Given the current dialog and understanding about fracking and the environment, it is difficult to believe that California’s Governor Brown would participate in jeopardizing the drinking water of current and future generations. But that is what is on the table.

In much the same manner that Big Food has spent millions to subvert GMO labeling, or the way that the tobacco industry did their damnedest to obfuscate facts regarding their cancer causing products, so too runs the lobbyist machine of the petroleum industry.

Our public lands – the birthright of citizens of the United States – are being destroyed by mining operations.  Not just the fracking pads which are drilled on one mile grids.  There are thousands of miles of roadways cut into wilderness lands to connect the pads, billions of gallons of freshwater used for the extraction process, and a staggering number of ponds constructed to hold contaminated water.   Where ever a fracking operation has occurred the structure of the biosphere and the earth below will have been irrevocably altered for millennia.

Some of the fossil fuels which are extracted are sold back at a premium to the American people, with the rest exported and sold to profit multinational corporations.   This defacto state of affairs is a far cry from the original bill of goods sold to the American public about energy independence.  During the days of the Bush presidency, exemptions were made to the Clean Water act.  This action allowed the injection of all manner of poisonous compounds into the earth. Contrary to Philip K. Howard’s mantra that, “industry sets the highest standards,” multinational corporations are simply out to screw us all.   Two examples come to immediately to mind.  The first is Exxon-Mobil who has yet to pay the state of Alaska and the Federal Government one-tenth of a $5 billion dollar fine for damages and clean up from an eleven-million gallon oil spill in 1989.

While this is ancient history for some, there are currently over twelve hundred abandoned, uncapped, un-sealed, open petroleum drill sites in the state of Wyoming alone, with thousands more to on the way: “In all, the fate of some 11,800 idle coal-bed methane wells remains uncertain….”

Businesses have simply walked away from entire sites on private, state, and federal lands alike which were no longer profitable. ^NYT

The question becomes, who in their right mind believes that any corporation (Chinese owned or not) will correct damage to our nation’s drinking water?   And that question is based on the optimistic, pollyana-esque notion that such damage could be repaired (Fukushima’s nuclear reactors are still spewing radiation into the Pacific and our atmosphere and there is no “fix” in sight).

Take two seconds and sign the Move-on petition (even if they spam you afterwards) below. Maybe it will make a difference. Maybe not. But at least you will have made your keyboard heard in the wilderness and you can feel like you at least did something positive.