With all this depressing talk of doom and gloom in my previous posts, here’s something a bit more inspirational for you. Why do we care what happens to our land? What’s so important about Pennsylvania? Is it really that necessary to preserve all of our land?
Yes. It really is that important. Deforestation has affected Pennsylvania for hundreds of years now. We’ve cut down our forests for different reasons throughout our history, leaving only a few precious acres of virgin forest that still exists. Many species of songbirds, such as the massive Pileated Woodpecker and Wood Thrush, require deep dark forests with little disturbance (such as that created by fracking when making wellpads and roads). And do we really want places like this to be cut down or polluted?
This is 6 mile run, just a few miles to the north of here and in the middle of fracking territory. In fact, I found this area while filming for my advocacy project on fracking. It’s a beautiful stream filled with trout and other small fish. As I stood next to this stream attempting to balance my camera on a stump to take this picture, I could hear a ruffed grouse (our state bird) thumping its wings against a log somewhere. A belted kingfisher flew by at one point, eyeing the minnows that live in the pools. Only a hundred yards downstream, however, is a very different environment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_moshannon.jpg
The Red Moshannon is dead. The slight orange tinge is made from slimy iron compounds that have precipitated out of its polluted waters. Past coal and iron mining along its banks continue to leak acidic sludge into the river, killing anything that would otherwise live in it. As I kayaked down this river several weeks ago before the Red Moshannon Downriver Race, I noticed a dead hellgrammite float by. While I was thrilled to see some sort of creature alive in the stream, a few minutes later I realized that it had probably washed out of a side stream such as Six Mile Run and died when it hit the acidic Red Mo.
Okay, so he’s not the cutest creature, but he’s important to our streams!
http://www.all-creatures.org/works/images/hellgrammite.jpg
Something of this magnitude is unlikely to come from fracking. What is more likely is methane migration, small-scale spills, the occasional explosion, minor earthquakes, and thedestruction of our state-owned roads by entities that pay very minimal taxes. It’s a death from a thousand cuts.
In short, we need to protect our state, not exploit it even more. We owe it to nature and our citizens to give our land a break for once. Hopefully our state makes the right decision and halts fracking before it’s too late. Barring that unlikely logical move from our state government, it’s up to us as citizens to stop the wholesale destruction of the land we need and love. We need to get the word out about how terrible fracking can be and not contribute to the problem ourselves by leasing our land to gas companies. For once, let’s make the right decision for our state.
Don’t let our beautiful state be destroyed.
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These photos are inspirational and startling, Tim. They make a nice capstone for your CI blog and they do their own kind of advocacy work, encouraging readers to act on the information you’ve given us all semester long. You’ve done an excellent job of explaining the problem and helping us understand how serious it is. The next step for all of us is to consider what to do about it. And with people like you, Janine, Sean, and Melissa out there thinking and writing about these topics, I’m confident we’ll figure something out!
Manas: The sad truth at the moment is that conservation doesn’t pay. We don’t have much in the way of enforcement for environmental laws, or at least not enough that companies find it worthwhile to be eco-friendly. People don’t care enough about the environment to pressure companies into environmentalism, either. Until we pass strict enough laws that punish polluters and unsustainable practices, I believe that we’ll continue to have environmental degradation. And thanks for the vote of confidence!
Lindsay: I definitely agree. We are a short-sighted society. We’re rapidly running out of resources but not doing anything about it. We have the technology to switch to sustainable sources of energy, yet don’t do it. Money gets in the way. And thanks for following my blog! It’s nice to see that people care about the environment.
I think that the problem with our society is that we can’t consider the future. We are selfish beings (as a whole, not me or you) who are only concerned with our life and wellbeing. But we have to consider the future and our grandchildren and their children. They need a place to live also and if we continue to ruin our natural resources they will not be able to live comfortably. I really appreciate your interest in the environment and sustainability. I’ve enjoyed reading your blogs because they have taught me a lot more than you might think. Maybe you could share them with others on an online blog who are against fracking or those who are not so informed on the issue.
Tim, I completely agree with the points you’ve made here. I was thinking about this a couple days ago when I was walking through campus, how everything here used to once be wild and thick forests. A big part of me yearns for that sort of deep, lush tree cover that Pennsylvania is known for (it’s a good thing I’m going camping this weekend!). Additionally, one of my friends in Schreyer went camping last weekend and ended up in a part of the woods where fracking was occurring, and basically the result of that was that all the water sources that the camping crew tried to drink from were polluted, which made me really sad to hear about. There are devastating and upsetting things that we have done to our planet in the name of money and power–but sometimes, I wonder if we can change things. Do you think it’s possible, with capitalism, to prioritize the environment over the economy? Because we haven’t been able to for many years. Anyway, I appreciate your care and concern for the planet as well as your constant desire to inform people about those things. I can certainly see you having a career as a professor or a public scientist who educates people on important environmental and astronomical events. Either way, good luck.
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