Technorati Tags: fracking failures, Shane Davis, Sierra Club Poudre Canyon Group
Tags: fracking failures, Shane Davis, Sierra Club Poudre Canyon Group
This entry was posted on October 30, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under Colorado, Energy, Environment, Events, FP/L, Longmont, News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
A sad thing is that more than a few will tend to discount the likely message here, because it is issued under the stamp of the Sierra Club. I can tell you, around the natural resources industries, the very words cause derision, dyspepsia, and sneers, if not worse. My wish would have been to get a few ordinary small businesspersons, professionals not associated with any “environmental movement,” and housewives, to join a panel airing what we have already done to the strata beneath our feet, in the name of hiding our wastes. The ingrained practices of the operator contingent are why I have advocated for making failure (very) EXPENSIVE, meaning sure, we drill. But it has to be done so carefully that few — only the best — will want to try. Is that denying “modernity” and taking the human race back to candle wicks and buffalo hides? No. If resource development has to become more deliberate and done with more care, then quality takes over where as now, quantity is the watchword. If there’s money to be made on the part of one driller, then there should be ten doing it in one area. Oh, really?!? It’s the same with real estate, I can tell you. If a metro market needed one office building before 2008, then a half dozen developers would each put one up. Each would say with a straight face, “My project will succeed where theirs fail.” The waste and damage need to stop, period, but it looks like something akin to an asteroid impact is required. After all, we wouldn’t want to in any way restrict the number of billionaires created, even if illegally or immorally. Would we?
I am a concerned housewife and would love to join your above mentioned panel.
If we value our lifestyle here, clean, safe and a great place to live, then we need to stop those who would come in, make a quick buck and then leave us with their big mess to clean up. Though they assure us that they will do no harm to our water and the ground our homes and businesses sit on, it is easy enough to apologize, take a slap on the wrist, pay a fine and then pocket their profits and leave. Some things can never be made like they were before.
Water that is tainted with powerful damaging chemicals can never be made pure again. We can never take out all the carcinogens and poisons that Fracking will put into our water. For a state that values water so much it has stringent laws concerning its use, we (our government?) apparently feel powerless to stand up to the oil and gas industry.
Even if the oil and gas industry does have a notarized piece of paper giving them a right to drill under our land, if it will damage/kill us or our environment does that not factor into the equation? Do we have to just say, “well, they do have the legal right (to poison our water) if they can get us some more gas, and what can I do about it anyway?”
At what point does someone else’s right to make money supersede my right to clean water and air?
Since we all use oil and gas perhaps it’s time to lessen our dependence on it.
We need other viable choices.
I recommend watching the documentary, CARBON NATION on Netflix, for a real life vision of a way to live and prosper, without oil & gas profiting from the harm they continue to inflict on us and our increasingly damaged planet. Apparently there is more than enough energy to go around despite what we have heard from Exxon and the like. We also need to encourage our elected officials to do more forward thinking and “think renewable energy” as our president is trying to encourage.
We need to make it difficult for Frackers to get a foothold, through legal channels. We need to require excruciatingly extensive tests to prove that no damage will be done by them every step of the way. Accurate tests also must have a reasonable amount of time to show results, it sometimes takes years for dangers to present themselves.
We have to make our voices heard and we should not allow ourselves to be exploited.
Count me in!
It boils down to this: we must make failure VERY expensive for the operators, preferably BEFORE they operate!!! And judging from their operating record (pipeline spills, Exxon Valdez, Macondo well in GOM) should make any rational individual see how expensive failure OUGHT to be for them. BP will be on the hook for Macondo to the tune of about $50 billion once all is said and done. Yet they are still wheelin’ and dealin’, turnin’ to the right (that’s drill talk).