So here's the thought that's keeping me awake right now:
With all the new and proposed frac sand mines and processing plants planned in northwest Wisconsin, will the next step be a new nuclear power plant to feed this insatiable beast? This industry sucks a lot of energy to get oil out of the ground - will this be our next fight?
Nothing is planned, and I'll do whatever is in front of me when it's there, but this is an important piece of the continuing, desperate End of Empire.
Showing posts with label Frac sand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frac sand. Show all posts
2011/07/07
Rare Earth Minerals, Murder by Technology
The continuing tidal wave of ripping stuff out of the earth keeps on rolling. This time, under the Pacific Ocean. Rare earth minerals, tons of them, have been "discovered" by Japanese "explorers".
"Rare earth metals have emerged as one of the most sought after resources in [the] commodities boom. Minerals present in the mud include gadolinium, lutetium, terbium and dysprosium." Some of these are used in the manufacture of those eco-friendly hybrid cars. Here is a handy image with notes about which minerals are used in the Prius, created by Lee Allison, state geologist and Director of the Arizona Geological Survey. Gadolinium is used in x-ray systems, CDs, and nuclear medicine.
The "commodities boom." Does that include frac sand? The excitement and anticipation of profits by scooping tons of mud off the ocean floor makes me sick. To what lengths will we continue our pillaging of the very body that bears us and makes us human? We are all complicit, here in the privileged West. I am sick to death of new solutions and technologies that are really assassination attempts. While we consume the death of the oceans and the forests and the ecological systems that continue to get in the way of our lifestyles, we lose more and more of our humanity.
It all seems part of the end of Empire and it's a long way down yet.
2011/06/30
1000 Acres
According to a reliable source, there are plans for 140 frac sand mines in northwest Wisconsin right now, with some as large as 1000 acres.
1,000 acres.
These are plans to strip the land of its hills full of sand, add chemicals and water, and leave the wreckage of our water and air to all of us who have to live here, with untold and unchecked profit for a few. I am astonished and very, very pissed. A banker wrote in an open letter recently: "Eventually the sand mine will return to farmland, and, 50 years from now, no one will remember that there had once been a hill where the flat, fertile farm now lies." It's all nostalgia to him; progress is the real value, and all of us emotional environmentalists are out to harm the community with our misplaced and unpatriotic outrage.
So what do we care about those unprofitable hills anyway? We're just a bunch of emotional wackos who don't want to buck up and provide the country with this valuable and necessary resource.
Unless of course, we are just people who have educated ourselves about frac sand, mining, and processing plants and the permanent divisions they create in community and safety, and sincerely want to protect our children and all our descendants from this latest end-of-empire devastation. Not any of us stand to make any money from frac sand and all it entails, and none of us think any profit should be made off of the suffering of others.
Duh.
This is a good time to remind you check the Hay River Frac Watch for updates.
1,000 acres.
These are plans to strip the land of its hills full of sand, add chemicals and water, and leave the wreckage of our water and air to all of us who have to live here, with untold and unchecked profit for a few. I am astonished and very, very pissed. A banker wrote in an open letter recently: "Eventually the sand mine will return to farmland, and, 50 years from now, no one will remember that there had once been a hill where the flat, fertile farm now lies." It's all nostalgia to him; progress is the real value, and all of us emotional environmentalists are out to harm the community with our misplaced and unpatriotic outrage.
So what do we care about those unprofitable hills anyway? We're just a bunch of emotional wackos who don't want to buck up and provide the country with this valuable and necessary resource.
Unless of course, we are just people who have educated ourselves about frac sand, mining, and processing plants and the permanent divisions they create in community and safety, and sincerely want to protect our children and all our descendants from this latest end-of-empire devastation. Not any of us stand to make any money from frac sand and all it entails, and none of us think any profit should be made off of the suffering of others.
Duh.
This is a good time to remind you check the Hay River Frac Watch for updates.
