WEBVTT - Eliza Griswold on what does fracking, fracture? 0:00:00.120 --> 0:00:05.160 I'm Bethany McLain. This is making a killing in this show. 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:07.960 I cut through the hype and handwringing to reframe the 0:00:08.000 --> 0:00:11.280 stories you thought you understood and uncover the ones you 0:00:11.360 --> 0:00:18.040 didn't know were important. In some ways, today's episode is 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.400 a classic tale of innovation going hand in hand with destruction. 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:26.680 Fracking is a technology that prioritizes big picture progress and 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:30.800 short term economics over protecting the citizens in its path. 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:35.040 Just ten years ago, Congress was moaning about shortages of 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:38.360 natural gas, and most people believe the price of oil 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.440 was heading in only one direction higher. But at the 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.360 end of twenty eighteen, the news broke that the United 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.600 States was now the world's largest producer of crude oil, 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:52.639 responsible for almost twenty percent of the world's oil production. 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.360 That's more than Saudi Arabia and Russia for the first 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.280 time since the nineteen seventies. In other words, it's the 0:01:00.320 --> 0:01:03.880 so called shale revolution, which is better known as fracking, 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:08.160 has changed everything. For decades, the US had this grand 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:13.400 goal of energy independence. Now President Trump's administration talks about 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:18.120 something even bigger, energy dominance. The ideas that our oil 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.520 and gas riches will change the geopolitical game, both by 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:25.680 weakening Russia and by disentangling US from the messy Middle East. 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.959 And yet there are many questions and even more controversy. 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:33.840 Most of that focus is on the environmental cost. The 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:38.160 truth is, there isn't anything pretty about fracking. Fracking basically 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:41.720 involves injecting tons of sand and millions of gallons of 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:46.319 water and an undisclosed cocktail of chemicals directly into the 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:50.120 ground beneath our feet. This helps force oil and gas 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:53.560 through rock that was previously considered too tight to yield it. 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.600 So what does this mean for our markets, for our environment, 0:01:58.000 --> 0:02:02.240 for us? Enter Eliza Griswold, my friend and New Yorker 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:06.080 journalist whose book Amity and Prosperity does a terrific job 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:10.160 of illuminating the environmental and human costs of the fracking revolution. 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.560 Eliza's book just one the Pulletzer Prize for General Nonfiction, 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:17.240 so it's especially exciting for me to sit down with 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.080 her today to dig in on the controversy at hand. 0:02:20.880 --> 0:02:23.040 Even if you think fracking is one of the best 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:26.280 things ever to happen to this country, it's worth hearing 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.760 Eliza's take because then you'll understand why there are so 0:02:29.800 --> 0:02:33.560 many people who are so determined to stop it. For 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:38.359 my part, I'm deeply curious about the nuances of the economic, global, 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.680 and political impacts of fracking. I wrote my own mini 0:02:41.720 --> 0:02:44.680 book which focused in on the fragile economics of fracking 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:47.240 last year, but mine didn't win a pulletz er, so 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.560 please read Eliza's. I see the story of fracking on 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.720 a grand scale is one of a technological innovation that 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:58.400 is literally and figuratively fracturing our country, and yet it 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:01.680 is also sustaining our way of life. Is anyone willing 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:05.359 to live without access to energy which charges our smartphones 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:08.600 and powers our electric cars? If there are good guys 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.040 and bad guys here, is it always clear which one 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:15.040 is which. Before the book came out, I met this 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:19.240 amazing young woman named Ronnie Coptis, and she is a 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:23.919 coal activist who's from Appalachia, and she has the complicated 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:27.120 identity that so many people do. You know, she's big 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:30.560 on the Second Amendment, and she hunts for her own protein, 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:34.160 and she's also fiercely anti coal. Her husband was a minor, 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.200 so she's really engaged in what does it mean to 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:41.360 move to the next generation of energy development? In America 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:44.240 and she's big on how rural Americans have paid the 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:47.800 price for urban Americans energy appetites. So before the book 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:49.800 came out, she and I were driving around you know, 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.160 rural Appalachia, and she turned to me and she said, 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.680 you know, resources aren't the only thing that can be 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.400 taken from communities like ours. Stories can be taken to 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.720 This is very familiar to me from the war zones 0:04:03.760 --> 0:04:05.880 I've worked in most of my career. You know, you 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.839 can show up in a refugee camp and you can 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:15.000 spend a day with people and become another level of extraction, 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.359 like become something else taking from them. And is that 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:20.760 because you're bringing your own ideas of what the stories 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:23.520 should be to them, or just because any kind of 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:26.040 storytelling is taking their story. So I think it does 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:28.360 have something to do with the ideas, but it has 0:04:28.440 --> 0:04:31.800 more to do with feeding the engine of the media. 