By Dr. John Gilmore
I went to a bed and breakfast in Upstate PA. Nearby they were just beginning to mine marcellus shale. There have been several reports about the pollution of fresh water that takes place during this process. Heavy metals, cancerous agents, and even radioactive elements have been found in the drinking water of many residents around areas who feel they need to suddenly have access to marcellus shale. On one video a man actually set his water on fire to show how polluted it was by the process done to separate the gas from the shale. The inn keeper at the bed and breakfast almost panicked when my wife told him of the dangers.
“I don’t care! We’ve got to do something!” He said. “We have to put up with some of the inconveniences or we’ll be destroyed! What can we do? They say everything is wrong. We have to do something!” Come on. A couple of decades ago we didn’t even know how to get the oil from shale. Since they discovered how to in Canada and are making a fortune suddenly we have to do this or be destroyed.
A combination of solar energy, wind energy, title energy and geo-thermal energy would easily supply us with the energy we need well into the future, and poisoning all of the fresh water in aquifers is not an inconvenience it is totally stupid. Van Jones, the great Green advocate who was targeted with a slur campaign and forced out of the Obama administration put it well when he said that our nation is like a group of crack heads addicted to oil The only thing we know is drill and consume. We don’t care about our friends, our families, the next generation, anything, as long as we get our next fix. It is time to change this behavior and build for the future and future generations.
Put solar cells on roofs, put wind turbines and title energy turbines in the ocean, use the geothermal energy from volcanoes and use oil for what we can’t use the others for until we increase the efficiency of the clean energy. Use the same power lines we use now to move the energy from those sources to where it is needed. That seems to make sense to me. Yet again, the people with interest in all the oil might not like that. They have to make every penny possible off of the oil that they can at peak oil prices. They are making a killing and many of us are getting killed.
Excellent post by John Gilmore. Let’s use all of our resources and remain the strongest, richest, most charitable,and kindest nation on earth.
The French work less than just about anyone else but rank among the richest in the world (and ahead of us).
They get 90 percent of their energy from nuclear or hydro-electric power plants.
Cheap energy=wealth.
We, unfortunately, are not building nuclear plants and are ripping down our hydro-electric ones.
There is nothing wrong with solar/wind/thermal and they certainly should be researched, experimented with and adopted where it makes sense.
The Marcellus Shale drilling in PA is for natural GAS, not oil.