As consumers Americans have long been inured to the suffering of others when it comes to getting a good deal. Walmart shoppers are oblivious to the fact that foreign workers toil in horrific conditions for pennies a day to enable the lowest prices to the buyer and the highest profits to the shareholder. If Americans are aware that more than a 1,000 garment workers died in Bangladesh when a factory manufacturing clothes for Walmart and more upscale clothing retailers collapsed, they take no responsibility and continue to buy from the same companies. As our corporate economy has been molded, shareholders thrive while the average American subsists all off the suffering of others.
Now we are being pitched that siting an LNG export terminal will somehow be the economic salvation of Coos County and bring, jobs, improve the local tax base and fund our schools. There is no empirical evidence to suggest any of this will come true. Just check out the key economic indicators of similar facilities around the globe and here in the US at Sabine Pass LNG and Port Arthur, Texas just across the river. However, even if Jordan Cove LNG did allow its profits to trickle down to the local economy it would be entirely dependent upon the suffering of farmers and ranchers subjected to hydro-fracking in states like Wyoming. Jobs and prosperity in Coos County would require the suffering of residents in communities impacted by fracking and be dependent upon those citizens losing the battle to stop natural gas extraction from ruining their water supply.
Yesterday, anti-fracking protests erupted all over England and Americans too are getting wise to the consequences of polluted water supplies and dead cattle and polluted crops and sinkholes associated with irresponsible resource exploitation. According to The World, Jordan Cove LNG spokesman, Michael Hinrichs says the environmental impact of siting an LNG terminal on the North Spit and laying the accompanying 224 mile 36″ pipeline will be minimal because “the terminal will not conduct hydro-fracking.” Hinrichs as much as admits that the impact will be significant in the area where the natural gas is extracted and that their suffering is an acceptable price for our prosperity.
Bangladesh may be far away and out of mind but now we are talking about American homes and livelihoods being sacrificed to benefit Coos County, Oregon. Now we are talking about our neighbors, friends and families. When do the BS Oregon crowd start to take responsibility for contributing to high cancer rates, birth defects, and debilitating health effects associated with contaminated groundwater? When anti-fracking protests succeed in legally stopping the flow of natural gas to the Jordan Cove terminal will these same “SOB’s” finally develop an imagination that can see beyond fossil fuels?
Some people used to think that if the BS people were made aware of all the negatives, they would wise up and change course. Ha Ha, they don’t care if it hurts someone else, as long as some of that money gets into some of their pockets and they own the allegiance of our elected officials, The same ones that want your vote, then want you to shut up and be quite.
http://americablog.com/2013/08/texas-run-out-of-water-fracking.html
Across the south-west, residents of small communities like Barnhart [Texas] are confronting the reality that something as basic as running water, as unthinking as turning on a tap, can no longer be taken for granted. Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry’s outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers. And climate change is making things worse.
In Texas alone, about 30 communities could run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Nearly 15 million people are living under some form of water rationing, barred from freely sprinkling their lawns or refilling their swimming pools. In Barnhart’s case, the well appears to have run dry because the water was being extracted for shale gas fracking.