The rules of the game are inviolate. See a bug while driving along – VW, rear engine, etc., first, say its colour and type and repeat the rule, “yellow punch buggy no punch back”, and then proceed to punch your seat partner on the arm as hard as your mood dictates. Always delicately if it’s a girl, excepting sisters I would imagine not having had one. Always very hard if it’s the neighbourhood tough guy both so he can prove his ongoing toughness, and to prove your up and coming toughness even if that’s not actually in question. This essay is about fracking, why is he going on about punch buggies?

The rules of the game are inviolate. See a certain type of rock formation while hydraulic stamping along creating a seismic profile, and when a reasonable possibility is spotted call in the drill and say the magic incantations as loudly as mood and environment dictate, to the drill crew. This group of skilled, in some sort of way, and certainly able to take yelling and punches, will put the drill in a precise spot and head the head down into the shaley deep. The process has been done over geological time in its own geological ways an innumerable number of times; but not in the goopy gluttonous fashion we are soon to explore.

In this process the drill will be going very deep and punching very hard. So deep, in fact, that the companies involved claim without equivocation that fresh ground water supplies, such as for crops and cows, can in no way be contaminated. There does seem to be some backtracking on that one but only in limited conditions and improperly trained crews. Punching really hard sounds like fun. I mean, only microbes and such are getting harmed, right? Well. no.

This is where things go sideways. In order to get a pressure to frackture the shale which is under tremendous pressure already – 200 million years at 15,000 psi could even make Keith Richards grumpy – requires concoctions of special and often secret ingredients at even higher pressure are systematically applied, eased, and reapplied until the whole bunch is allowed to flow as it will and then separated into its component usable, re-usable, and disposable parts. Collected as such, the good bits such as natural gas are burned off – you see there is no where to store it nor a pipeline to ship it. The nice sweet crude is put to use if only to ship the rest of the good stuff.

The bad stuff that creates massive headaches, literally in the case of methane as an example, is burned or disposed of in diverse ways. Migratory birds fall from the sky, polite Canada Geese thence completing the cycle all on their own with barely a de-flight honk. Worst of all however is the ponds left over by 90% fresh water (won’t somebody please think of the cows?), 5% sand, the new gold in frack-world, and 5% foams, gels, de-foaming and de-gelling agents. Why Canada Geese fall instead of doing the bidding of wings everywhere to fly, baby, fly, is blocked from our understanding by Crime Minister Harper’s separation of science and public. You see, Mildred, I told you that it wasn’t church and state or science and state but those things and us. Science and church are where they firmly belong together; in bed.

The tiny, nay minuscule, amount of information I have provided within this short essay about fracking is leaps ahead in information for most, even the frackers themselves. Why are we embroiled in this?, because we have passed peak oil, some would say well past, which leaves us with natural gas (highly dangerous in all its shippable forms), coal (equally dangerous in different ways), and so-called “green” energy creators such as solar and wind which take dirty energies to make, and in some instances have a few incidental problems of their own. And the elephant in the gigantic room; nuclear.

Now, this could all be undone. It could all be undone without undue suffering here in our gluttonous West and in ways that help the developing countries not fall down in despair and poverty. “You mean, Grandpa, that they used to cut up these ships by hand using oxyacetylene?” “Yes, and many died doing it.” Why, Grandpa?” “Because those that already had more than enough wanted more, and those workers with barely anything at all were willing to risk it all for just a bit.”

First we have to go back to frack.

The water has to be essentially fresh since a high level of dissolved solids will interfere with the rest of the various interactions at every stage. The amount of fresh water per fracked hole will average 3 million gallons. This is a supply removed from an already depleted source, and this contaminated brine, which it is by this point, cannot be rehabilitated. The cost of filtration and ion exchange resins would make this prohibitive. Right from the get-go the fracking technology is a loss leader that keeps the unemployment rate artificially low.

The sand has to be of a particular quality, particularly with a crush resistance significantly higher than 15,000 psi and it too is non-recoverable and left with the discarded water in ponds. The land leased from the farmer is rarely told about these ponds, or the land is bought outright, obviating the problem. The cows and the crops will still be hayed and harvested until such a time as contamination makes that not possible any more.

