The Lorax Meets the Fracker-in-Chief

[JPZenger]

Last edited Sun Mar 4, 2012, 03:19 PM - Edit history (2)

The Lorax Meet the Fracker-in-Chief

From the Land of Tax Free Fracking (With apologies to the great Dr. Suess)

Narrator:

At the far ends of Pennsylvania, the rivers had once ran clean. The farm fields were fertile and the mountains had trees. The birds sang happily and the wellwater was trusted. But now the wind smelled sour, and the water exploded.

Why did this happen?

Governor Gashole knows, but you cannot ask him questions. At his Mansion's door, guards won’t let you knock. He lurks in his buddies’ factories, no critics allowed. To stenographic reporters, he sometimes peeks out. One thing is sure, he always knows he is right.

Into the Governor's Mansion, the Lorax did sneak: "I am the Lorax. I speak for the water, for the water has no tongues. I speak for the water, for which you barter. Trading pollution for power."

Governor Gashole: Our goal is to make this land so vast, into the Texas of natural gas.

Lorax: I am the Lorax, and I'll yell and I'll shout for the fine things on earth that are on their way out!

Gov. Gashole: Now, you listen to me, while I blow my top! Water, farms and trees, you speak for these? Well, we're busy biggering and biggering, creating forests of gas wells. Texans have come to get wealthy - I'm not worried about healthy. Our state has a new name, no more history is needed. We now are “Penn’s Wells”, and no critics are heeded.

Lorax: And I'm asking you sir, beware of the leaks. There’s horrible things you’ve done with our creeks.

Gov. Gashole: Trust me, there's no cause for alarm. Only a few explosions will happen, there will be no harm.

Lorax: You're crazy - crazy with greed. How can we clean up after your dastardly deeds? You've taken common out of Commonwealth.

Gov. Gashole: I know what the public will believe. I’m so boring, my words they don’t even try to read. It's the industry of the future, you irritating pup! Gas smell is progress, as my campaign funds fill up. For the love of my heart, no taxes will be allowed to part. Screw the disabled, the bus riders, and those who fish. Slash colleges, schools and food stamps, I must. Learn fracking, or starve, that is my motto, for all.

Lorax: Please! I object in the name of the trees!

Gov. Gashole: Put your complaints in this trash can, if you please.

Secretary: Governor! Governor! Range Resources stock is way up!

Gov. Gashole: Yippee! We’re drilling like never before! And profits are soaring galore!

Lorax: They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast. You ought to be locked in a sludge pond, you should! The things that you do are completely un-good.”

Gov. Gashole: But progress is progress, and progress must grow!

Lorax: You're making such smoke - the poor hawks, they can't breath! They cannot live here, so I'm sending them off.

Gov. Gashole: You want me to regulate? That’s what I hate! You want me to tax them? For that, it’s too late.

Lorax: I'm sorry to yell, but my dander is up! Your machinery chugs on, day and night without stop. Our creeks are filling up with leaking gluppity-glupp! You're glumping the pond where the humming fish hummed. No more can they hum, for their gills are all gummed. As I send them off, their future is dreary. I hear things are just as bad up near Lake Erie.

Narrator: And at that very moment, we heard a loud boom. From out in the gas fields came a sickening gloom. Then we saw the last well was done... the last well of them all. The boom was a bust.

The Texans quicky jumped into their SUVs, and drove off under the smoke-smothered trees.

Left behind was the foul-smelling sky, and ponds full of sludge and fish with three eyes. Before he flew off, the Lorax left a message.

It was a single word: “Unless"

Just a word. Just a thought. But what about what? About something I ought?

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. It's not.

You're in charge of your state. Treat it with care. Keep the water clean, and keep the air fresh. Grow a forest. Protect it from derricks that leak. Then the eagles, and all of his friends may come back.

----
* Note - the original book really did include a rhyme with Lake Erie.

I welcome suggestions from people who are more poetically skilled on how to improve this.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. Extremely clever.

I think Dr Suess would be proud.

[JPZenger]

2. Rolling Stone Investigation: The Biggest Fracker in the World

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-big-fracking-bubble-the-scam-behind-the-gas-boom-20120301#ixzz1ntFAyN2H

From the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine. the whole article is worth reading.

"Aubrey McClendon ... has become a billionaire by directing his company, Chesapeake Energy, to blast apart gas-soaked rocks a mile underground and pump the fuel to the surface. "We're the biggest frackers in the world," he declares proudly ...McClendon dominates America's supply of natural gas the same way the Tea Party-financing Koch brothers control the nation's pipelines and refineries. Like them, McClendon is an influential right-wing power broker – he helped fund the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry in 2004, donated $250,000 to the presidential campaign of Rick Perry, and contributed more than $500,000 to stop gay marriage.

