Hydraulic Fracturing, or, “fracking”, the controversial process of natural gas extraction in which water, sand and chemicals are injected into the ground in order to break up, or “fracture” rock formations that are trapping the gas, is a burning (no pun intended) topic in our region. Fracking, which is all the rage here in Pennsylvania and in neighboring Ohio, West Virginia, and New York, while promising a virtually unlimited supply of much-needed natural gas, can cause significant groundwater contamination, produces massive amounts of toxic wastewater, and can quite possibly be responsible for hundreds of small earthquakes from Oklahoma to Ohio. Gas companies and anti-fracking activists have been at one another’s throats for a couple of years now over the issue of energy independence versus environmental catastrophe.
Now, it seems, the frackers have acquired a new enemy, and from a surprising source. Cuban leader Fidel Castro, tenacious survivor of 10 U.S. presidents (Obama is his 11th), has been spending his retirement writing occasional columns for Cuban state media. Much like us here at OMT, Castro muses about pretty much whatever is on his mind, and some of his observations are not what one might expect from the former revolutionary firebrand. “Numerous dangers threaten us,” Fidel wrote in his column recently, “but two of them – nuclear war and climate change – are decisive and both are ever further from approaching a solution.” Say what you will about Fidel, one of the reasons he’s probably lasted so long is because, unlike American politicians, he rarely engages in self-delusion, something from which our buddy Newt could take a lesson or two.
From there, Fidel launches into an environmental discussion which places a primary focus on fracking. He admitted that he’d only recently heard about the process, and when he turned to some of his friends both inside and outside of Cuba for more information about the process, “none of them had heard a word about it.” Not being able to get answers is not something that Fidel is exactly used to. But having the luxury of time in his retirement, he has apparently done some digging on his own.
In the end, Castro came down squarely on the side of the anti-fracking people, quoting reports that highlighted the negative impact that fracking has on the environment, and that gas produced from this method generates more greenhouse gases than that extracted from conventional wells. “It is sufficient to point out that among the numerous chemical substances injected with the water to extract this gas is found benzene and toluene, which are substances terribly carcinogenic,” Castro writes. He goes on to say that what we have learned about the shale gas process is something that “no political cadre or sensible person could ignore.”
Castro was so concerned about this issue and so intent on getting this column written that he had “let the festive days of the old and new year pass by” so that he could work on writing his column.
And skipping New Year’s celebrations in Cuba is no small thing. For those of you who don’t remember your Godfather Part II, we remind you that it was on New Year’s eve 1958/59 that Fulgencio Battista fled Havanna as Fidel Castro’s troops marched into the city. Michael Corleone barely got out, and Fredo disappeared into the crowd. So for Fidel to skip New Year’s celebrations in Cuba isn’t like one of us deciding to go to bed early and skip the dropping of the ball. New Year’s eve is Cuba’s Fourth of July, and Castro is Cuba’s equivalent to Thomas Jefferson as far as that goes.
Would an elderly Jefferson have skipped Fourth of July celebrations to write about the environmental threat of hydraulic fracturing? Here at OMT, we think that would be an interesting topic for a “what if” parody piece. But maybe on some other day.
As a lover of nature and the environment, we’re not big fans of fracking. We’ve seen first hand some of the obvious damage the process can cause on our bike rides through the Pennsylvania countryside. And we also worry about a process that shatters bedrock by pumping it with water and chemicals which remain behind long after the gas is gone. That the worst damage from this process is completely out of sight — that is until people turn on their taps and toxic, flammable water comes out into their sink — is the most insidious part of it. It’s difficult to get people to appreciate a danger that you cannot see.
There is a lot of money floating around among the frackers, which they are using not just for the extraction process, but to line the pockets of local politicians and others who are making it easier for them to entrench themselves in communities where they drill. Communities that they routinely bully into giving them their own way. If you ask us, we should be spending money on developing non-fossil, non-polluting, renewable sources of energy, instead of desperately going after the last, dwindling reserves of dirty fossil fuel, and irrevocably damaging the environment in the process.
On this, we agree with Fidel Castro. This is where our readers generally expect us to say something like our stock line, “even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then”. But Fidel Castro is no blind pig. Would a blind pig have outlasted Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II?
And live to publish his musings about the environment?
When the time finally comes for Fidel Castro to merge with the infinite, he will likely go down as the most worthy adversary that the United States faced in the 20th century. Hanging on in spite of our very best efforts to unseat him, Castro repeatedly thumbed his nose at us, and didn’t budge an inch. Sticking to his guns, and damn the torpedoes.
He’d have made a great American if only he’d been on our side.
