Short-term Profits, Long-term Disaster

"He plants trees to benefit another generation," quoted by Cicero.

American corporations don't think like this. At most, they plan ahead for the next quarter, or the next year. Speculators and large Wall Street firms gamble to exploit people's misfortunes, they don't plan ahead to help others (only themselves).

The issue of fracking is illustrative of how this works. Natural gas producers are flocking to fracking, because there appears to be an abundance of gas in a large number of enormous shale deposits deep in the earth. However, fracking requires two things that make it potentially damaging to huge numbers of people. One landowner could sell drilling rights on his land to a drilling company, but the company, after drilling down about a mile, turns the drill bit horizontal, so one surface well could have impact on people for miles around, even if all of them oppose drilling under all circumstances.

And what is the impact?

Once the wells are drilled, both vertically and horizontally, the producer pumps in a toxic stew at high pressure to fracture (hence, to frack) the shale formation in which the gas has been trapped. The drillers claim there is no danger from the toxics--they pump them out again--but no one can guarantee they won't end up in our drinking water, either from natural upward flow, or from unintended spills. This is a short-term venture that could spoil a long-term resource that is not only in short supply, it's essential to life. Many civilizations have foundered when they destroyed, or lost, their water supply. The Mughal city of Fatehpur Sikri was abandoned shortly after it was completed; it had too little water. Mayan cities disappeared for the same reason. The Romans piped water in North Africa from the southern mountains: Islamic extremists destroyed them and with the aqueducts the agricultural resources of the whole region.

Fracking oil companies act like these ancient doomed civilizations: short-term thinking only, in pursuit profits.

All this is to say: business will pursue fracking because they can make short-term profits and either: 1) they believe all the complaints about adverse effects are wrong, or 2) they're betting they'll do no damage, or 3) any damage they do won't appear until they've extracted their profits and gotten out.

In New York State, frackers have been pouring money into the legislature to prevent a moratorium, or to limit its duration. Yet, the Marcellus shale region undergirds almost all the water resources needed by New York City in its extensive reservoir system. If natural gas, or worse, the frackers' injection fluids pollute those reservoirs, New York, our financial and cultural capital, might have to be abandoned like Fatehpur Sikri, or those Mayan cities. This is just plain stupid; especially since frack wells don't last as long as conventional ones.

Instead of 'do no harm,' modern corporations appear to believe in 'do harm' if there's profit in it.