The Bush Administration talked at length about Evil – the capital-E type that has to be fought on a global scale. Terrorists are Evil and the countries that harbour them formed an Axis of Evil. Saddam Hussein was Evil, sometimes Islam itself is Evil along with Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic Congress. Sadly, this hyperbole was not only counterproductive foreign policy, but was a cover for much more tangible acts by the Administration that were a much better fit for the definition of evil. Vice President Cheney, long stereotyped by the left as a black hearted villain, has his fingerprints all over the worst of it and has more than earned his reputation.
Some of the worst damage was done (to the environment anyway) when George Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This legislation - introduced by Texas Republican Joe Barton, Tea Party member, Oil industry shill and bona fide global warming denier – sought to provide direction for the future of US energy. However, the bill basically packaged subsidies and incentive for oil companies (including some to drill in the Gulf of Mexico) and the nuclear industry, very much at the expense of the environment and common sense. The most damning provision: the “Halliburton loophole” which exempted Big Oil from oversight by the Safe Drinking Water and Clean Air Acts (and EPA) – effectively giving them free rein to pollute as they please in pursuit of oil and gas. The loophole is named for the biggest benefactor Halliburton, an oil and gas multi-national formerly run by none other than Dick Cheney.
Nauseating as this appears already, I haven’t got to the kicker yet. Josh Fox’s documentary Gasland details how the loophole has been exploited in particular to extract gas from America’s widespread shale deposits, using hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ (it’s a must watch doco, which I will not remotely do justice here). In short, the gas companies pump a shit load of pressurised fluid (and chemicals) into their gas wells to fracture the rock layer and release their bounty. Two problems. The first is that they were never obligated to release the ingredients in their fracking mixture. The second is that the majority of the fluid leaks into the water table – causing people’s drinking water to catch fire! Turns out that typical fracking fluids contain a range of known carcinogens, toxins, alcohols and hydrocarbons – all of which are a bad idea to drink, breathe or be near. Gasland documents a number of poisoned (and flammable) water supplies, dead animals, sick humans and fracked wells as far as the eye can see. It also shows the widespread denial of this problem, the power of the gas lobby and the paralysis of the US Congress (The FRAC Act, closing the Halliburton loophole has languished without a vote since January 3, 2011).
Come the end of Gasland, I was too angry to speak. For the sake of corporate profits, under the cloak of job creation and energy independence, 38 US states have now been pillaged by fracking. The scale of the problem defies comprehension. To add insult to injury, Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security is lobbying on behalf of the gas industry to take fracking to Pennsylvania. While he claims not to be a lobbyist, he recently described fracking as harmless and claimed that flaming taps were a naturally occurring phenomenon. I hope he chokes on his fat salary. In closing, this kind of ignorance to scientific fact (ie, what is carcinogenic and what is not) has become the hallmark of so many of our bad decisions from creationism to climate change denial. While most prevalent in the US, I’m afraid to say that both fracking and stupidity are cropping up more and more here in Australia.
