June 20, 2013, 9:28 am
By Christopher Shoup Bradley
I am writing in response to your June 8 point/counterpoint article titled “The issue with fracking.” While it’s apparent you’ve both researched the topic of hydraulic fracturing, and that you can each list certain pros and cons of the issue, and that you are both versed in the fast-track legislation that brought natural gas mining to Illinois, what ultimately disturbs me is that you each ended your points as apologists for the fossil fuel industry. Burning natural gas is not an energy innovation. It is not a bridge to some better future. Burning natural gas for energy is a market-based solution (substitution) for an industry that’s currently running short on oil and slowly being pressured to reduce its reliance on coal, humanity’s biggest and most harmful source of CO2 pollution. Burning natural gas is merely business as usual. To understand basic geology, in the terms of being able to look at basic geological maps and understand how the ground beneath us works, and to know the basic science of aquifers and ground water movement leads to the enlightenment of knowing that punching deep holes into Illinois’ stratums of rock and injecting poisonous fracking solutions is a bad idea. It’s been a bad idea since the 1940’s, when the hydraulic fracturing process was being developed, but the average person has little understanding of how the world beneath us works.Please click the link for the rest of this letter: http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=508668&query=christopher