Commentary by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor & Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV, September 3, 2013
When I was a kid in these West Virginia hills, there was a common saying, “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.” I suppose it originally meant some physical thing, but in my time it meant the speaker wouldn’t broach some topic because of the controversy involved, some theological, political, or other issue.
Now some people wouldn’t touch the problems of fracking with a ten-foot pole. (We use “fracking” here for the whole process of drilling shale for horizontal access and the use of high volume, slick-water hydraulic fracturing.) Many avoiders are holders of political office, some are academics who don’t want to be outside the main stream, others are just plain blunderers, unwilling to find out the truth.
One is Stephanie Timmerman, who has a long history of moving through the revolving door between government, industry and academia. According to one source, ” Timmermeyer’s career blurs the line between public service and corporate subservience; she has moved through the revolving door into government and back out again, working as a corporate attorney, then as cabinet secretary of West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, and now as a Chesapeake lobbyist, but never forgetting who she really worked for (hint: not the public). As a regulator, she went soft on industry; as a corporate lobbyist, she leverages her regulatory experience to ease the way for Chesapeake.” Go to the original story for much, much more. Obviously, Stephanie is one who will not criticize fracking – she “knows which side her bread is buttered on.”
Have you heard that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection missed a legally mandated time to file a report on how climate change will impact the state? Yes, it is now a year and a half late. The problem is a “lack of support” for inclusion of research showing fracking more climate unfriendly than coal. The previous Climate Change Program Manager, Joe Sherrick, quit out of frustration, because “There was a ‘lack of support’ from the Corbett administration and the PA-DEP for anything related to climate change. The way this attitude was demonstrated, “A few months after the Penn State team submitted its original draft, the PA-DEP Policy Office directed Sherrick to take Dr. Robert Howarth, et al’s work out of the report.” Jessica Shirley, the PA-DEP policy specialist who asked for the study to be removed, says it was her own judgment call, and she was not pressured by anyone above her. Perhaps it’s just the climate she works in.
Then there’s the on again, off again approach of the US EPA to water contamination. First it said the water was contaminated at Dimock, Pennsylvania, then the final report said it was safe to drink, now an internal EPA PowerPoint surfaces which concluded that “methane is at significantly higher concentrations in the aquifers after gas drilling and perhaps as a result of fracking and other gas well work” and that it “fits a troubling pattern at a time when the Obama administration has used the sharp increase in natural gas production to rebut claims that it is opposed to fossil fuels.”
“In March 2012, the US EPA closed an investigation of methane in drinking water in Parker County, Texas, although the geologist hired by the regulator confirmed that the methane was from gas production. In late June, the US EPA dropped a study of possible contamination of drinking water in Pavillion, Wyo., despite its earlier findings of carcinogens, hydrocarbons and other contaminants in the water.” And further, “the energy industry and its congressional allies have hammered the US EPA for undertaking the studies, which they say are a pretext for regulatory overreach.”
And you get positions like “Will Washigton Politics Kill The US Energy Revival And Shale Gas Revolution?” in Forbes, written by Jon Entine. Entine is listed as a “Contributor,” so I looked for what he has written. This appears to be his only venture into fracking, but he is big in supporting GMO, supporting DNA screening and generally supporting big business. He is described in Wikipedia as an American author, journalist, think tank fellow, and consultant with a BA degree in philosophy. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University and a senior fellow at GMU’s conservative leaning think tank STATS (Statistical Assessment Service). Inside of STATS Entine is the founder and director of the Genetic Literacy Project, a non-profit organization which says it seeks to “foster dialogue about the scientific, social and ethical implications of genetic technologies.”
So his education and previous experience on fracking is zero, and his piece is a writers “stuff in and stuff out article.” And my readers are free to guess where he gets his stuff with conclusions like that.
And then you get into the really hard core stuff, like Tom Shepstone who faulted the Heinz Endowment for giving a grant to the Clean Water Fund to “connect state networks of community efforts with policy development and characterize pollution impacts of Marcellus Shale development.” Of course, Shepstone is a highly paid professional (by grants from the industry) who invents this stuff for a blog and other circulation.
And there you have it. Not one considers global climate change, the elephant in the room. These people wouldn’t touch anything unfavorable to fracking with a ten foot pole. It violates the simple dogma of the industry, “We don’t hurt anybody.”
At a higher level, as one of my friends characterizes the industry attitude, …” we will not allow any concerns for externalities to interfere with our economic recovery, such as it is.” The role of increased energy production is essential to economic recovery and future growth, and the adverse impacts will simply be weighed as insufficient to warrant foregoing the benefits of cheaper energy (i.e. natural gas, including its liquid derivatives).
And augmenting this rationality is the influence of money in the US professional politician environment. It is increasingly difficult to see light at the end of this tunnel since Legislators will not bite the hand that feeds their political status and elected office.
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