TV News LIES

Short for “hydraulic fracturing,” fracking is the process by which gas companies access underground deposits of natural gas, called shales. Millions of gallons of “fracking fluid”—that’s water and sand mixed with hundreds of chemicals—are pumped deep into the earth’s crust, breaking up rock and freeing natural gas reserves.

Natural gas is being marketed as a clean, green alternative to foreign-oil dependency; this year, the International Energy Agency found that carbon-dioxide emissions in the U.S. fell by four hundred and fifty tons, the result of an increase in the use of natural gas instead of coal. But since the inception of widespread fracking in 1997, horror stories have slowly entered the national conscience: illnesses coinciding with contaminated wells, citizens who can light their tap water on fire, pet and livestock deaths, exploding houses.

The vital tasks carried out by tiny "engineers" like earthworms that recycle waste and bees that pollinate crops are under threat because one fifth of the world's spineless creatures may be at risk of extinction, a study showed on Friday.

The rising human population is putting ever more pressure on the "spineless creatures that rule the world" including slugs, spiders, jellyfish, lobsters, corals, and bugs such as beetles and butterflies, it said.

During the early 1970s, before Sean Lennon was born to John and Yoko, the couple bought a farm in Delaware County, three hours from their home at the Dakota in New York City. As a toddler, Sean remembers one of the goats chewing on his blue jeans.

Today, that property near the Catskills belongs to him and sits within potential drilling territory above the sprawling Marcellus Shale, where Governor Andrew Cuomo might reverse the state's ban on hydraulic fracturing – known as "fracking" – for natural gas.

Ono and Lennon, who founded Artists Against Fracking in July, gathered the coalition on Wednesday at New York's Paley Center for Media and called on Governor Cuomo to discuss developing renewable alternatives to wells, some of which have been linked to leaking methane into the groundwater.

France isn’t prepared to tap its shale energy resources until “clean technologies” are invented to replace hydraulic fracturing, Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg said.

The technique known as fracking causes “irreversible pollution” in some cases, the minister was cited as saying in an interview published today in Les Echos newspaper. It will probably be replaced by a different method, he said.

The French parliament passed a law last year outlawing fracking because of concern it can pollute drinking water, effectively halting plans by companies including Total SA (FP) to explore for shale gas in southern France. Fracking is widely used in the U.S., including by Total, to produce gas.

Sometimes the vehicle for community means saying NO to a carcinogen-dependent industry that seeks to use our towns as their factory floor, offering temporary riches for a few and permanent pollution for all.

Governor Cuomo: The state of Illinois once protected me. Now I want you to protect my two children. Governor Cuomo, say NO.

On the northern tip of Delaware County, N.Y., where the Catskill Mountains curl up into little kitten hills, and Ouleout Creek slithers north into the Susquehanna River, there is a farm my parents bought before I was born. My earliest memories there are of skipping stones with my father and drinking unpasteurized milk. There are bald eagles and majestic pines, honeybees and raspberries. My mother even planted a ring of white birch trees around the property for protection.

A few months ago I was asked by a neighbor near our farm to attend a town meeting at the local high school. Some gas companies at the meeting were trying very hard to sell us on a plan to tear through our wilderness and make room for a new pipeline: infrastructure for hydraulic fracturing.