I came across a 2011 proposal by the EPA which has left me somewhat confused. Click the image below to download and read the actual document published by our Environmental Protection Agency, “Plan to Study the Potential Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing on Drinking Water Resources.”
For the record, hydraulic fracturing was pioneered by the Halliburton corporation in 1940. There are over one million (1,000,000) such wells in the United States with more on the way.
The word “SCIENCE” on the background of the report’s cover is intended to connote scientific method and oversight: that process of systematic thought and labor which put men on the moon and successfully brought them back again. How exactly is the scientific method to be invoked seventy years after this industrial process began? It seems a little late to “plan” a study of “potential impacts.”
Carl Sagan on the now iconic “pale blue dot” photo.
This video is worth ten minutes of your time.
These ideas came to mind after viewing the video:
• Earth will remain on track, orbiting around our sun, long after we have returned to dust.
• Our biosphere supports a wealth of life operating within a fixed range of variables.
• The Marxist notion of Nature as an endless source of raw materials is as dated as the Dodo.
• If we do not act as agents for positive change no one else will.
• “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that the good do nothing.” While I cannot find the correct attribution for this quote (Burke, Jefferson, Plato?), the power of that thought is timeless.
This is one of the most powerful presentations I have experienced in a long time. It is also a living example of the cancer which defines the fossil fuel industry.
Foreign corporations (and nations) have been investing in petroleum in the United States and Canada for many years. China invested 33 billion dollars in Canadian petrochemical interests from 2005 – 2012. Canadian oil interests would like to see more investment. China owns at least 40% of the tar sands production at Athabasca Oil Corporation (formerly Athabasca Oil Sands Corporation); a company which sold China all of its holdings of the McKay River tar sands development3. In 2013 China purchased 100% of Canada’s tar sands operator Nexen for $15.1 billion1.
Canadian interests favor these purchases – otherwise they would not have been approved2.
Not to be left out of courting Chinese dollars, President Obama is selling the United States as a better place to invest4. Considering how heavily invested China already is in fracking operations within the United States, the President’s position makes little sense6.
They came, they drilled, they left:
There is the question of just who will be left to clean up the mess left behind – if this is even possible. Once China develops fracking within its own boundaries5, why would it pay for more expensive energy elsewhere?
The only way out is to develop a new source of power; something other than petroleum that will not poison our biosphere.
Californians deserve to have their public lands managed for the good of the people. These precious wilderness areas belong to us, not the oil and gas industry.
The Bureau of Land Management’s proposed rules for regulated hydraulic fracturing on Federal and Native American lands are not only weak, but they do not take into account all the harmful processes required to frack for oil and gas.
Get Chevron out of Romania. Click to sign the petition.
And while you’re at it, maybe you can figure out why Europe has been so successful in keeping fracking out — while our land and water is being poisoned by Chevron and other oil companies? Clicking the image below will bring you to the Chevron PR message.
To see through the hypocrisy and lies foisted on the unwitting, give the video on this page five minutes of your time.
Economic success is traditionally measured by positive increases in growth. The United States economy isn’t any different. Economists report on the numbers of new jobs, sales of durable goods, auto sales, houses built and sold, and more. All of these economic signifiers are reported in percentages. The higher the value of these positive percentages, the better things look.
The Washington-based forecast for 2015 is a “sustainable” economic growth rate of the United States economy between 2.4% and 3% per cent per year. A rate of 3% means that our economy will double in twenty-four years. This certainly sounds good, but as Faust would have you know, there is a price tag for everything.
If the phrase “sustainable growth” has always sounded like slick, political double-speak, Physics Professor Albert Bartlett’s lecture will confirm that your reptile brain’s survival response continues to work correctly.
Albert A. Bartlett Los Alamos wartime security badge (c. 1944)
The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Prof. Albert Bartlett, 1923 – 2013
According to a Wikipedia entry, Professor Albert Allen Bartlett gave the lecture “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” 1,742 times.
