Politicians side with gas companies, ignore science on shale gas drilling. Drinking water threatened

[limpyhobbler]

So the president gave a great State of the Union address last night. 95% of what we said was good. I’m glad I voted for him over John McCain. Not like that was a hard decision or anything. I was excited about Obama in 2008 and made a lot of phone calls and canvassed for him.

Natural gas drilling from the deep underground shale layers is currently poisoning water supplies in America. This is the hydro-fracturing or fracking process.

The government should step in to protect people so we can have clean water to drink.

Politicians including the President say we should continue this toxic drilling and injection without slowing down.

Many people are concerned about this poisoning and are calling for a moratorium on fracking until it can be shown to be safe.

A new poll of Ohio voters shows 72 percent think the practice should be stopped until more study of it can be done.

A new poll of Ohioans shows that more than seven in ten want the controversial practice of hydro-fracking stopped until more study of it can be done, according to a Quinnipiac University survey released this morning.

The first statewide poll on hydrofracking--the practice of pumping millions of gallons of chemical-laced water into shale deposits to crack open oil and natural gas deposits far below the earth's crust--shows Ohioans anxious about its impact on the environment. By a margin of 72-23, Ohioans say the practice should be stopped until further study.

http://www.nofrackohio.com/news/2012/1/20/new-quinnipiac-poll-ohioans-strongly-oppose-hydro-fracking-u.html

The President says drillers on public lands should disclose their chemicals.
That’s nice but
1) It should apply to all drillers not just public lands
2) Disclosing chemicals does not stop the currently ongoing poisoning

The President says “my Administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy”.

But it is already being developed very unsafely, threatening our drinking water, and the government should be protecting us, instead of siding with the polluters. The administration to date has taken no actions to protect people from this.

The government is siding with the gas and oil companies like Halliburton.
Those companies have great access to politicians because they have a lot of money.
They can meet with Senators any time they want.

Regular people who are concerned with clean water have almost no access to politicians. They sometimes have to go to great lengths to get even a meeting with a state legislator.

I’m really disappointed that politicians including President Obama are choosing to ignore the science presented to them by the Environmental Protection Agency, by shale gas expert advisory groups, by the scientific community, and by the concerned residents of these communities.

In December, the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft study that tentatively confirms hydraulic fracturing contaminates groundwater and drinking water wells. The gas industry has argued the opposite, putting communities and the environment at risk.

In November, the President’s own Shale Gas Advisory Panel advised that “…. if action is not taken to reduce the environmental impact accompanying the very considerable expansion of shale gas production expected across the country – perhaps as many as 100,000 wells over the next several decades – there is a real risk of serious environmental consequences…”

In November, the Scientific American – the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States and 2011 National Magazine Award winner -- editorialized that “drilling for natural gas has gotten ahead of the science needed to prove it safe”.

The President should be putting communities first. But by promoting increased gas drilling when his own advisors and the scientific establishment tell him that we have neither the science nor the oversight to ensure safe drilling, he is not.

http://www.earthworksaction.org/media/detail/president_obama_should_put_communities_first_not_drilling_industry_profits

Once we are done paying Halliburton and friends to make our water undrinkable, we can then pay them to clean it back up and sell it back to us at a profit.

By siding with the gas companies, our politicians are failing to take into account the cost in health to communities and families.

Besides people, there are also a lot of animals out there trying to get a drink out of a stream. Fish and deer and bald fricken eagles.

I would expect this stance from George W. Bush or John Kasich, but to be honest I wasn’t expecting it from President Obama.

What should the President have said last night instead?
“I call upon all natural gas developers engaged in hydrofracking near water supplies to temporarily halt their activity until the process can be shown to be safe.”

Easy as pie.

[izquierdista]

1. Humans as yeasts

Yeasts are pretty stupid creatures. Having only one cell, there are no synapses or neurons to worry about, just eat and excrete until your environment will no longer support (your kind of) life. Unfortunately, money has taken over the role of synapses and neurons, so the future of humanity will be the same as for the yeasts. Actually worse, for humans haven't yet figured out how to sporulate.