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.

Imperial Water

Water was falling steadily on September 30th, water carried by the prevailing winds all the way from the Gulf of Mexico. It's falling now, too. September's rain reminded me of the tortured history of water between this country and Mexico.

Here, in the Northeast, we usually have an abundance of water, although the "monsoon" we've had broke a six-week drought. But the whole western third of the US has always been deficient in water. The West used to be tagged, on old maps, as 'The Great Western Desert.' This included large parts of California.

Most of the West was also a possession of Mexico, until the Mexican war of 1846-48. The US annexed Texas before the war; after, it took over all the Rocky Mountain and Pacific territories (California, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada) when it won the war, which the US fought for blatant territorial aggrandizement. Americans called it "manifest destiny."

Some of the prized possessions of those territories are the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers. The Colorado flows from Wyoming into Mexico, all the way to Mexico's Gulf of California, or it did. Now, there are times when its flow is negligible by the time it gets to Mexico. It's the main source of water for California's Imperial Valley, one of the richest irrigated agricultural regions in the world.

There was a Mexican-American Water Treaty negotiated in 1944. It allocates more water to the US, from the Colorado and the Rio Grande, so Mexico does not receive the water enjoyed by American farmers and city dwellers in places like LA, the Imperial Valley (aptly named), and Arizona. I've seen lush fields of hay (!) in Arizona's deserts, for example.

So, first, the US took a large part of Mexico, and then it took a good deal of its water. That water is used to grow crops Mexico cannot. Then, to add insult to injury, the US negotiated NAFTA so that US subsidized corn could flood Mexico (where corn/maize first appeared more than two thousand years ago). Mexican peons couldn't compete; subsidized imports drove them from their smallholdings.

American corporations not only wanted to export surplus corn, but to establish maquiladoras over the border. So, the flood of cheap workers created by destroying Mexico's small farms was serendipitous.

However, China's lower labor costs made the maquiladoras less competitive. So, Mexico has a large unemployed, rootless labor force. Is it surprising that Mexicans stream across the Rio Grande, or the Arizona desert? Or that drug trafficking has become one of Mexico's principal industries?

Border States have become "hard-assed" about illegal immigration, but imperial bullying brings consequences. The flood of Chicanos into the US is one.

Lack of water is one of its principal causes.