2011/06/23
The Cost of Information
Tonight the owner of the sale and lease of land being negotiated with the mining corporation will be hosting an informational meeting to discuss local ramifications and who knows what else. Isn't it interesting that the owner - not the mining company - is being so helpful to the corporation? What a sweet gesture of compliance and sharing she has shown to the Company. What a helper! What a community member!
I may be pissed, but it's true; the mining companies don't need to do PR when the locals will take - and generate - all the heat for them.
In 5 years, when the landowner has been screwed by they mining company (a very common thing, evidently), I wonder what kind of regrets won't be discussed in an informational meeting. When the wells dry up, and the air is filled with carcinogenic particulate that gives my children and the children attending school in town asthma and increased risk for lung cancer, what kind of info meeting will she be hosting? When the trucks have wrecked the county roads and cracked the foundations of old farmhouses and killed dogs and cats and many other mammals haplessly crossing roads that used to be deserted, what kind of info meeting will we attend then? When the relatively toxic farming practices used to monocrop GM corn and soy are exchanged for hundreds of known carcinogens leaching into the groundwater after the sand processing plant is finished, and we are all drinking unknown and untested chemicals in our water, what kind of info meeting will be hosted then? And when all the farming families and folks I know don't move because we can't afford to, and we have to work outside in a toxic stew to grow our food, what kind of info meeting will I be attending?
The cost of civilization and colonization is not information. It is destruction and risk and suffering. Only human-scale community will endure because only we can ask the questions that remind everyone else of our shared humanity and the connections to our individual webs of life and living. I'm rooting for life, but in the mean time I'm fighting as best I can against destruction.
I may be pissed, but it's true; the mining companies don't need to do PR when the locals will take - and generate - all the heat for them.
In 5 years, when the landowner has been screwed by they mining company (a very common thing, evidently), I wonder what kind of regrets won't be discussed in an informational meeting. When the wells dry up, and the air is filled with carcinogenic particulate that gives my children and the children attending school in town asthma and increased risk for lung cancer, what kind of info meeting will she be hosting? When the trucks have wrecked the county roads and cracked the foundations of old farmhouses and killed dogs and cats and many other mammals haplessly crossing roads that used to be deserted, what kind of info meeting will we attend then? When the relatively toxic farming practices used to monocrop GM corn and soy are exchanged for hundreds of known carcinogens leaching into the groundwater after the sand processing plant is finished, and we are all drinking unknown and untested chemicals in our water, what kind of info meeting will be hosted then? And when all the farming families and folks I know don't move because we can't afford to, and we have to work outside in a toxic stew to grow our food, what kind of info meeting will I be attending?
The cost of civilization and colonization is not information. It is destruction and risk and suffering. Only human-scale community will endure because only we can ask the questions that remind everyone else of our shared humanity and the connections to our individual webs of life and living. I'm rooting for life, but in the mean time I'm fighting as best I can against destruction.
2011/05/13
Frac Sand Mining
There is a raging hot issue in my neck of the woods that is pissing me off and making me work hard to figure out what I can do to stop it: a frac sand mine is proposed a couple of miles from my house in western Wisconsin. I will post more about this in the future, but it's hard to find time with it being Spring and planting season and cooking our meals and cleaning up our meals and housework and parenting duties and all that. And I don't even farm! I have a relative life of luxury.
I will share here many of the questions and ideas that come to me that I may not have other opportunities to express, which will hopefully help me organize myself and kick some corporate ass. And as you might expect, it won't always be pretty, because I refuse to accept our community being treated as a place that most of the world considers a valuable resource for the rest of the population, so the US can continue our swift plummet into the deep abyss of the end of Empire - and all that entails.
I will share here many of the questions and ideas that come to me that I may not have other opportunities to express, which will hopefully help me organize myself and kick some corporate ass. And as you might expect, it won't always be pretty, because I refuse to accept our community being treated as a place that most of the world considers a valuable resource for the rest of the population, so the US can continue our swift plummet into the deep abyss of the end of Empire - and all that entails.
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