CONNECT THE DOTS

There are significant health and environmental impacts when examining the full life-cycle of shale gas.

• Air pollution comes from the exhaust of generators and compressors (that run 24/7) at shale well sites, from heavy-duty truck traffic and from the venting of wastewater storage tanks.
• Shale development results in more emissions of greenhouse gases, smog-inducing compounds and other hazardous air pollutants than conventional oil and gas development.
• Increased use of shale gas instead of coal may actually accelerate climate change in the coming decades, not reduce climate change impacts.
• Air pollutants found near fracking sites include methanol, formaldehyde, carbon disulfide, and VOCs (including nitrogen oxides, benzene and toluene) are also discharged during fracking
• Emissions from well sites form ground-level ozone combine with particulate matter to form smog
• In Dish, Texas air samples contained high levels of neurotoxins and carcinogens
• In Wyoming, drilling and fracking have caused ground-level ozone pollution to exceed amounts recorded in Los Angeles.

Shale gas is not an alternative fuel that can serve as a bridge to a future powered by clean, renewable energy resources, but a path to more environmental degradation.

References:


Food and Water Watch. (2012, March). Fracking:  The new global water crisis.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2011, June). The future of natural gas: An
interdisciplinary MIT study.

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Manchester. ( 2011, January). Shale gas: a provisional assessment of climate change and environmental impacts.

Brown, Stephen P.A. et al. (2009, December). Natural gas: a bridge to a low-carbon future? 



United States House of Representatives:  Committee on Energy and
Commerce. [Minority Staff Report]. (2011, April). Chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing.
April 2011

May Day-OWS

Think about what people fought for a little over a century ago then ask yourself:  Are the "job creators" really creating jobs with their ever-growing tax breaks/loopholes?  Or is this mantra just a way to fool the 99% into supporting their agenda?  What regulations can we do without; cleaner air, unpolluted water, or protection from unsafe work places?  Higher taxes for us so the gap between rich and poor can grow even wider?  Does "Trickle Down Economics" really trickle down to the 99% or is it reverting our society to a Middle Age feudal system where the wealthy few have all the say and the rest of us do their bidding?  

Definitely a re-post--not my own words since I didn't take time to research and find info about the original May Day in the US....

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday...

Read the rest here.

~Eric Chase - 1993.