The Clay Center, West Virginia’s premiere arts and science museum for kids, recently launched a new exhibit focused on the science and wonders of fracking, thanks to hefty donations by the oil and gas industry.
The exhibit, called "Power Your Future," is housed inside a natural gas-powered truck, which enables it to be driven to local elementary and middle schools.
From the article:
"Jackson went on to laud fracking, saying, “Natural gas is and will be a central issue for our State and our counties for decades” and that “we can expect the gas industry to be around for a long time.”
Tough to say if the above quote is more suggestive of hubris or a total ecological disconnect. As if there ARE many decades left for human survival (that is, above ground and not in some high-tech underground bunker) if the Frackers and other fossil fuel energy behemoths have their way.
Oh, and aiming at the kids suggests an interesting PR fantasy since by the time they come of age, the already escalated Earth Changes will make far more lands prey to volcanoes, earthquakes, fires, droughts, and mega-storms… but all the Frackers can see is the paper money generated from this particular way of raping the Great Earth Mother.
This is so frigging shameful. Where do these polluting assholes demonstrate one iota of means to restrict methane emissions, and measure their methane escapes.
Hitler and Goebbels would be green with envy if they could see how much more successful global capital’s propaganda machine is compared to Nazi propaganda.
Nothing replaces first hand accounts of events.
A colleague I have gotten close to at the place of my work (that shall not be named) described the sequence at his brother’s town in Idaho.
In the small community, There is a continuous train of diesel trucks that perform the task of depositing effluents in pits dug at higher elevations. The purpose of these pits is to evaporate the poisonous gasses into the atmosphere. When the pits can;t evaporate the poisons fast enough, more are created.
In the winter, the air settles into the valley of the village, where the rate of lung diseases (emphysema for the elderly, asthma for the young) has skyrocketed. Stillborns are becoming common.
And the bestest part of all is the water fountain where kids can drink the pure water that flows from all fracking operations!
If there is a hell, these greedy jerks certainly have a ticket.
This truck, my neighborhood, and a big party to disable this putrid rig. Freak’in, Fruck’in, frackers, mostly crackers or tweakers since their brains don’t run right.
Don’t mean to quibble but those ‘greedy jerks’ seem to own the ‘place’, who needs tickets?
Yes, I read an article like this… the midwife that brought this up in her town, has had her life threatened… and her ranch attacked…
West Virginia has a long history of turning tricks for the coal industry. Over a century. Now coal is on the decline, and West Virginia’s politicians are eagerly signing up with the new john. Pathetically, so are most newspaper editors and semi-private outfits like the Clay Center. But this is more widespread than WV–look at the Smithsonian, with its corporate-funded exhibits. As a West Virginian, I am disgusted by this story. But the phenomenon it points at, of governmental divestment inviting corporate sponsorship which then comes with corporate manipulation–that is enormous, occurring all over this country and probably much of the world, and the result is the death of our civilization. No, I’m not exaggerating: it’s corporate ownership of media and the resultant skewing of what amounts to the national conversation, the nervous system of our body politic, that has put us in a position where public opinion is irrelevant and what matters is whatever will enhance corporate bottom lines. Since much of this is incompatible with the survival of Earth’s ecosystems–fracking being a fine example, including both local harms and global warming–we’re going down hard this time. Nothing is being done about the greatest crisis, probably, that humanity has ever faced, climate change (which is only one of a complex of environmental crises bearing down on us). There is even more denial around resource depletion and overpopulation. If some humans survive this century, I predict they will spend thousands of years trying to figure out how their ancestors got so insane. They’ll probably speculate about heavy metals in the air or water–surely they will not be able to conceive of such factors as an entire generation walking around looking at tiny screens in their hands, dismissing the real world as of minor importance compared to their various fantasy worlds.
