DEATH SPIRAL

Soil from East Corinth, Vermont,

and frac sand from ≈ Wisconsin on stretched canvas

48” x 48”

Stephen McDonnell

With “energy dominance” a political goal of some U.S. policy makers, if the extractive industry’s proposed Liquified Natural Gas terminals are approved, U.S.-sourced L.N.G. emissions would be larger than the greenhouse gas emissions from the European Union—energy dominance then equals greenhouse gas production-sourced dominance.

The massive carbon footprint from hydraulic fracturing to obtain oil and gas is generally dismissed or unknown by politicians and the public. The following facts provide acomprehensive picture of the extent of fracking’s greenhouse gases:

•      frac sand acquisition from quarries and mines.

•      trains to transport millions of tons of sand to transload sites hundreds to thousands of milesaway.

•      fleets of diesel tri-axel trucks and semi-trucks used to transport millions of tons of fracsand, millions of gallons of water and tanks of chemicals, many of them toxic, to each drill site.

•      massive diesel rigs that drill wells thousands of feet vertically, then drill numerous horizontal wells thousands of feet into the shale that holds gas and oil within this dense rock. These rigs also pump cement into the wells to seal the well casing and insert an explosive device into the wellto perforate the well casing.

•      as many as 30-40 diesel pump trucks connected in parallel blast the sand/water/chemical concoction into each well under enormous pressure, providing minute voids in the shalethat is wedged open with the frac sand proppant.

•      millions of gallons of water each well uses contain many chemicals that serve to dissolve minerals, reduce friction and prevent corrosion. The EPA’s Safe WaterDrinking Act requires drillers to list the chemicals they use, but the Haliburton Loophole allows chemicals that drillers consider proprietary for competitive advantage to be exempt from disclosure, many of which have been found to be carcinogenic, allowing drillers to hide the true composition of their chemicals behind the Loophole.

•      this toxic and radioactive solution is then pumped out of the wells with the sand left inthe voids to provide a path for pumping gas and oil to the surface.

•      this process water must be disposed of by blasting it underground into abandoned oil wells (suspected of causing earthquakes in certain areas and polluting groundwater) trucking it to man-made ponds where the toxins in the water evaporate, and in somecases, is recycled or reused in additional wells.

•      process water pumped into these abandoned oil wells has been found leaking to the surface from internal pressure.

•      a massive network of underground pipelines and pumping stations create attendant airpollution from construction and operation.

•      massive amounts of energy and ocean pollution required to ship oil and gas aroundthe world are created through refineries and L.N.G. ports.

•      L.N.G. conversion stations that require trucks and rail to transport this highly explosive substance through local communities.

•      methane flaring at well pads.

•      a well’s life cycle exhausts economically available gas over a limited number of years, with the attendant expenses of well decommissioning and land reclamation, often delayed or avoided.

•      each well requires over a million gallons of water to be trucked to well pads at 5,000 gallons per truck load. Water is the most threatened liquid world-wide. Fracking’s reliance on extraordinary amounts of water adds to the catastrophic imbalance between water supply and demand.

•      economically accessible quality sand is the most threatened solid material in the world.

•      extreme degradation of local roads from 24/7 truck fleets affects community safety and municipal budgets.

•      the negative health effects of fracking have been verified through extensive studies, especially revealed, for example, by the significant differences between the health outcomes of Pennsylvania residents living and working in or near fracking sites, compared to those residing in New York State, where fracking is banned.

•      despite the onerous but generally disregarded pollution and environmental degradation from this process repeated thousands of times across the country, fracking is seen as a boon to local employment and economies and a windfall from mineral rights royalties to landowners, blinding these communities to the dangers they gladly welcome.

•      all of this in service to the endgame of gas and oil combustion and its attendant massive climate degradation and inequities.

RESUME

University of Vermont, Burlington, VT

1968-1972

BA, Studio and Art History Major, teaching assistant, graduated with Honors

Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH

1972-1974

Graduate Teaching Assistantship, painting, printmaking, art history

St. Mark’s School, Southborough, MA

1974-1976

Fine Arts teacher

Mobius Shelter

1975-1983

Energy efficiency construction, design and consulting

Martha’s Vineyard, MA and Waverly, PA

Governor’s Energy Council, Solar Energy Division, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,

Harrisburg, PA

1983-1985

Managed solar hot water subsidy program 

General Public Utilities

Reading, PA

1985-2000

Managed residential and commercial Customer Care initiatives including energy efficient construction, load management and energy conservation; coordinated department Y2K efforts, deregulation and SAP enterprise solution conversion

PPL

Scranton, PA

2000-2002

Electric utility commercial energy management sales consulting

School Specialty, Inc.

2002-2008

K-12 character development and time management consulting

Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education

Scranton, PA

2008-2014

Practice Manager in primary care residency teaching clinic for underserved patients