West Virginia’s Elk River Chemical Spill and How We Measure Progress
It’s a cruel irony for the 300,000 West Virginians forced to turn off their taps for five to ten days… will count as a plus according to…GDP.
It’s a cruel irony for the 300,000 West Virginians forced to turn off their taps for five to ten days… will count as a plus according to…GDP.
True stories from Walter Brasch, author of "Fracking Pennsylvania", plus Helen Rimmer from FOE UK and Sandra Steingraber.
De Wereld Morgen asks Richard Heinberg about the prospects for fracking in Europe.
•Fracking by the Numbers: Key Impacts of Dirty Drilling at the State and National Level •Monterey Shale isn’t all it’s fracked up to be •West Virginia Landfills Will Now Accept Unlimited Amounts Of Often Radioactive Fracking Waste •Too Big to Believe: Top Economists Doubt California Oil Industry’s Jobs Figures •Colorado Cities Sued Over Fracking Bans by Oil, Gas Group
Oil shales, if they live up to proponents’ expectations and can be produced commercially, could change the economic and political fortunes of the United States and transform the geopolitical map of the world.
•Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans’ personal debt •A Permanent Slump? •To tackle pollution, China to drop pursuit of growth at all costs
•Could California’s Shale Oil Boom Be Just a Mirage? •Could fracking boom peter out sooner than DOE expects? •More mineral owners seek to join gas lawsuits •Bakken field haste fuels massive natural gas waste •Shale gas fracking a low risk to public health -UK review •Underground Carbon Dioxide Injections Triggered Earthquakes in Texas in 2009-2011 •Colorado an energy battleground as towns ban fracking
•China cracks down on emissions to combat choking smog •China’s first coal-to-gas plant soon to pump gas to Beijing •China’s smog reduction plan could add to water stress and boost emissions •China Faces Gas Shortage after Cutting Coal Consumption •China’s oil demand to 2020 •Beijing slashes car sales quota in anti-pollution drive •Shale Gas Revolution Not Coming To China Anytime Soon •China faces a long battle for blue skies
Despite growing concern over the last two decades about the low-oxygen “dead zone” that emerges each summer in the fisheries-rich Gulf of Mexico, the nitrate pollution at the root of the problem continues to rise.
•New York Shale Play Gets Major Downgrade •America’s natural gas revolution isn’t all it’s ‘fracked’ up to be •Scientists Wary of Shale Oil and Gas as U.S. Energy Salvation •Shale gas firms to be brought under ‘robust’ new EU law •Lock the Gate Webisodes •Hundreds of North Dakota spills went unreported •Underground Truths: Shale Won’t Save Us •Romanian farmers choose subsistence over shale gas
Globalization has largely been seen in the context of the outsourcing of information technologies. But the larger outsourcing that globalization is leading to is the outsourcing of pollution and the energy-intensive production of goods.
Why has there been such a massive grassroots backlash against fracking? In this chapter, we’ll look at the evidence for fracking’s impacts on water, air, land, and climate. Reader warning: it ain’t pretty.