In this lecture Professor Bartlett examines the simple arithmetic of steady growth, continued over modest periods of time, within a finite environment. The concept is applied to populations as well as to fossil fuel.
World human population (est.) 10,000 BC–2000 AD.
“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global,
whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”
– Prof. Albert Bartlett
Oil prices adjusted for inflation 1861 – 2006
Populations effect an impact on environments and resources. Unchecked population growth amplifies these effects. On a cellular level, unchecked continuous growth(cancer) will destroy the host organism. The corollary here is that unrestricted influxes of people into any location will effect change upon the environment and resources.
Gaylord Nelson, originator of Earth Day, had this to say about human populations and the environment:
“The link between population growth and environmental degradation is made often in retrospective studies, which is why they aren’t really considered valid, but clearly more people living better lives is the hallmark of progress. Activists worried about the environment don’t want better lives unless it means fewer lives too. More people means more cars, trucks and buses, more air pollution, more parking lots and less green spaces. In their progressive dystopian future, there are more chemicals, more trash and more runoff cascading down super sewers into our streams, lakes and oceans means more damage to California’s biodiversity hot spots. Plus, more people means more pressure on declining water supplies.“3
Issues regarding energy aside, unchecked growth of any population will degrade the environment and its resources until the colony fails. One way to understand the impact of population on the environment is through an equation which was developed by ecologists in the 1970s.
“The IPAT equation, though phrased mathematically, is a simple conceptual expression of the factors that create environmental impact. IPAT is an accounting identity stating that environmental impact (I) is the product of three terms: 1) population (P); 2) affluence (A); and 3) technology (T). It is stated I = P x A x T or I=PAT.”2
This is a terrific article illustrating rivers and streams in New York and elsewhere which have been moved out of the way for construction.
I don’t know how anyone could have thought that burying the veins and arteries of the earth, evolved from natural processes starting at the end of the last ice age, would be a good idea.
Saw this while off-road biking with my friend John Flood in San Diego’s Mission Trails Park this past August. I didn’t know what it was as we don’t have any of these (any more?) in the Connecticut-New York-Pennsylvania area I grew up in. But John knew that it was both called a Tarantula Hawk and that it was a spider wasp. I know insects are strong. But watching the wasp drag a comatose tarantula through the grass filled me with respect, awe, and a more than a little gratitude that insects are currently sized as they are.
Support SB 833 : Protect Sacred Sites and Clean Drinking Water
[emailpetition id=”4″]
RE: SB 833 (VARGAS) Water Quality and Sacred Site Protection in San Diego County – SUPPORT
Dear Governor Brown:
I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to please sign SB 833, by Senator Juan Vargas. This bill would prohibit the operation of a waste disposal facility within 1,000 feet of a drinking water source and within 1,000 feet of a site that is listed with the Native American Heritage Commission as sacred to a federally recognized Indian tribe. This bill would put a stop to the proposed Gregory Canyon Landfill project, which would be built on the border of the Pala Indian Reservation and next to the San Luis Rey River.
The Gregory Canyon Landfill presents numerous environmental problems, not the least of which is the threat to water supplies. The San Luis Rey River flows past the mouth of the landfill site; two California Water Authority pipelines that supply drinking water to San Diego County are located within the landfill footprint; and a vital groundwater aquifer lies underneath the site. A landfill in Gregory Canyon would unacceptably threaten the safety of these water sources.
A landfill in Gregory Canyon would also desecrate Gregory Canyon and Medicine Rock, two sites that hold tremendous religious significance for Native Americans throughout southern California. SB 833 would help insure that these irreplaceable sacred sites are protected for future generations.
Protecting precious water and respecting the religion and culture of Native American tribes is of utmost importance, which is why I respectfully urge you to sign SB 833 and protect Gregory Canyon forever. I respectfully ask you to preserve the Earth and Sky which are Sacred to both Native and non-Native Americans who have made this great land our home.
Sincerely,
Stop Gregory Canyon: Save Sacred Sites and Clean Drinking Water
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