Tag Archives: Pennsylvania

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Fracking

I can’t believe how insane fracking is.  Call me naïve, but I am stunned that oil and gas companies are willing to poison our waters – and therefore ecosystems, wildlife and people – for the sake of profit, “that mean, mean green, that mighty dollar.”

Having written a post on fracking, I was gearing up to write an essay on the sweatshops in Bangladesh, but I’m finding it hard to move on to another subject because fracking is spreading at lightening speed across the Marcellus Shale.  Unless we can stop it, its toxic wastewater will permeate the waters of the Northeast and Mid Atlantic sooner than we think.  I find that thought horrifying.

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What the Frack?

Up until a few months ago, I had never heard of fracking. If you had asked me what it is, I would have guessed it’s a substitute for a word that one should not use in the presence of children. As it turns out, that is not what it is, but it still has everything to do with something that should never be used in the presence of children.

Hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. fracking, is an extraction process for natural gas that is currently being conducted in 27 states in the country. Josh Fox, director of the award-winning documentary Gasland, is convinced that fracking is one of the country’s biggest environmental and public health challenges in history. After learning about it myself, I could not agree more.   Continue reading