On Wednesday communities held Freedom From Toxic Fracking Waste
rallies to raise awareness on one of the largest environmental
risks from fracking: dealing with the waste it produces. In the
best case scenario the toxic stew - of unknown composition due
to the Halliburton Loophole - is removed from the hydrological
cycle entirely. In other words, less water for everyone. The
worst case scenario is considerably more disturbing. The great,
unknown hazard that hangs over fracking is this: Everything we
think we know about its effects are based on modeling. We don’t
precisely know what is going to happen. All we can do is make
educated guesses based on the modeling, then try it out on the
earth. This isn’t like computer programming, where we have some
kind of development copy of the planet to experiment on, make
mistakes with, completely trash if we make a mistake, wipe clean
and start all over again if need be. We have one environment,
the production environment, and if we screw it up we don’t have
backup copies