Frack You!

A new documentary called Gasland continues in heavy rotation on HBO. It is another clear indictment, a thesis that I have maintained for over 15 years, that big business will end humanity. Of course, that seems like hyperbola. The evidence that big corporations destroy and take the lives of humans is readily available and evident. That is hardly a debate. Further, it has been this way for a long time—one needs to look at Nader’s seminal work “Unsafe At Any Speed” written all the way back in 1965 for validation. Well, one could even go further to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle . Throughout the years, big business routinely has dumped chemicals into our water and food supply. It has financially destroyed many a family. It has even forced people off their land—which seems fitting given how this land, the US, was “cultivated.”

However, while GM killed only a relative few people with their engineering flaws, big business is improving its work to end humanity—or at least severely cripple its population. This has been pointed out long ago too. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring released in 1962, sounds the alarm bells regarding using chemicals for industrial farming. It’s a chilling discussion. One written over 40 years ago. Even back then, the outlook was dire and grim and hopelessly sad. And what do we have now?

BP is in the process of destroying the Gulf; although to be fair, big business has been destroying the Gulf for a long, long time—not just BP. And BP has or will dramatically impact the lives of millions of people along the coast and folks who enjoy seafood, shell fish particularly. But the gulf coast is not all of humanity, Ron, so I am not following your non sequitur. Fair point.

The new documentary Gasland, however, makes my case. If you have time, watch it. I might suggest watching even if you don’t have time. The movie illustrates just how insidious, immoral and wrong big business can be. Essentially, our government exempts these natural-gas-producing companies from the “Clean Water Act.” (I mean, why would we want clean water? That’s soo stupid on the face of it. Why require big business to protect the water we drink? All we need to do is go to Sam’s Club to buy it—that’s what it is coming to.)

So companies are extracting natural gas from the earth and in the process forcing so many toxic chemicals into the earth that it is almost hard to comprehend. The documentary outlines in great detail the process called “fracking.” For more information, here’s the website: http://gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking.

For each “well” a company will use between 60-300 tons of chemicals and between 1-8 million gallons of water; a well may be “fracked” up to 18 times. All this, mind you kids, for one well. Nice. There are tens of thousands of wells in the good old US of A. Note that the next time you see a fucking commercial lauding “natural gas” as America’s energy solution.

Many people near these wells have experience problems with their water—no kidding. If you think that your water is safe because you don’t live near a well, and thus prefer to bury your heard in the sand—my first response is “you’re a fucking asshole and I hope you and your progeny die soon” and next is “water is inter-connected, numb nuts.” Take a course in geology. (Of course, these folks probably don’t believe in “science” or intellectual thought, but that’s conservatism for you.) Here in Vegas, for example, there are no wells, but the water Las Vegans drink comes from the snow fall in the Rocky Mountains. In Colorado there are hundreds of wells. So LA and Phoenix, do you like some toxic substances such as diesel fuel, which contains benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene and other chemicals; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; methanol; formaldehyde; ethylene glycol; glycol ethers; hydrochloric acid; and sodium hydroxide in your drinking water? According to earthworks.com very small quantities of chemicals such as benzene, which causes cancer, are capable of contaminating millions of gallons of water. I heart big business!

We need to water to survive. Beside oxygen, water is the single most important nutrient. According to the experts, (I believe in experts, by the way) people can survive without water for 2-3 days max. Now that we are allowing big business to contaminate our water supply, can the end be that far off? Of course, if we drink contaminated water, we will live longer, but in a far more agonizing fashion: cancer, excruciating pain, miserable existence kind-of-life.

While there are people fighting this, does it not depress you that our elected officials specifically allowed these companies to do this to us by exempting them from any type of meaningful oversight? Myopia for greed, I suppose.

Perhaps, it is not big business then that will destroy us—I guess it is us. How can we allow this to happen? Greed is good and so what if your water has a little benzene in it—the CEOs and stockholders are rich. Oh yeah, plus a couple thousand people are employed, too. I think we should force them and their families to use the same water that they have contaminated.