The more I read, the more I am
convinced that fracking is "safe" like smoking was safe;
like thalidomide was safe; like agent orange was safe. Safe for whom?
In each of those cases, billions were made by a few at the expense of
thousands of lives before the sheer weight of the devastation could
no longer be denied. Then, finally, came the acknowledgment by those
who should have protected the public from the beginning that, not
only was it not safe, but the evidence of the threat had been there
all along.
In the case of fracking, we are talking
about the "safety" not of the individuals who voluntarily
expose themselves and their property to it, but of our water supply.
And by "our," I do mean, all of us. Not just this
community, but our country and the world. Clean water is fast
becoming the most valuable commodity of our time. Just ask Texas,
Colorado, and California.
We in south Louisiana, surrounded by
water, deluged by it almost every summer afternoon, take water for
granted. We take so much for granted. Have we learned nothing from
the past? Do we really want to wait for the evidence that fracking is
destroying water supplies to become so overwhelming that it can no
longer be denied, even by the oil and gas industry? It's frightening
to me to guess at how much worse it has to be before we wake up.
Again, look at, and I mean really look, at what's going on in Texas
and California as they are beginning to realize how much of their
clean water they have sacrificed in the name of profits and the
assurances by oil and gas that fracking is "safe."
The rhetoric of "economic benefit"
and "responsible natural resource development" has put us
in a trance from which we must awaken before we experience first hand
that you can't drink money, no matter how much of it you've made off
of fracking, or anything else for that matter. Sure, you can buy it
with your wealth, but only if it exists to be bought.
Wake up, people. Please, wake up.
Unlike the deaths and injuries caused by smoking, thalidomide and
agent orange, to name only a few, this devastation cannot be
eradicated with money judgments, apologies, and television
commercials. Once our water is contaminated, the only thing that
will repair it is time. I'd guess a few thousand years. And even if I
could live that long without clean water, who, especially here in
south Louisiana, the sportsman's paradise, would want to?
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