We the People

While immersed in The Teaching Company‘s CD series, “Touqueville and the American Experiment” about democracy in the United States, I carefully read the recent series of three articles in the New York Times by Ian Urbina about the extraction of natural gas called “hydrofracking.” Within them, there was a highlighting of that process and procedure in Pennsylvania, a state where both my daughter and granddaughter live … and my expanding awarenesses struck close to the bone. I also listened carefully to Diane Rehm‘s NPR discussion on 3/1/11 about the first New York Times‘ article on this subject, concluding that to my mind the Health of the people in Pennsylvania goes far beyond limited conversations about free enterprise and Constitutional rights.

The following are my cullings from the three New York Times “hydrofracking” articles and what I heard on Diane Rehm‘s NPR program:

Setting the stage to start with. Some environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal or oil; lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs; and it‘s said to be a way to wean the U.S. from its dependency on other countries for oil.

Now to the processes of the relatively new drilling method called “hydrofracking.” Huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and potent chemicals, are injected at high pressures underground to break up rock formations and release the gas. I read that one well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene, and naturally occurring radioactive elements like radium from underground—which combine with the original elements in the hydrofracking process itself.

From thousands of internal documents—many of which were never reported—a picture emerges that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood. It‘s a complex story of wastewater from the hydrofracking process sometimes being hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it, and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water. Radioactivity is said to be at levels higher than previously known. Federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste to not test for radioactivity.

I read further that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in PA. And I add, this situation appears to be statewide.

Currently, there are said to be roughly 71,000 active gas wells in PA and thousands more are planned, while regulations have not kept pace with the natural gas industry‘s expansion of production and drilling. Since federal and state regulations are complex, I urge people to read the three articles themselves for more clarity. As I understand it, the natural gas industry overall has exemptions from federal environmental laws that regulate most other heavy industries, laws that were written to protect air and drinking water from radioactive and hazardous chemicals. (Adding another piece to the picture, in terms of what state and federal regulations there are and may be, with governments needing to trim budgets, it doesn‘t seem there will be many inspectors or regulators to do the job.)

In PA, some well operators are selling their wastes to communities that spread it on roads for de-icing in winter and dust suppression in summer. Then when ice melts or rain falls, the waste can run off roads and end up in the drinking supply.

Gas has seeped into underground drinking water supplies in at least five states, including PA; and air pollution caused by natural gas is said to be a growing threat, too.

Some dangers of this toxic wastewater are its potential to contaminate drinking water and/or enter the food chain through fish or farming. As I understand it, once radium enters a person‘s body by eating, drinking, or breathing, it can cause cancer and other health problems. Adding to that, what about the mix of toxic chemicals people are also being exposed to and possibly ingesting?

More of my background. In the early 1960s, while reading books by Henry David Thoreau and many other writers, I extensively studied “freedom” and its various applications, concluding at the time that the way freedom is used by some people gets into license (freedom to do as one wishes in excessive ways); and that an individual‘s American Constitutional rights need to be limited when their use harmfully affects another person. That way of thinking still makes sense to me.

So, even though cash-strapped property owners in today‘s reality have the lawful right to sell or lease their underground mineral resources, if their personal actions adversely affect the Health of others, have these landowners abused their Constitutional personal rights? I think they have. In addition to U.S. Constitutional laws, there seems to me to be Common Sense perspectives that go beyond more narrow definitions of “rights.”

And what about businesses and business people who are primarily focused upon the security of their jobs and company profits, in an era where some people are energizing, “Greed is good”? As I‘ve been digesting the recent New York Times articles, I think there has been and is a lot of narrow self-interests, including distortion of the facts, threats, and in some cases downright lying taking place.

In my blog posting of “Enough is Enough” on 11/6/10, I gave myself room to personally expand without being held back by ongoing round-robin cultural events. And now, even though I Am in A Completely Different Reality, I Am also a mother, grandmother—and U.S. citizen. Somehow an internal tipping point took place for me as a wholistic Being, when amidst the context of all the dynamic global events that are happening, I read the three New York Times hydrofracking articles. I was alarmed! … and decided to productively use my emotional energies to write this essay, post it as a blog, and let it all go.

In addition to Seeing my daughter and granddaughter as spirit-being humans with their own agendas, I passionately care about the well-being and health of my family, including my American family! And from my point of view, many spirit-being humans in today‘s matrixes, who I believe are also basically part of a dimension of divine Oneness, are energizing limited and selfish-centered patterns that are harmful to others. Yes, as I stated earlier, this current-day hydrofracking reality—called this century‘s Gold Rush by some—is close to the bone.

To my way of thinking, it‘s a matter of power, personal power. I think a major significance of Facebook and the uprisings in the Middle East, North Africa, and protests here in the United States, is an emerging declaration of I Am Important, and I Am demanding to have a voice in my Life!

But currently here in the U.S., large amounts of money are being used by individuals and groups for the purpose of capturing people‘s minds and votes. So how free are people really when they are being deluged with sophisticated advertising techniques and propaganda? Who can one trust in this increasingly busy world?

Of course we need sources for the energy we use here in the United States for our industrial system and Lives. Yes, we are dependent on Middle East and other countries for large portions of our needed energy supplies. But does this also mean that hydrofracking for natural gas here in the U.S. is the answer ? I don‘t think so. From my point of view that‘s a manipulative, short-sighted solution to some very complex global and national situations.

I believe We the People of the United States now need to have quite basic, intelligent, and comprehensive conversations, that include both Constitutional rights and our individual responsibilities for others too.

Even though I certainly respect each of us spirit-being humans in terms of freedom of choice and playing our parts as individual portions of Oneness, I‘m also obviously dismayed about how some are currently using their personal points of power. Instead, I think each of us has wondrous individual potentials we can now choose to use, when We the People individually and collectively say, “Enough is enough of playing a part and parts in our trouble-making spirit-being experiment”—and instead choose to become what we are individually and collectively capable of Being.

Here‘s to widespread Liberation! J.