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Europe Has Every Right to Be Emotional About Fracking
As if he were employing the pop psychology Mars-versus-Venus framework on the issue, Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser called for a less “emotional” response to fracking in Europe. He stated that the European discussion on shale gas exploration is not factual but fuelled by emotions. So, can we thus infer that Mars — embodied by oil and gas corporations — must be focused on profits and is ready to drill? No matter who gets hurt in the process?
European opponents of fracking, including Food & Water Europe, are somewhat surprised by such a facile characterization as they have always based their case against fracking on facts— such as the water intensity of fracking operations. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 70 to 140 billion gallons of water are pumped into 35 thousand of fracking wells annually. What the gas industry is not admitting is that hydraulic fracturing uses water to an extent that ought to strike fear in countries that are counting on a shale gas boom, particularly as water becomes an increasingly scarce resource. Well contamination is also an issue to be considered. In January 2012, a Calgary-based company injected fluids at such a high pressure into a 1,800-metre-deep oil formation that they travelled more than 1.4 kilometres underground and ruptured an oil well near Innisfail, Alberta. There are also the documented facts of roads being destroyed through heavy machinery use and real estate prices dropping to ridiculous levels.
These are facts but there are also resulting emotions about compromising the quality of soil, air and water. Europeans may feel protective of their hills, meadows and valleys—and they are aware of the effects that fracking has had on the Pennsylvania landscape. They have the right to be emotional. They live on a continent that is rather small, densely populated and rich in areas of great environmental, cultural, and touristic value.
Mr. Voser, whose annual compensation for Royal Dutch Shell PLC amounted to over 5 million euros in 2010 is not paid to have such emotions. For Europeans of modest means, stewardship of the land still has an emotional component. Being emotional about fracking is not a character flaw. It is a virtue.
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Show AllThe Shell Corporation, though perhaps considered a person in the U.S., probably actually an illegal alien, has no emotions and faces no risk of illness or death from water pollution, air pollution, or poisoned food. Corporations belittle emotions because these "people" have none. They view emotions as noise or static that obscures the maximization of quarterly short-term profits.
Fractivists, actually real people, in exercising both the right and left sides of their brains, are emotional about fracking because of what we have learned from the science and the short history of accumulated suffering.
Too many politicians and major media heads have been seduced by the corporate dollar to adopt the corporate mode of thought, and belittle "emotional" responses to threats to the water, air, and land upon which we depend. These politicians and media moguls have reduced their realities to their reelection and short-term profits. Like the fossil fuel corporate "people' they belittle environmentalists, establishing a false separation between living beings and their environment. They forget (conveniently for their narrow goals) that the air, water, and food that is outside of us continually becomes part of the insides of our bodies.
Sincerious: Indeed. And if you look closely, you'll see that the likely paid informers use a similar tactic on this site, accusing those concerned about climate change of being hysterical; or making similar negative judgment calls about Harvey Wasserman for his principled and SAFE stand against nuclear power. The author is correct to bring up the Venus-Mars association in that showing emotion is always considered feminine and therefore weak; and one can't have nations sworn to war and ecocide actually considering the feelings these acts engender, or their impact on very real ecosystems and sentient beings. Only identification with force, and any capital gained (while all else is lost) matters.
Anyone with a little intelligence must fear the consequences of fracking which is why even in the United States there is a small minority that are concerned.
Your comment is cold, snide, and irreverent, I like it.
This is the line always used to quiet the population. I remember Ted Koppel telling the audience in a discussion about the movie "The Day After" about nuclear annihilation that they should have less emotion on the subject. No, I screamed inwardly, it is because we are not connected to our emotions and to our very real relationship to the earth that this insanity can go on. Mr Voser is the one with an emotional problem --a lack of them. He has substituted profit and status for human connection and does not have a sane idea of what sustains life so blinded by $$$$ is he.
I offer this from the feminist dictionary addressing the condition.
TESTERIA From the Latin testes, “testicles,“ “balls.“ Inability to respond emotionally. Cripling condition found in males, sometimes dangerously pathological. “Accounts in part for the ability of the male ruling class to efficiently, calmly, and maturely carry out planetary catastrophe. Male inventions like war, capitalism, totalitarianism, industrialism, and other atrocities are only possible if millions of efficient, calm, mature male people are diligently repressing their healthy, humyn emotions. Since the turn of the century, over 50 million humyn beings have been slaughtered in war by psychiatriacally normal male people.“ (Juli Loesch)
And yes no doubt you can find some females who fit the description.
The horrors you list are all emotogenic, rage, greed, dominance, jealousy and lust are the emotions that cover most of what you rightly call atrocities. What part would calm logic have in annihilating a generation of young soldiers and ruining an economy? WE DO need less emotion, and more calm consideration of all the facets of an act, in this light, fracking is a dead loser.
I posted before reading down the thread. We both had the same visceral reaction to this piece. Can you share the etymology of the word hysterectomy with hysterical to show the fellas how these items became connected... as an extension of the patriarchal world-view?
