The conventional coal fuel cycle is among the most destructive activities on earth, threatening our health, fouling our air and water, harming our land, and contributing to global warming.
~~ Natural Resources Defense Counsel
Last week the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection shut down some operations of natural gas driller Cabot Oil & Gas after 8,000 gallons of toxic chemicals were spilled on the ground and into a creek in Susquehanna County.~~Forbes.com
Notwithstanding the very low or negative energy returned on investment for any of these sources, every one of these sources will result in a devastating despoliation of the land surfaces and water resources for a significant area around these sites. The cumulative impact of the maximal extraction from each of these sites could damage thousands square miles of mostly pristine lands and pollute millions of gallons of fresh water. The implications of these actions beyond land and water destruction, if that isn’t enough, include habitat destruction, human disease and death, and a tragic waste of money that could be used to assist us in transitioning to a sustainable culture. I’ll illustrate a few glaring examples of these extractive threats and follow up with the key question.
Tar Sands (55,000 square miles)
The tar sands underlying the boreal forest of Alberta, Canada, spread out over 140,000 square kilometers (nearly 55,000 square miles) of land, are estimated to contain as much as 200 million barrels of oil. This oil is obtained either by open pit mining or the injection of high pressure steam for deeper deposits. While the open pit mining is damaging enough to the land base and leaving very stark options for reclamation, it is the steam injection method of recovery that is most problematic and water-use intensive. Each of these methods use significant amounts of clean fresh water, as Tar Sands Watch notes, “Both of these processes to extract the oil are extremely water intensive, requiring between 3 and 7 barrels of water per barrel of oil. While some of the water is recyclable, a large quantity ends up in lake-size tailing ponds filled with water and toxic materials.” Toxic tailings piles are generated at a ratio of six (6) square meters for each square meter of bitumen mined. Toxic lakes containing these tailings currently cover over 21 square miles of Alberta wilderness. Ruptures of these growing tailings lakes would be far more catastropic than the horrible coal ash breach near Knoxville, Tennessee in December of 2008 due to the severe toxicity of the “water”.
Surface Mining
Mining processes at an industrial scale, which means virtually everything done in modern times, is devastating to the land on which it occurs. There is no practical exception to this statement no matter what some conglomerate or geologist might suggest. Metals extraction in the Western U.S. uses huge quantities of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids or cyanide to leach the metals out of rock which contains microscopic trace amounts of the metal. It is, of course, only profitable to disturb massive amounts of land containing these ores if the price of the metal warrants the expense (but not the expense of cleanup which would be off the charts) and leaves behind cyanide and other contaminants plus surface and groundwater pollution. A Carlton College report notes that “acid mine drainage contaminates nearly every stream drainage that emanates from the mine. Essentially the entire watershed becomes a toxic wasteland.
Surface coal mining including mountaintop removal, one of the most staggeringly damaging forms of industrial mining, causes serious and widespread damage to land and water resources. It essentially renders useless the land under which the coal deposits lay. Often the tailings are dumped in the adjacent ravines where cold, clear streams once flowed which supplied drinking water to Appalachian homesteaders and generations of their descendants….until now. Other problems that mountaintop removal mining creates includes devastation of forests, landslides and foundation damage from blasting, particulates and other air pollutants from blasting, and huge leaching ponds, some which may collapse and smother the inhabitants below. I recently visited with local activist Judy Bonds of Coal River Mountain Watch who noted how widespread the damage to her people’s way of life had become to the benefit of coal conglomerates but very few residents of the region. Of course, as coal is seen as the “fuel of choice” for a new generation of consuming Americans, this type of mining will become ever more prevalent, leaving behind totally destroyed communities which will never be able to be functionally re-inhabited in a reasonable human time frame.
HydroFracking
Hydrofracking (slick-water horizontal hydrofracking) is a highly toxic gas-drilling technique using conventional drilling to a point. Drillers then use a slurry composed of water, sand, and proprietary chemicals, drillers to pump into the well at high pressures which fractures the shale rock and, ideally, allowing the natural gas trapped in pockets to flow back up the well. But not all of the slurry mix and methane makes it back up the well and frankly nobody knows where this toxic mess goes–except instances of groundwater contamination in Wyoming and Pennsylvania which hint at where some of it is going. The proprietary chemicals remain a trade secret due to the protective clauses of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 creating an exemption to the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Extents of shale beds in New York and Pennsylvania are believed to contain large deposits of natural gas trapped in pockets of the shale. The only thing is that much of the area where the shale deposits occur is rich farmland where numerous organic farmers and other agricultural operations rely on clean soils and fresh, uncontaminated water. New York Well Watch suggests that the water supply of New York City may be threatened by these practices.
