Fracking like there's no tomorrow

 

The world is running out of cost-effective and safe sources of fossil fuels. It's hard to imagine a more important challenge for every man, woman and child on the planet.

Cheap energy, mainly in the form of coal, oil and natural gas, powered the Industrial Revolution in general and U.S. economy in particular. In a live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword twist, the United States' reliance on fossil fuels bears unsustainable costs and unthinkable risks in the 21st century.

The unsustainable costs include environmental damage from coal-fired power plants. Coal, which fuels the majority of the U.S. electricity supply, remains a widespread energy source in industrial countries around the world. But coal's environmental costs such as acid rain, greenhouse gas emissions and mining impacts are barely bearable now. A new spike in air pollution is highly likely if China and India follow in the U.S. economy's coal footsteps.

There are sure signs that the petroleum industry is taking greater risks in its quest for new sources of oil and natural gas. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico was a nightmare risk that became a reality. The industry continues to lobby to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the most environmentally fragile federally protected wilderness areas in the United States. And oil companies want to drill off the coasts of California and Florida, two of the most productive fisheries in U.S. waters.

Fracking seems like a desperate measure for desperate times. This trailer from the award-winning documentary "Gasland" highlights most of the fracking danger signs ...

Clean water is becoming one of the world's most precious commodities. The fracking process is water intensive and has been linked to water aquifer contamination in several states. The contamination includes known carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehide.

Fracking could not stand up to scrutiny under the federal Clean Water Act, so Congress and President George W. Bush exempted fracking from the nation's most important water protection law in 2005.

Don't expect to hear the word fracking or acknowledgment of environmental risks in the rhetoric of the American Petroleum Institute. In the American Petroleum Institute video above, we're supposed to be impressed that fracking could secure 100 years worth of natural gas. But what happens after that 100 years is up? And we'll be living with the legacy of tainted water for centuries.

Fracking waste lagoon in Pennsylvania /Flickr image