When Sandra Steingraber discusses our society’s approach towards energy sources she uses the metaphor of an alcoholic burning through whatever alcohol he can find until he burns out. Using this type of comparison humanizes the issue, you are saddened as you realize that you have been enabling this addiction. Throughout Raising Elijah your perspective on environmental issues are shifted towards how personal these large issues can be. As it is written in memoir format, you flow easily between stories of her children to detailed descriptions on endocrine disruptors. By formatting issues like chemical run-off from fracking within reference to her everyday life, you are able to detach from the dominant ideas that mass media might want to sway you towards.
How Steingraber drums up comparisons between the ways in which we respond to different issues in society are also very insightful. In chapter seven when she compares our handling of the climate crisis to the handling of her possible rabies contamination she proves that we are capable of taking care of issues to the point of their dissemination. While a man might come to your home to tell you how to keep bats out and prevent rabies, no one is going to help you find better ways of insulation or plant a garden to aid in energy and efficiency. “I began to wonder why we don’t bring a rabies approach- with its urgent, multitiered, take-no-chances, can-do lines of attack- to climate change.” Steingraber shows a large disconnect in the way that we have reacted to climate change as an actual crisis. If our society is able to err on the side of caution, than why are we not with CO2 emissions? And don’t we realize that our unpreparedness will leave us with much worse than a series of shots?
The most shocking perspective though was that presented in Gasland. Filmmaker Josh Fox set off to learn about fracking after being offered money by an energy company to use his land. What the audience is shown are multiple accounts of contaminated water and sick people. Even more shocking is when they light water on fire as it runs out of a tap, or gather plastics to the surface with a butane torch. Gasland relies heavily on shock value, but it is the shock that brings viewers to a better understanding of how dangerous hydrolicfracturing can be.
What both Steingraber and Fox do well though is show how environmental dangers, especially those from fracking, move downstream and affect society on so many levels. By saying no to fracking, you are saying yes to preserving your environment, keeping your drinking water clean, but even more so doing these things for the whole of society. In their hopes for a new Saudi Arabia, those in power have been negligent and disrespectful to our world. In their hopes for prosperity they forsake parts of their humanity, they forget how interconnected we all are. Fracking process wastes that settle into ground water wells create non-ingestible water that is now a part of the water cycle. When we contaminate small areas we still contaminate the entire system.
Steingraber’s memoirist style allows you to relate to her struggles as well on a family/ household level. When she speaks about mowing the lawn or planting her own garden, you too want to strive for that kind of dedication. While she is probably aware of this, she does not discuss the implications for people who are not even able to have those kind of experiences. Her analysis and answers to environmental issues, while not any less important, do not give answers or help to those who do not have yards. We can all do our best to help, but just as no one teaches us how be more environmentally aware at home, not one actively works to lessen the amounts of pollution and marginalization that affects those in many working class urban areas. People who have yards may be more encouraged to fight against fracking or pollution as they have a more direct connection with their landscapes. If fracking in New York State had not been stopped this past December, millions of New York City inhabitants would have begun drinking water that was coming from fracked areas, but how many of them would have known that?
What Gasland also works to do is to show the corruption within the energy companies, their affiliates, and the ways in which people are kept from getting help. While companies would bring people giant containers of water to “replace” the now tainted water, they cannot replace the damage they have done to the land. Even for those who now have clean water, they cannot escape the toxicity of chemical runoff as it is now a part of their local water cycle. In “The Fracking of Rachel Carson” Steingraber talks about the “millions of gallons per well” of fresh water that are pumped into the ground during fracking which never return. The amount of water that fracking takes from our environment whether through drilling or contamination will never be able to “replaced”. Some of that water actually never comes back, and the rest of it now puts further contaminates into the global water cycle.
Dear Governor Cuomo was the most different piece we encountered this week, as it was really a combination of many medias. By combining music, firsthand accounts, scientific evidence, and activist concern, Dear Governor Cuomo uses the multiple different ways in which media can be used to express emotion and concern; Actors/ activists inspire people due to their Hollywood iconic images, when someone sees Marc Ruffalo thinking something is important, they think it is important too. And while Marc Ruffalo is absolutely not the reason everyone came together to make Dear Governor Cuomo, the pieces attachment to celebrity artists as well as scientists give the message a larger boost.
The New York Times article “New Research Links Scores of Earthquakes to Fracking Wells Near a Fault in Ohio” by Michael Wines discusses how fracking has led to underground fault line slips and ultimately earthquakes in the surrounding areas. While this article is more technical than personal, the article addresses directly and clearly that fracking is the direct cause of the earthquakes. By leaving out personal accounts, readers of this article lack what they took away from the works of Fox and Steingraber; they do not worry immediately about the people who live in the surrounding area.
The way you write and describe the people we read about through the readings was informative. I enjoyed how you describe Sandra stengraber though out the peice and even make comparison to her and josh fox on how they get their message out. I also liked how you spoke about gasland and the use of "shock value", I think your correct when saying that that shock value is what needed to get people's attention to give issues like this the attention it deserves. Overall I likes reading your blog and your writing was well laid out and informative.
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