Here is some stuff about hysteria and hysterctomy. And I disagree with woodgas. Wars are calmly planned to insure dominance and make money for the 1% an the Nazis kept impeccable logical records of their atrocities men pride themselves on their logic as opposed to women's emotions. More emotional connection would make us see the horror we live in.
From ABS article directory:
An anatomical "reality" that persisted in Western medical lore since ancient Greece was that the female uterus becomes displeased and displaced, and wanders through the body, negatively influencing the brain (I kid you not!). "Hysteria" is derived from the Greek word for uterus.
In a fit of fury the female uterus went travelling through the body, causing all manner of emotional disturbances – hence hysteria, hysterical – and hysterectomy.
The mental condition of hysteria afflicted legions of women of all ages throughout the patriarchal centuries, and was considered the most common disease after fever. In menopause, specifically, "the belief was that the failure to menstruate caused the uterus to travel around the body, eventually negatively influencing the brain".(Louis Banner In Full Flower)
The descriptions of hysterical patients painted a terrible caricature of the feminine. Old treatments included bed rest, binding, beating, purging, bloodletting, and, in worse cases, hysterectomy and/or clitoridectomy.
Europe has many more regions damaged by the long-term effects of the Industrial Revolution, and due to higher population density, it is much more in people's faces than in North America. Thus any 'new' extraction technique is bound to be treated with suspicion, and after the wide distribution of 'Gasland,' is a slam dunk 'not here.' It should also be pointed out that polluting industries have not done nearly enough to ameliorate for their predecessors' sins, and in fact, are doing quite a few of their own (Royal Dutch Shell's horrible behavior in the Niger river delta, for immediate example) in this time. Kudos to Europeans who give a damn about the future of the environment where they live and breathe.
It's a continuation of "Slash and Burn." What percentage of the land mines have been de-activated in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia? What percentage of the DU distributed across Iraq? The macho world-view drawn from Biblical Scripture amenable with the "winner take all" ethos tells the predators, that they've embodied to enjoy DOMINION over the Earth and all her creatures. Note that it's diametrically opposed to the far more Earth-friendly ethos of the Shamans of South America, and those who understand that Earth/Pacha-Mama IS the great Mother; and if she becomes deathly ill, all life forms will follow suit.
"As if he were employing the pop psychology Mars-versus-Venus framework on the issue, Shell Chief Executive Peter Voser called for a less 'emotional' response to fracking in Europe."
_______________________
Translation: relax and enjoy it!
Marauding predators have been saying this ever since manunkind became capable of speech.
I took another installment of my ongoing midlife crisis last May. I toured eight western states on a motorcycle, solo. In Montana, there is a lot of fracking going on. At one little motel four huge Haliburton trucks idled all night outside, I assume because they wanted the cabs to be warm in the morning. The locals I talked to were friendly, generous and proud without arrogance. Many of them welcomed the slight boost to their economy, mostly lodging and services. Very few had any profit coming from eventual extraction as mineral rights had long ago been sold for pennies by others. They have no recourse to the invasion of their properties by men an machines that are destroying their water and grazing. Trouble and regrets, coming soon to a state near you.
Thanks for sharing that experience, W.G. It almost makes me long for the End of Oil to shut down all the motorized, machine-driven mantras of Mars rules. Today, one idiot had the leaf blower going before 9 AM, while not far enough in the distance, a heavy chain saw was going attacking the latest Green Being (translation: tree), while yet another idiot rev'd up his lawn warrior machine. You know the type, the old timer sits on it like a gladiator astride, and preparing for battle, only to cut a 25 X 25 foot lawn. I'd have more tolerance if there was a blade of new grass TO cut. I had to turn up the Mozart many decibles to tune all the SHIT out. It's definitely an invasion to the senses. And don't get me started on boom boxes. I once told a professor of music from The University of Florida that they were surely Hiroshima's Revenge, and he got it... and agreed.
Heavy trucks idling all night. Makes me want to own a gun... and use it.
Fracking has been exempt from the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act although it has been proven to pollute ground water. Only Americans are ignorant enough and corrupt (Washington) enough to poison their water supply.
What a waste of water this process is. Texas drought? I know this is about Europembut I had to say it. look a little deeper, no pun intended.
There is a new epithet being hurled at people concerned about the environment: they're "chemophobic."
Fracking is just another technology to extract fossil resources: combustibles, gems, minerals, the damage is similar to any of all other extractive technologies, after all and fundamentally, all of them destroy the environment in one way or another. And If the extraction doesn't, transportation does.
EVEN TO THINK POLLUTES THE ENVIRNMENT, IT IS NOT 100% ENVIRONMENT FRIENDLY, THERE IS NANO WASTE POURED INTO IT. Thinking is a neuronal molecular process, MEANS THAT IT IS A PHYSICAL PROCESS, ABSOLUTELY PHYSICAL LIKE THE HEARTH PULSE.