The Big Fracking Bubble: The Scam Behind the Gas Boom

[grntuscarora]

By Jeff Goodell
March 1, 2012 8:00 AM ET


"Aubrey McClendon, America's second-largest producer of natural gas, has never been afraid of a fight. He has become a billionaire by directing his company, Chesapeake Energy, to blast apart gas-soaked rocks a mile underground and pump the fuel to the surface. "We're the biggest frackers in the world," he declares proudly over a $400 bottle of French Bordeaux at a restaurant he co-owns in his hometown of Oklahoma City. "We frack all the time. What's the big deal?"

McClendon dominates America's supply of natural gas the same way the Tea Party-financing Koch brothers control the nation's pipelines and refineries. Like them, McClendon is an influential right-wing power broker – he helped fund the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry in 2004, donated $250,000 to the presidential campaign of Rick Perry, and contributed more than $500,000 to stop gay marriage. But unlike his fellow energy czars, McClendon knows how to tone down his politics and present a friendlier, less ideological face to the public. He secretly gave $26 million to the Sierra Club to fight Big Coal, and built a Google-like campus for Chesapeake's 4,600 employees in Oklahoma City, complete with a 63,000-square-foot day care center, a luxurious gym and four cafes manned by cook-to-order chefs. He even voted for Barack Obama because he thought the country needed "an inspirational figure."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-big-fracking-bubble-the-scam-behind-the-gas-boom-20120301#ixzz1ntFAyN2H

[Newest Reality]

1. The big deal could be

that we are also our environment and, while you can put that off and run and hide, it comes down to that, eventually.

I would advise McClendon to do an experiment. He should simply avoid using the bathrooms in his home and, instead, do his business in any room where he feels the inclination to do it.

After a while, the real problem will become unavoidably obvious even to someone who is hopelessly trapped in their own abstractions and comfortably secluded in absurd notions about money, power and success.

Crapping on your world is a way of crapping on yourself and, collectively, it is reasonable to surmise that, while there may be still be a practical way to live within the luxury of avoiding the implicit results while sequestered in mansions of denial on acres of influence, it can be a sure path to misery and destruction.

In this case, self-respect is mirrored in what is going on and the "other" is the people and environment involved in the projection of distorted, grandiose views. Whom, amongst us was issued a "this is not me, too" card from nature to play, sincerely and without concern?

[JPZenger]

2. The Lorax Meets the Fracker in Chief (PA. Governor tom Corbett)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11278479