...Fracking, it turns out, is about producing cheap energy the same way the mortgage crisis was about helping realize the dreams of middle-class homeowners. For Chesapeake, the primary profit in fracking comes not from selling the gas itself, but from buying and flipping the land that contains the gas. The company is now the largest leaseholder in the United States, owning the drilling rights to some 15 million acres – an area more than twice the size of Maryland. McClendon has financed this land grab with junk bonds and complex partnerships and future production deals, creating a highly leveraged, deeply indebted company that has more in common with Enron than ExxonMobil.... According to Arthur Berman, a respected energy consultant who has spent years studying the industry, Chesapeake and its lesser competitors resemble a Ponzi scheme, overhyping the promise of shale gas in an effort to recoup their huge investments in leases and drilling. When the wells don't pay off, the firms wind up scrambling to mask their financial troubles with convoluted off-book accounting methods. Berman says, "In fact, when you look at the level of debt some of these companies are carrying, and the questionable value of their gas reserves, there is a lot in common with the subprime mortgage market just before it melted down."

...Last April, a Chesapeake well in Bradford County suffered a massive blowout. It was the onshore, natural gas version of what happened to BP in the Gulf two years ago: A wellhead flange failed, and toxic water gushed uncontrollably from the well for several days before workers were able to bring it under control. Seven families were evacuated from their homes as 10,000 gallons of fracking fluid spilled into surrounding pastures and streams. Pennsylvania fined the company $250,000 – the highest penalty allowed under state law. Well failures, in fact, are fairly common at drilling sites. I ask Anthony Ingraffea, an engineering professor at Cornell University and a former consultant for oil-service firms, to look at the 141 violations levied against Chesapeake in Pennsylvania last year. According to Ingraffea, 24 of them involved failures of well integrity. "When a well loses integrity, it means the seal is broken and something – usually methane, but it could also be flowback water – is leaking out underground," he says. "And it's impossible to know where it is going, or in what amounts."

It's also impossible to know what chemicals are flowing out of the wells, or how toxic they are, because companies like Chesapeake are not required to disclose the compounds they use in fracking operations. Providers of fracking fluids, such as Halliburton, claim that the composition of such fluids can't be revealed without disclosing trade secrets. In 2005, the industry lobbied hard for what's known as "the Halliburton loophole," which exempts it from federal disclosure requirements. ...Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania have moved to tighten state regulations and require mandatory disclosure of what's in the fracking fluids, but loopholes still remain. "We don't know the chemicals that are involved," Vikas Kapil, chief medical officer at the National Center for Environmental Health... "We don't have a great handle on the toxicology of fracking chemicals."......An even larger threat is the flowback waste that is pumped out after a well is fracked. It's a salty brine, mildly radioactive, and laced not just with toxic chemicals but with natural hydrocarbons and heavy metals like barium and benzene, which are known carcinogens even in minute quantities. ... "

[JPZenger]

3. One more excerpt from Rolling Stone article

About a family farm in Bradford Co. in northern Pa.:

"...Drilling, which began the next year, was an immediate nightmare. One morning, Vargson woke up at 6 a.m. to find 18 trucks idling in her driveway. The hillside behind her house was leveled for a drill pad, and the rig went up 500 feet from her back door. Once the fracking began, water trucks made hundreds of trips up and down her driveway, while air compressors roared all day and night. When the gas was flared off before production began, the flame was so bright in the night sky that she could see it glowing red on the horizon 12 miles away. Vargson stopped drinking the water after she discovered the methane – but tests showed that her water also contained elevated levels of toxic chemicals like radium, manganese and strontium... What's more, her well turned out to be a dud: The landman from Chesapeake who sold her on the deal failed to mention that 80 percent of a well's gas is often depleted within the first two years."

[grntuscarora]

4. I agree with Curmugeoness.

Last edited Sun Mar 4, 2012, 09:41 AM - Edit history (1)

Dr. Suess would be very pleased with this adaptation.

As an (almost) lifelong resident of PA, I never imagined anything like this could really happen here.

But people are starting to fight back. http://www.marcellusprotest.org/ http://www.owsstopfracking.org/

[blue neen]

6. Thanks for the links.

These protests are very precious news, indeed!

[badhair77]

5. excellent job, JP

you have a gift

I have to read the Rolling Stone article in sections. After awhile my heads feels like it's going to explode. What a "legacy" Gov Gashole leaves.

[PA Democrat]

7. Sigh. If only Governor Gashole were a fictional character.

Your adaptation is right on the money! Good job.

[HopeHoops]

9. The Patriot-News has little 3" square sticky-pad like advertisements in the upper right corner.

I peel them up and use them to cover pictures of asswipe Corbett, Mr. Frothy, Rmoney, and other assholes I can't even look at without wanting to barf.

[HopeHoops]

8. On the plus side, the Lorax DOES "take leave of this place" by mooning the Onceler.

And, once again I state, if I ever encounter asswipe Corbett in downtown Harrisburg, I'm going to give him a full truck-nutz moon. It would be worth being arrested for.