Fracking Synthesis

     The peer reviewed article I picked is titled, "Natural Gas: Should fracking stop?" This article was written in September of 2011. The point of this article is to inform the reader about how dangerous fracking is to natural gas. Although natural gas from shale is typically known as a clean fuel, this article clearly states that it is does not believe it is. The two new ways to extract shale from the ground are fracking and drilling. However, fracking is much more common than drilling. 

      This article is very similar to the article titled "EPA: Natural Gas Fracking Linked to Water Contamination." Both of the articles agree that fracking is harmful to the environment. The EPA article is more focused on how fracking is bad for water contamination, and the Natural Gas article is focused on how shale gas from fracking is bad. However, both of the articles talk about the government's involvement in dealing with fracking. In Natural Gas, the author states a very interesting point, "Many of the fracking additives are toxic, carcinogenic or mutagenic. Many are kept secret. In the United States, such secrecy has been abetted by the 2005 'Halliburton loophole' (named after an energy company headquartered in Houston, Texas), which exempts fracking from many of the nation's major federal environmental-protection laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act." This point reminded me of when the EPA Article talks about how the Senator called the EPA's investigation of fracking "offensive." It is just so surprising to me that the government would allow loopholes to fracking and for a Senator could call it offensive to investigate more on the effects of tracking to the environment.

      Both of the articles give clear points on why fracking is bad for the environment. The Natural Gas: Should Fracking Stop article gives a point about water contamination, "It found that about 75% of wells sampled within 1 kilometer of gas drilling in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania were contaminated with methane from the deep shale formations." This point even further proves the points about how fracking leads to water contamination in the article EPA: Natural Gas Fracking Linked to Water Contamination. The fact that both articles have exact facts on how fracking is bad for the environment makes it even more startling that the government has been able to let fracking have a loophole, and not promote the investigation of the side effects of it. However, both articles state that the reason the government isn't involving itself in stopping fracking is because it is a cheap resource to use. Even though it is cheap, we should still be focused on how it is harming our environment. As a reader, both articles have convinced me of the dangers and risks involved with fracking. 


The Link to the Natural Gas article is: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7364/full/477271a.html

     

Fracking EPA Article

     This article is definitely an eye opener. It is crazy to think that these studies show that there are so many pollutants going into drinking water because of fracking. The sad part is, I did not even know what fracking was until I read this article. I believe that Gary Snyder and Richard Kahn would both agree that this article is another true example of how much bioregional knowledge I am lacking. However, this article definitely made me sit there and want to find out where my drinking water is coming from, what are the chances there are pollutants in it, and I even want to test my drinking water for pullutants myself. It is just so frightening to think that I could be drinking chemicals that are bad for me every single day without even realizing that I am!

     One of the quotes in this article that astounded me was “After a phone call with EPA chief Lisa Jackson this morning, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told a Senate panel that he found the agency's report on the Pavillion-area contamination "offensive."” How in the world can you sit there and say that a study to make sure the drinking water of the inhabitants of your state is offensive? That just drove me crazy when I read it. I think Snyder and Kahn would be appalled as well. It would also be one thing if this was just an innocent bystander who claimed this was offensive. However, it is a senator! That just makes the government look extremely terrible in my eyes, relating to this environmental topic.

     Truly, this article made me think about bioregional knowledge more than anything we have talked about in class. This article hit me harder because it is so recent, and so eye opening. It honestly made me think about my drinking water more than I ever have. It also made me think about how our senator would react if this was being done in North Carolina.

Kahn's Discussion in Class

The class as a whole had really good quotes to talk about from Richard Kahn's article. Despite the article being very hard to follow, the fact that he stated so many eye opening facts really captivated the reader's attention. One of my favorite quotes from the article was “This relationship – to think ecologically is to think about the relationships between things – declares that a threat to either the organism or its environment is a movement towards the ecology of death: the life process requires both and any process that so binds the one or the other so as to threaten “both” is in some sense courting death and moving away from the love of life.” This quote is the one I chose to discuss because I believe this point right her correlates to everything we've been learning in class about the environment's relationships with humans. What I took out of the quote is that humans have to react to things happening to them with the knowledge that the environment and other species are being affected as well.


 

additional themes

The first poem that really made me think about Snyder's view on where the bioregion is going is the poem, FRONT LINES. This poem's imagery is really what made it stand out for me. I believe Gary Snyder is calling the destruction human's are doing to the Earth as cancer. The line, "the edge of the cancer swells agains the hill-we feel a foul breeze- and it sinks back down," makes me think of the humans destructing the earth as a disease. Also, the "foul breeze" reminded me of pollution.

In CONTROL BURN, Snyder has a very pessimistic attitude about the destruction being done to the Earth. He talks about how the Indian's burnt everything down, which is clearly not true. In fact, the Indians managed to live off of the land with out over consumption. At the end of the poem, when Snyder says the Earth will return back to how the Indian's maintained it when they held it, Snyder is being sarcastic and really means the opposite. I also think he could mean that we would have to go back to how the Indian's actually lived; living off of the land.

The most blatant part of Turtle Island thus far has been  FACTS. In this section Gary Snyder's true annoyance with the over consumption of the United States is just straight written in the form of facts. I really hope I can find a way to intertwine one of my facts with my essay.

Turtle Island Themes #2

FOR THE CHILDREN is by far my favorite poem I have read in Turtle Island. I interpreted the theme as invoking life lessons on the younger generation. These life lessons I perceived from the poem were all from the last stanza that was italicized. I interpreted stay together as keep the people you love close. Learn the flowers immediately reminded me of bioregional literacy. I took the saying as learn your surroundings, just like I learned that I didn't know my surroundings very well thanks to the bioregional quiz. Gary Snyder would not be proud of me. Go light is the only saying that didn't immediately speak to me. After pondering, I interpreted that the saying meant be careful throughout life.

O WATERS theme came off to me as starting new. The first stanza is really what made this theme stand out to me. Snyder talks about water washing off us and me. This theme somewhat relates to the theme of FOR THE CHILDREN because starting over new is a part of life that many people do more than once. Such as moving to a new place, starting a new job, and so on.

TWO FAWNS THAT DIDN'T SEE THE LIGHT is a very, very morbid poem. It took me a while to interpret any sort of theme, but eventually this thought process occurred: both of the foes were mothers, which led me to think of mother nature, which proceeded into thinking maybe the foes represent nature and the foes being killed by the humans represents how the environment of Earth is being destroyed. The unborn deer represent the humans that won't be able to enjoy the Earth because the population will destroy it before they get to experience it.

Gary Snyder's Themes in Turtle Island

In Turtle Island, one of the themes I saw was gratitude. I especially saw this theme in PRAYER TO THE GREAT FAMILY. He uses the word throughout the poem. He suggests to treat the Earth like a family member and to give thanks to it. I also saw this theme in WITHOUT. He made me think about what it is like with nature and without nature, which made me grateful for it. THE USES OF LIGHT also has gratitude as a theme. It speaks specifically about how important light is.