George Frantz wrote:
I'm not denying that there are issues, and I'm not denying that we are dealing with an industry that would dig up its mothers' bones if they thought there was natural gas under them. But let's work the problem. And let's not destroy our credibility with wild assertions that any knowledgeable person can easily discredit.
Without knowing yet where we'll end up with this, I completely agree with what George is saying here. I think the sustainability community has to be very careful how it proceeds with the hydrofracking issue. On the one hand, it's clear that we're facing some pretty scary aesthetic and water quality problems (and as a person who gets his drinking water from a well downslope from a lot of leases over the town line in Newfield, I have to admit to being personally mighty worried about this). Plus damage to the local roads and some pretty sizable toxic waste disposal problems. On the other hand, we have: - The economic inevitability of eventually getting that gas out; anyone who thinks this isn't going to happen is kidding themselves - Our eventual need to squeeze out of the ground every cubic inch of natural gas we can to fend off mass starvation while we try to wean food production away from nitrogen fertilizer (made almost entirely out of natural gas) - The moral indefensibility of getting up in arms about possible damage to our local environment when we happily run our appliances and civic infrastructure on electricity generated from coal - The social justice and local food supply implications of denying income from gas leases to local farmers who are desperately looking for ways to hang on to their land (and while it's probably the least of our problems, I'll note that the local sustainability movement stands to lose whatever credibility it might have with these folks if it takes an adversarial position that's not solidly supported by the facts) So.... Let's tread carefully here. What I'm taking away from this thread is the danger of undercutting our position by using data from places that aren't directly comparable with ours. I'm beginning to suspect that the most constructive goal would be to control hydrofracking in a way that makes it proceed as slowly as possible and with as little damage to the environment as possible. Maybe we should be focusing on that. Jon _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins Questions about the list? ask [email protected] free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
