Fracking Cage Match: Mayor Bloomberg vs. Sean Lennon
And if there is a fracking accident in upstate New York, guess what gets compromised? New York City’s water supply!
Interestingly, the threat to NYC’s water supply was once so concerning to Bloomberg, that “his opposition to “fracking” near the city’s drinking water reservoirs led to a state ban on drilling in the watershed.” Maybe because the currently proposed sites for fracking mainly effect areas like Binghamton, Bloomberg doesn’t care anymore. That’s right. It’s like Mike Bloomberg is George W. Bush and Binghamton is black people. Mike Bloomberg doesn’t care about Binghamton.
On the other side of the op-ed fracking debate is Sean Lennon, whose New York Times bio helpfully explains “is a musician.” Lennon wrote a strongly anti-fracking piece that was definitely designed to pull on the heartstrings, referencing his late-father-who-you-might-have-heard-of and various bucolic activities that are now common enough in Brooklyn, like drinking raw-milk. But Lennon also makes many good points that speak directly to Bloomberg, namely that the process of fracking “inevitably leaks toxic chemicals into the air and water. Industry studies show that 5 percent of wells can leak immediately, and 60 percent over 30 years. There is no such thing as pipes and concrete that won’t eventually break down. It releases a cocktail of chemicals from a menu of more than 600 toxic substances, climate-changing methane, radium and, of course, uranium.”
Lennon goes on to make many more salient points, including the fact that “America’s Natural Gas Alliance has spent $80 million in a publicity campaign that includes the services of Hill and Knowlton — the public relations firm that through most of the ’50s and ’60s told America that tobacco had no verifiable links to cancer.”
This is absurd. We live in a time of extreme environmental instability. This country is in the middle of a drought that is unprecedented since the days of the “dustbowl” in the 1930s. We have melting ice caps, rising sea levels, extremely hot weather and devastating storm patterns. And instead of looking for sources of actually clean energy, we are looking for a new way to put more poison into the air and water and into our bodies.
Mayor Bloomberg has spent the last umpteen years (yes, that is the actual amount of time that he has now been in office) telling New Yorkers what to put in their bodies. Smoking is bad for you! Soda is bad for you! Trans-fats are bad for you! Infant formula is bad for you!
But potentially poisoning our ground water is good for us? Because it’s “good for consumers’ pocketbooks”? I think I’m starting to understand. And as much as I want to make the mediocre pun right now and say “Frack you, Bloomberg,” I won’t.
Fuck you, Bloomberg.
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