Fast Forward to New Mexico's Legislature where House Bill 297 would lessen regulations on overseeing old oil and gas wells and their danger to our water supplies. This little gem is being sponsored by Representative Thomas Garcia of Ocate, NM. (Who got him to do this?)This bill was vetted by the New Mexico Conservation Voters and found to present a danger. After many days of negotiations it was thought that a compromise was reached but when the substitute bill was presented it contained none of the compromises. This bill was certainly written by the oil and gas industry.
3 comments:
Interesting. The Republican goal of unfettered Capitalism. This is one front, the assault on our living standards in Wisconsin and Ohio is another.
If they succeed in getting us back in serfdom, at least we'd be alive to fight another day. But this drilling is scary. That NY Times article was all news to me, and I've done a lot of reading on fracking. It's twice as dangerous as was known before, in my view.
I have hauled those drilling fluids (it's mostly diesel fuel), and that waste water, which is pumped right back into the ground - they said into aquifers that weren't drinking water.
And now, I learn, it's radioactive, too. The NY Times said there are impervious rock layers between these aquifers. But I was picking up hay once in Alamoso, and talking to the farmer about their water. He said there's a shallow aquifer they pump from, but when that gets low you have to stop, and you can't draw from the deep one, because it pressurizes the shallow one.
In other words, impervious rock layer my rear end. What are they basing that on? How do they know? They don't. And even if it was like that in places, what happens when there's any kind of movement down there?
We're screwed, I think, either way. The whole state will soon have to use bottled water, and so long to chili peppers, and to any kind of agriculture.
I can see it now, brave firefighters rushing up to a fire to sprinkle bottled water on it.
Oh Please. Watch out, the capitalists are coming! Run for your lives!
Ever notice how people start to get nervous, defensive even, when you refer to the US economy as a Capitalist economy?
It is a Capitalist economy, of course, but is usually just called "the economy." The economy did this. The economy did that. When "the economy" slows down they talk about the efforts of the Federal Reserve and the government to affect "the economy", and they often lament the limits of the ability to affect "the economy."
The image given the economy is of some vast, naturally occurring state of things, like "the universe," and not of a human system, where economic decisions are made by those with Capital, in their self interests, and where the political ideology and the way of teaching and talking about economics exist basically to justify those decisions.
Calling it a Capitalist economy makes it sound different. It opens things up to questioning. No wonder it makes certain people nervous.
Post a Comment