracturing bedrock with about five million gallons of toxic water per well, the word “clean” takes on a disturbingly Orwellian tone. Don’t be fooled. Fracking for shale gas is in truth dirty energy. It inevitably leaks toxic chemicals into the air and water. Industry studies show that 5 percent of wells can leak immediately, and 60 percent over 30 years. There is no such thing as pipes and concrete that won’t eventually break down. It releases a cocktail of chemicals from a menu of more than 600 toxic substances, climate-changing methane, radium and, of course, uranium.

New York is lucky enough to have some of the best drinking water in the world. The well water on my family’s farm comes from the same watersheds that supply all the reservoirs in New York State. That means if our tap water gets dirty, so does New York City’s.

Gas produced this way is not climate- friendly. Within the first 20 years, methane escaping from within and around the wells, pipelines and compressor stations is 105 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. With more than a tiny amount of methane leakage, this gas is as bad as coal is for the climate; and since over half the wells leak eventually, it is not a small amount. Even more important, shale gas contains one of the earth’s largest carbon reserves, many times more than our atmosphere can absorb. Burning more than a small fraction of it will render the climate unlivable, raise the price of food and make coastlines unstable for generations.

[limpyhobbler]

1. k/r.

We can beat it.

http://marcellusprotest.org/event_calendar/2012-09

[Gregorian]

2. It seems futile to point out that the other half of the equation is demand.

A rather crucial part of the equation. Flagrant use of energy seems to be the norm. People just don't realize this when they run off to the store, or go on vacation, or any number of things.

I prefer to pull the rug out from under the corporations by not giving them what they want. Demand.

[TalkingDog]

3. I agree. Because that would mean a massive MASSIVE

public education campaign. On a scale that may only be feasible by the Government.

Given politics as they stand, how likely is that to happen?

[Gregorian]

4. And we have just the opposite going on.

It's maddening to watch. And coming from an energy conscious family in an energy conscious town, it has been decades of watching this madness. Even Jimmy Carter didn't put a dent in it.

Building Olympic villages (as much as I love the Olympics), military everything, tourism. All of it has to stop. If we stopped just the military activity on planet earth, it would give us all some breathing room. As it stands, it's full throttle.