Climate Tuesday: Like I was Saying, People are Missing All of the Points

So, the takeaway from Naomi Klein's book, if I just boiled it down to the simplest message is, "For crying out loud, not everything has to come down to the Almighty Buck!"

So here's another example of people who seem to be missing all of the points in the extractivist quest to mine for gold in...the dumbest places.  So here we go--West Virginia.

I like West Virginia, it's a beautiful state. The Ohio River is lovely, and its water serves the thirst requirements and more for over 3 million people. So, of course, oil companies are looking at that stream of liquid life and thinking,

"Hey, could there be natural gas under there?"

Yep. The state that just recently had water services to 300,000 residents interrupted by a chemical spill wants to play River Roulette. Sad to say, the governor there is a Democrat, albeit I guess a pitiful one. Which is a reminder that stupidity in the pursuit of petrodollars is not a partisan issue--it's a problem all over.  Fossil fuel royalties are no way to plug a budget hole if it's a stopgap at best and poses more serious clean-up problems down the road. This is the kind of short-term political thinking that makes things worse.