Review: This shouldn't be a political issue . . .
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 4, 2011
... unfortunately it is.People have to drink clean water. That's a biological necessity. Their water shouldn't make them sick and give them health problems. Furthermore, a company shouldn't be able to irreparably damage someone's use of their property and then get away without compensating them.Yet, at the same time, people need jobs. The country needs energy independence. Natural gas is an important part of that effort and the natural gas has got to come from somewhere. Contrary to what some might believe, it doesn't somehow appear magically in a tank at the local gas utility!This is another chapter in an endlessly fascinating age-old tale: the rights of the society vs. the rights of the individual. It's a good piece of journalism if a bit short on the technical details of fracking. Furthermore it might have benefited from a few diagrams and photos. The author does note the problem suffers from a lack of objective studies and it seems to be wilful ignorance on the part of the companies and government. People seem to be predisposed to come down on one side or the other but I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't want smelly junk in the water you have to drink, junk that would eventually poison you.Like I said, it shouldn't be a political issue but it is.When I finished the short book I was both angry and glad - glad that I wasn't in Meeks' situation, spending his life and GI loan on a mortgage on a place that's essentially worthless; drawing the scorn and ire of your neighbors (though he's vindicated by the end). Angry that lately it seems that this country has to turn everything into something that's politically divisive (I'm writing this a few days after a segment of Congress was threatening to default on the federal debt).Maybe we just have to develop a way to harvest these deep pockets of natural gas without contaminating groundwater? Problem solved. There's nothing much gained when a society buries their head in the sand and pretends that something is no problem when it is, when a solution to one problem makes a problem that we don't have much greater.