Life and Lemmings

The natural gas news today is all about investment and money making as the third-largest European energy company has announced that it will spend $2.25 billion to gain new access to deep natural gas fields in Texas. “Total SA, like Exxon (who announced in December they were buying XTO Energy Company in a $41 billion deal), will take what it learns in the U.S. to natural gas fields across the globe.” (Business Week, 1/4/10)

One can only shutter to think of what that could conceivably mean.

The process of hydrofracturing, the technology that these large corporations want in on, uses millions of gallons of clean water, to which resin-coated sand and a mixture of extremely toxic chemicals is added, to fracture the shale some one mile below the surface. Beyond having no way to dispose of the “produced” water and no science as to the affect of leaving anywhere from 30 to 70 percent below the surface, (now with a fractured shale layer between it and the fresh water aquifers), I cannot really imagine what kind of horrors applying this technique around the globe where there may be no regulation in terms of on ground storage of the waste water, and specific cementing of the casing, might unleash. The idea that clean water will be squandered for fuel is crazy.

Lemmings running off the cliff is the image that comes to mind.

Theoretically lemmings don’t actually commit mass suicide. According to some very quick Internet research, they are solitary beings that only get together for mating and then go off by themselves. (There may be more similarities than we know!) Not surprising, they breed quite rapidly and often have large population swells. As food gets scarce, they migrate, sometime jumping into the Norwegian waterways where they live to seek out new sources for food. Some aren’t able to make the crossing and, with their demise, the population stabilizes.

In the woods on New Years Day I was struck by the life apparent in the dead standing trees. In that moment, I understood life as a constant that exceeded human activity. It was simply a gift to experience it, however long or short. Each day, each moment, was its own opportunity that needed no other to support it. Life would continue, always.

I remember that as today's news asserts that money is the final reality. That and the myth of the lemmings, rushing to their own demise.