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His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 1/13: Lower Than the Angels, BBC 1973
I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me. The Departed 2006 starring Jack Nicholson & Leonardo DiCaprio & Matt Damon & Ray Winstone & Martin Sheen & Mark Wahlberg & Vera Farmiga & Alec Baldwin & Anthony Anderson et al, director Martin Scorsese
Considerable strides have been made in creating a system of international environmental governance to achieve global sustainable development through the management of cross-border environmental disputes and protection of the global commons. The Commission on Global Governance: Our Global Neighbourhood p208
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. Ansel Adams
The environment is probably the major victim next to human beings of the debt crisis, if only because countries are obliged to cash in their resources. They must cut down their forests. They must dig up their minerals and ruin their land, producing cash crops to earn enough currency to keep on paying the debt. There is an almost perfect correlation between the top debtors and the top deforesters. There is a striking correlation. Dr Susan George, author The Debt Boomerang
I’m not a pessimist. I’ve always had a great deal of faith in people that we wouldn’t succumb to frenzy or rage or greed. That we’d figure out a solution without destroying the things that we love. Josh Fox, Gasland ***** 2010
‘Hydraulic fracturing has been characterised as environmentally risky and inadequately regulated. Press reports and websites alleging that six states have documented over 1,000 incidents of ground water contamination resulting from the practice of hydraulic fracturing – such reports are not accurate.’ ibid. evidence to sub-committee on Energy & Minerals
In 1972 Richard Nixon signed the Clean Water Act into law. ibid.
One day I got a letter in the mail; it was from a natural gas company. The letter told me my land was on top of a formation called the Marcellus Shale which stretched across Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. And that the Marcellus Shale was the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. I could lease my land to this company and I would receive a signing bonus of $4,750 an acre. Having 19.5 acres that was nearly $100,000 there in my hand. ibid.
The 2005 Energy Bill pushed through Congress by Dick Cheney exempts the oil and natural gas industries from the Safe Drinking Water Act. They were also exempt from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund Law and about a dozen other environmental and democratic legislations. ibid.
The method of gas drilling they used is called hydraulic fracturing ... Like a mini-earthquake ... A mix of over 596 chemicals. ibid.
Shortly after their well was drilled their water started bubbling and fizzing – it turned out to be natural gas. ibid.
I’d heard reports of oil and gas waste-water known as produced water, the water that comes back up out of the ground that’s contaminated with the fracking fluids being dumped illegally on to fields and into streams, and I’d heard of workers who had chemical burns on their hands and faces. ibid.
I was starting to compile a list of things that could happen in Dimmock: water trouble, health problems, hazardous explosive conditions inside the house, destruction of land ... A total loss of normal life. ibid.
There was no-one for them to complain to. ibid.
[lights drinking water from tap] Jesus Christ! ibid.
The Whistleblower: Weston Wilson – In 2004 the EPA was investigating water contamination incidents due to hydraulic fracturing across the country, but a panel rejected the Inquiry stating that although hazardous materials were being injected underground the EPA did not need to investigate. Weston Wilson, a twenty-year veteran of the EPA, wrote a letter to Congress objecting. ibid.
Energy Police Act of 2005: The Halliburton Loophole to the Safe Water Act. ibid.
Glycol Ethers eat the membrane inside the filters. ibid.
Of all the [chemical] water that goes down only about half of it comes back up. ibid.
Evaporation Sprayers ... In flow-back pits the water is sprayed into the air ... They create ozone hazardous air pollutants and they fall down in the form of chemical or acid rains on the grasslands. ibid.
Theo [Dr Colborn] has identified 596 different chemicals in 900 chemical products. ibid.
I tried to keep anger and sorrow at bay. ibid.
I wanted to get out of Gasland as fast as I could. But there was nowhere to go ... Everywhere I went it was the same story. ibid.
I’d seen these condensation tanks everywhere all across the United States. ibid.
Industry has leased hundreds of thousands of acres within the New York City watershed and the Delaware basin. ibid.
There were hours and hours of hearings at city hall. But no-one from the State’s department of environmental conservation came to the city’s hearings. ibid.
It’s possible the Gasland might stretch a little bit further from my backyard into yours. ibid.
The problem is that everywhere the gas drilling industry goes, a trail of water contamination, air pollution, health concerns and betrayal of basic American civic and community values follows. Josh Fox
Hydraulic fracturing requires massive amounts of water. Disposing of the toxic wastewater, as well as accidental spills, can contaminate drinking water and harm human health. David Suzuki
Too often, governments are quick to use excessive force and even pervert the course of justice to keep oil and gas flowing, forests logged, wild rivers dammed and minerals extracted. As the Global Witness study reveals, citizens are often killed, too – especially if they’re poor and indigenous. David Suzuki
In the US where fracking is well established there’s growing alarm amid stories of gas-contaminated drinking water. Tonight: The Truth About Fracking, ITV 2013
A rush for energy in America – for a type of gas that appears cheap and plentiful. One with just one way of getting it out of the ground – hydraulic frackturing, or fracking. Horizon: Fracking – The New Energy Rush, BBC 2013
For some the great hope of the future – shale gas. It doesn’t come out easily. ibid.
You need to pump water under very high pressure deep underground – that fractures the bedrock. ibid.
The pipes, the lorries, the rigs, blights rural communities. ibid.
Fracking is starting to change the politics and economics of this nation. ibid.
Burning carbon-based substances like oil, gas, and especially coal, produces billions of tons of extra carbon dioxide each year. Methane gas from cows and pigs and other animals on our large farms ends up in the atmosphere as well, trapping more of the sun’s energy as heat. Bill Nye
There are two problems for our species’ survival – nuclear war and environmental catastrophe – and we’re hurtling towards them. Knowingly. Noam Chomsky
We were trashing our environment and it seemed no-one cared. Professor Tim Flannery, chairman Copenhagen Climate Council
Clinical ecology – a new branch of medicine aimed at helping people made sick by a failure to adapt to facets of our modern, polluted environment. Adverse reactions to processed foods and their chemical contaminants, and to indoor and outdoor air pollution with petrochemicals, are becoming more and more widespread and so far these reactions are being misdiagnosed by mainstream medical practitioners and so are not treated effectively. Richard Mackarness
In a recent speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, I proposed a world-wide program to protect land and water, forests and wildlife, to combat exhaustion and erosion, to stop the contamination of water and air by industrial as well as nuclear pollution, and to provide for the steady renewal and expansion of the natural bases of life. John F Kennedy
The environment is being used for a power struggle. The environment is being used for socialised government. The environment is being used for a one world government. Don Young, chairman House Resources Committee