U.S. Department of Energy Prepares to Take the Floor in the Nation's 'Fracking' Debate

By JOEL KIRKLAND of CLIMATEWIRE
Published: July 26, 2011   
NTTIMES

When talking about his department's role in steering U.S. energy policy, Energy Secretary Steven Chu likes to recall its role in last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's true that we had no jurisdictional or regulatory authority in the deepwater spill," Chu said in an interview with ClimateWire late last week. "We played a different role. We helped stop the leak."  Chu's behind-the-scenes war room is widely credited with bringing order to chaos in the aftermath of the BP PLC Macondo blowout in April 2010. His team pinned down the oil's flow rate, and it was the joint effort of government scientists and BP engineers that finally stanched the three-month-long seafloor oil gusher.       

In an interview, Chu suggested his department will try to play a similar role in sorting out the entangled mess of misinformation and spin about the environmental impacts of gas drilling.
The top two U.S. gas producers, Chesapeake Energy and Exxon Mobil Corp., are expected to drill tens of thousands of wells through 2020, and plenty of other companies remain lined up behind them despite a prolonged slump in natural gas prices.

The result is nothing short of industrialization in rural areas outside of some of the nation's largest cities.

"The charge from the president was very clear," Chu noted. "We need to develop this, but we need to develop it in an environmentally responsible way."       

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"States and U.S. EPA have been searching for the right balance that allows companies to expand their drilling operations, ensuring a reliable source of energy, while at the same time government agencies craft a policy that heeds public concern about contaminating water aquifers, toxic waste pits and air pollution."

Why not collaborate your vanity calculator PhDs to kick around reliable methods of discovering and utilizing our natural, renewable resources? Notice we said, 'OUR' natural renewable resources... Maybe your 'Curriculum of Greed' left that chapter out of your books intentionally.

Ever think of constructing a 'reliable' policy? One that is designed to protect our natural resource interests and not destroy them forever? Of course not. Renewable energy is the 'Anti-Christ' to  Capitalism. Why would 'Big Industry' remove silver from its pockets? They wouldn't. That would be contrary to maintaining the Oligarchy that currently exists today.

Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία, oligarkhía^[1]) is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, corporate, or military control. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words "ὀλίγος" (olígos), "a few"^[2] and the verb "ἄρχω" (archo), "to rule, to govern, to command".^[3] Such states are often controlled by a few prominent families who pass their influence from one generation to the next.

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