If Water is the New Oil then Hydrofracking is Counter-intuitive
Water for Oil, an archived RT piece, was commented on yesterday, and it got me thinking about something that Eric Massa had said many times throughout his campaign-
“Water is the new oil”
We absolutely require water to function as humans. It is required by all living beings and is at the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I mean, really, where are you going without water?
people can live as much as 30 days without food but only seven without water. How long can a person live without oil?
More than a billion people lack access to clean water, and 2.5 billion are without water for sanitation, with 80 percent of all disease borne by dirty water.
Meaning, in the future, wars will be fought for control of water:
“If the wars of this century were fought over oil, the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” (1995 World Bank vice president Ismail Serageldin)
And where is 20% of the world’s fresh water?
As the global water crisis increases, so does pressure on exporting Great Lakes water (20% of world’s surface freshwater; 95% of US surface freshwater).
In the Star Gazzette, this week, Eric Massa addresses the issue of Hydrofracking in the Southern Tier.
“The most precious resource we have in western New York state is our water table and our aquifer and the Finger Lakes,” Massa said. “My No. 1 priority as a representative of the people who live here is to protect that resource, especially from foreign corporations who want to get short-term profit quickly and get out of town and leave us with the problem afterwards.”
Tom Reed, on the other hand, had this to say:
“We have to be concerned about what we do with our water supply because we don’t want a situation where we contaminate it for generations to come,” he said.”But meeting with many gas producers, many landowners, talking with people down in Pennsylvania where they are fracking into the Marcellus shale formation, the technology and the environmental concerns can be readily addressed,” Reed said.
Sounds like Palin-speak to me. (I’m surprised that he didn’t finish with, “Also, too.”) This guy actually thinks that the companies who want to drill will look out for the people’s best interest.
The freshwater of New York State needs to be protected against those who would despoil it for the sake of short term gain. It’s time to re-invoke Bush’s “abstinence only” propaganda phrase, only with a bit of a twist. When it comes to hydrofracking in the Marcellus shale: “Not here. Not now!”
Related posts:
We have tort laws to address people who commit harmful actions.
Speaking of Maslow, self-actualization is smothered by government imposed solutions and violations of property rights. Freedom is necessary to realize the full potential of one’s self.