That last 5% has me temperless, my sense of humour fleeing the scene to be replaced by a holy disgust. What have we done, in who’s name and, deeply, why? A few, only a few mind you, of the agents that make up this injected mix are napalm, jellied gasoline (and the irony is only getting started), acetic acid, soda anyone, methanol, bring out the still Grandpa, and a (sic) soup song of things like guar gum found in everyday processed foods. And then there are “Radioactive isotopes chemically bonded to glass (sand) and/or resin beads (which) may also be injected to track fractures”. The monitoring of these substances, ostensibly by the Federal Regulitary Comission, in fact only put out the guidelines while the monitoring is left to the companies themselves. If this doesen’t have your comedy bone apoplectic, then the fact that the companies are their own monitors for all else too will leave what was left of your humour quivering in the corner; they don’t even have to tell us what they use. Fascism wrings us dry, creates an oily shake, makes an awful mess in the process and leaves the mess for our children, and their’s, to clean up.

That Bovine Revolution as sung by Dana Lyons “Cows With Guns” is almost starting to sound good. Then, so is a T-Bone.

What we can do about all this is learn and teach to live with less here in wealth-land, and give, yes give, those who need more, more. The ecology works as a full employment scheme, which I think is considered 3% all things considered. Everything that can be is recycled in the most environmentally sound way. That’s in place if possible as for making it the most ecological way would usually involve major transportation. If that system is in place already for ecologically based recycling that’s great, I do like the idea of tens of thousands of rubber duckies carefully dodging the Pacific gyre to find Nan King and their birthing tank of plastic. I think I hear my sense of humour returning.

Our Government has no business in the bedrooms, science labs, or churches of this or any country. The business of Our Government is that of making law and enforcement of those it makes. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a good start and a means for amending the Charter is in place if and when neccessary. Enforcement of environmental law already on the books is another good place to start. “Oh boy Mum! I got my new homework today.” “What is it dear?” “I have all year and bit more in order to come up with a plan for who can use our National Parks.” “Isn’t that a bit premature for Grade 8?” “I don’t think so, and our team starts at 10,000 and I’m sure we’re not all in 8th. I hope I’m one of the 2,000 selected for project-end at the Banff Springs Hotel!” “Sounds like an amazing year for you. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” “MUM!” Some things never change.

In this newly imagined educational age students are given one long-term assignment, along with an interconnected and indeterminate number of classmates working on the same problem. At the end of the assigned time a paper is submitted to a board of review, in the case above consisting of grad and post-grad physicists, chemists, engineers and so on, where cherry-picking and, on occation, wholesale adoption of suggestions are brought forward. On the part of the students they are expected to bring all of the knowledge and knowledge of how to gain knowledge to the assignment. Not only are they learning, and learning how to learn, they are also approaching real-world problems.

What we have, in essense, is the very learned and highly compensated professionals either working for Dick Cheney, who was somehow able to take an 8 year break from Halliburton and get all executive branch on us, and arranging a $250 million get out jail free card with Nigeria and a let’s ignore environmental toxins bill with his name on it here in good old Younited Mates of Good ‘Ol Boys, here on Turtle Island. By the time the American Law was in play neither the EPA nor Canada’s equivalent had much to say and even less to do with the thousands of holes being reclaimed. Blackburn, Lancashire never had it so good (4000?). In Oklahoma alone 6,500 new holes per year would exibit the Red Queen Syndrome: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” Again, a make-work project. There is no real product. In fact the production is the saddest one can imagine; A town, Lac Balintique, blown and burnt into oblivion along with the lives of 47 vibrant souls.

The beaureaucrats that are suppossed to work the other side – the ones that record and enforce and ensure ‘accidents’ like that don’t happen still draw their ample salaries, as do the Halliburtonions. The people in place, to whom this is home, receive their pittance slowly, intermittantly, and whether they wished to be acknowledged of their loss or not are reminded when it makes for press convenience and raised ratings for some reason. When the time does come, somewhere past Johnson’s Crossing, the kudos will go to the figurehead of the day, a beaureaucrat from the shuffle, a local work-hard organizer, and a cute kid who is happy for a day in the attention and all the pop she can drink — ascetic acid on the rocks please.

Meanwhile nothing has truly happened. The trains still pull/push oil making work for the pipeline proponents, the pipeline pushers bleat plaintively about cows for some odd reason seeing as they’re sheep, a coin has been tossed as to wheather to add one engineer to a 100 car train, and all fades into time for the next crisis – this time a shortage of fresh water in a particularly prone area.

Most get a paycheck that varies according to a mysterious formula with money created from nothing. Kurt Vonnegut put the words on the table: “…and so it goes.” Shall we say grace?