Fracking to Industrial Hemp
"Where might man's ignorance of the capabilities and life's purpose of varied nature around him lead?"
"It's not our business to remain indifferent. When we're indifferent we do not exist."
Anasta: Book 10 by Vladimir Megre, www.vmegre.com/en
It has come to my attention that our elected officials in the great state of Maryland are looking forward to inviting the Fracking industry to our land. I was kindly alerted through email by Food and Water Watch. Naturally, I passed it on to others, as I had done a fair amount of research on the practice. The industry touts the benefits of energy independence and cheap oil. The potential hazards to our air, water and soil, along with increased seismic activity, are just too great a risk when I think about having to answer my children and grand children about our behavior.
The real dangers of fracking, with the promise of cheap oil, is the fact it holds back making technological advances on all the potential free energy sources that are available to us. Cheap oil also encourages us to use more of it rather than care or understand the main causes of our energy use. The focus should be on why we are using so much energy. What changes we can make to greatly reduce our energy use?
Once again, the main culprit of energy consumption is our eating habits. YES! That fast food burger we scarf down in a matter of minutes not only endangers our personal health and well being, but comes with a huge energy price tag.
There are a lot of people taking fracking protests to the streets, as they are with the oil pipeline in the Dakotas, but the majority of those people are not aware that their eating habits are the main cause of fossil fuel use.
The amount of water used for Fracking is abominable and the danger of ground water contamination is real, but the gas is an energy source for animal production for human consumption. Five thousand gallons of water is used to produce one pound of meat! "...Recent EPA studies have shown that over 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and groundwater in 17 states have been permanently contaminated by industrial farm waste. Raising animals for us to eat pollutes our waterways more than all other industries combined." (from Comfortably Unaware)
Fracking has been known to pollute the soil...Let's take a look at what raising 70 billion animals a year for eating does to our soils... "In the United States alone, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows in factory farms produce over five million pounds of excrement per minute...The waste produced by the animals raised for food include with it all the antibiotic, pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and other chemicals..." (from Comfortably Unaware)
Now, add the 80% of farm land used for grain production to feed these animals. The majority of that is government subsidized, Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMO's, using poor farming practices that are depleting our soils at an alarming rate.
"What we currently decide to eat every day creates more global warming than all the cars, trains, planes, buses and trucks in the world combined...
70% of the Amazon Rainforest has been destroyed-lost forever-due to cattle ranching. The United States is the single largest consumer of Central and South American beef...In one crop season alone, 2004-2005, more than 2.9 million acres of rainforest were destroyed, primarily to grow crops for chickens used by Kentucky Fried Chicken." (from Comfortably Unaware)
The "Lungs of the Earth" are being wiped out for cheap, greasy, heart attack-causing chicken...and we're concerned about Fracking! Yes, we should be! and we should protest it... We can start by changing what we decide to put on our plate.
We are much, much smarter than fracking. When we put our collective minds to creating free, clean and healthy energy supplies for all, I can guarantee it will happen! That would mean our beloved oil industry would go the way of the dinosaurs, and perhaps 100's of thousands of years from now our healthy, strong future generations will unearth our oil producing artifacts and marvel at how primitive their ancestors were!
So... let's start with Industrial Hemp. Look into it!
The plant produces seeds that are an excellent source of protein and have Omega 3, 6, and 9 in ratios that are of most benefit to our health, along with many trace minerals. Hemp was grown throughout our history and can be used to make oil, textiles, bioplastics, automobiles, paper, and as construction material. It uses a lot less water than cotton to grow and actually helps replenish depleted soils. So what's the hold up to this incredibly versatile plant that is ranking in billions of revenue in Canada and other countries selling Hemp products to to the US?! Why... it wouldn't be the Fracking Industry would it?