And For What?
With the amount of precious land being destroyed, essentially for a time frame that is forever in human terms, you’d expect that, even if there was any rational justification for such actions, that the need would be urgent and existential. But in this case the land base is being destroyed to further fuel growth and industrial expansion. And as so many (here, here, here, and here as just a few examples) have made abundantly clear, this economic model is unsustainable and catastrophic. The only circuit breaker in case of overload is systemic collapse and by then the damage is done and likely irreversible.
But need can only be claimed weakly within the narrow and pathological framing of our current growth culture. If you step outside the limited vision of this ideological picture, such actions could be construed as dangerously insane and seriously immoral. This is because these sources of energy are being sought as a direct replacement of the sources of energy currently used to fuel growth and development of the global growth economy in its current form. In fact, this could also be a significant flaw in the development of non-carbon alternative sources of energy also. For if the purpose of any alternative at all is to continue to fuel manufacturing plants, shipping modes, private cars, air travel, shopping, profligate waste generation, and all of the other facets of our economic system, then it is a false choice. It is an example of agenda setting and framing by the existing sources of cultural power and authority.
To put it another way, we are encouraging the devastation of vast areas of land and quantities of fresh water to fuel our SUV’s, run our iPods, eat filet mignon, live at the end of the cul-de-sac in Oak Terrace Acres, vacation in Aruba, reserve tee times at the Country Club, and all of the other wasteful and excessive behaviors that most of us privately know we can’t continue engaging in forever. There are too many of us already engaging in these behaviors, far too many who aspire to engage, and too few resources and waste sinks available to accommodate them. Even if we were able to power this entire spectrum of lifestyle for 10 billion people with solar and wind power–an impossibility for a variety of reasons, it would still be tantamount to madness. The rest of the requirements necessary to develop these lifestyles including mined minerals (including silica, copper, cadmium for solar panels and iron ore and other metals for wind turbines), water for industrial processes, land area to accommodate hundreds of thousands of subdivisions, the asphalt surfaces for roads and parking lots, and so on would soon result in a Wall-E world of hopeless waste and disfunctionally simplified ecosystems (if you could even call them ecosystems at that degraded level). The historical examples abound as written about by Diamond, Hughes, and others. Hughes suggests in Pan’s Travail that a key reason for the fall of the ancient Greek republic was the destruction of forests and the lack of accessible wood resources for fuel and construction.
As many authorities have been yelling into the wind about for years and other respected authorities have begun to take up the megaphone, the industrial way of life based on endless growth is not only unsustainable, it is a suicide machine. But even when presented with this evidence and the myriad examples of the damage done to land and water, cultures and peoples, and ourselves–the very people this machine is purported to be operating for, no politician or banker, or other authority within this system has the courage to even acknowledge this dilemma we find ourselves squarely within. The system has assured that it would be tantamount to career suicide and social ostracism, at the very least.
It is clear that unless each of us undertakes the steps to simplify and relocalize, individually, in households, neighborhoods, communities, and as a species, that no one else will stop the madness. The parallel culture must be aggressively pursued within the framework of the growth culture (I’d be glad to expound on this point offline) as a moral mission. No election will bring a savior to power, no epiphany will take hold of a corporate leader, no idea or movement from the center of this culture will emerge to show us the way. Make your New year’s resolution count for something in 2010.
Sources:
A Dirty Little Secret: Canada’s Global warming Engine. Alberta Tar Sands Profile Series. Polaris Institute; www.tarsandswatch.org (undated).
Environmental Impacts at Fort Belknap from Gold Mining. Carlton College, Intrgrating Research and Education; http://serc.carleton.edu/research_education/nativelands/ftbelknap/enviro…
Blowing the Top Off Mountaintop Mining. WIRED Magazine, September 10, 2007; http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/09/mountaintop_mining…
Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force. Headaches, Heartache, and Hydrofracking:
Haudenosaunee visit Hedgehog Lane in Bradford, PA. By Lindsay Speer; http://www.hetf.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57:hydr…
Drink Up: An argument against hydrofracking, New York Well Watch. http://nywellwatch.org/2009/10/27/drink-up-an-arument-against-hydrofrack…