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.599 I have some friends in Greece, and when the Greek 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:38.839 economic crisis hit, these Greek journalists were saying that literally 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:41.680 journalists had sat with them outside banks and been like, 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.680 find me a family where the people are missing their teeth, 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:49.279 where they sold their teeth for gold, Like casting stories 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:54.039 and whether we're doing that in Iraq or Afghanistan or 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.320 in Appalachia. It's something that as a journalist I really 0:04:57.320 --> 0:05:00.400 want to resist, and I think we're king in a 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.520 place over time has forced that to happen. This is 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.039 a great place for you to introduce Stacy Haney, who's 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:08.920 the character that forms the core of your book, and 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:11.200 tell us how you found her and what her connection 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:14.120 to fract Ponds are. Stacy Haney is a single mom 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:17.880 and a nurse who lives in Washington County, Pennsylvania, which 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:21.360 is about an hour southwest of Pittsburgh. Her family has 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:23.320 lived on the same land for more than a century. 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:26.120 Her family comes from two towns, and those towns are 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.080 named Amity and Prosperity, which is the name of the ball. 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:31.480 I was thinking, I love it when truth is stranger 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:33.800 than fiction. That's one of my favorite things about business, 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.039 and really, who needs fiction when you have towns named 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.800 Amity and Prosperity. It's fantastic, totally, and I met Stacy 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.880 in the spring of twenty eleven. I went to southwestern 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:47.919 Pennsylvania to look at America's crumbling infrastructure because I wanted 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:51.200 to look at how our collective poverty I wanted to 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.160 look at how our failing systems, our lifeline systems, roads, bridges, 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:59.080 the grid we could go on are inadequate, and how 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.039 that's costing us, right, the human cost of that. But 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:06.039 when I got to southwestern Pennsylvania pretty quickly, the entire 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.600 conversation was the boom. It was the oil and gas 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.039 industry's arrival, dating back a few years really to the 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:15.920 late two thousands, right, And this was two eleven. So 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.400 one day, you know, I was looking at locks and levees, 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.880 as looking at river traffic, really everything you can imagine. 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:26.600 And I became friends with this remarkable biologist named Rose Riley, 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:30.120 and she works for the Army Corps of Engineers. And 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:32.320 one day she asked me if I wanted to go 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.920 with her to hear how this new industry was impacting people. 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:40.000 That farmers and other landholders were meeting at the airport 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:43.520 in Morgantown, West Virginia, because another symbol of what I 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.679 would call this public poverty is there's no meeting place 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.200 in Appalacha like where you're going to meet publicly at 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.920 the airport, right. Wow. She knew nothing about fracking, and 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:55.240 she was going down to learn about what was going 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.640 on firsthand from people who had experienced it, and she 0:06:57.720 --> 0:06:59.360 asked if I wanted to go, and did you know 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.520 what fracking as at that point? Absolutely not, you know, 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.719 I mean I knew that it was this technological innovation. 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:10.000 I knew the buzzwords around fracking, but what it really 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.080 entailed how one drilled more than a mile down into 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:15.239 the earth and then out for a couple more miles 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:19.680 to crack rock and harvest oil and gas from these 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:22.520 ancient bubbles. I did not understand that at all. So 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:25.880 we started driving south and she pointed out to me, 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:28.680 like where mountains had flatlined, and I was like, what, 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.080 how is that happening? And she's that's mountaintop removal. So 0:07:32.120 --> 0:07:35.400 she pointed out to me how for more than a century, 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:40.400 these communities in Appalachia had really been harvesting America's energy. 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:42.840 So we got to the airport. I was sitting behind 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.440 Stacy and her eleven year old daughter, who was still 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:48.440 in her pajamas and was complaining to her mom she 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:50.240 was hungry. Her mom was being like, you should have 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:54.160 eaten breakfast, right, I've been there, right, yeah, So you 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.520 know I did what i'd do, which is like I 0:07:56.600 --> 0:08:01.000 carry these disgusting you know, all natural alf bars right, 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:04.440 oh sugar exactly. So I gave her one of these 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.040 like earnest bars, like all for the girl, and she 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.360 very wisely was like, no, thank you. And then her 0:08:10.400 --> 0:08:13.120 mom got up and started to talk and said, you know, 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:15.760 she was Stacy Haney. She was a nurse, and she 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:19.200 and her kids had benzine and tallyween in their bodies, 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:23.160 and her fourteen year old son Harley, was really, really sick, 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:25.720 and they knew a little bit about what was going 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.520 on with them. They lost some of the animals on 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:31.280 their farm, as had their neighbor, but it was really 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.320 the beginning, and she was terrified. She was terrified to 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:36.800 speak out. This was the first time she spoke publicly 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:41.440 because at that point the company was supplying her drinking water, 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.520 and she was terrified that if she spoke against them, 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:46.840 they would take the water away. And if they took 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:50.000 the water, she couldn't afford to stay there. Because this 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:53.120 is an area where again we get back to infrastructure. 0:08:53.559 --> 0:08:57.520 Drinking water is actually scarce. Some people have working wells. 0:08:57.520 --> 0:08:59.680 But what she had grown up doing, Stacy and her 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.360 family is doing something called hauling water. They'd grown up 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.160 traveling ten miles with a pickup truck to a public 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.520 water station to fill like a massive water tank called 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.880 a water buffalo, and they filled basically a cement jug 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.120 outside their house, a cistern, and that's what they used 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:21.160 to bathe and to drink. So she'd grown up pour 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.480 of water and pour in every way, and this farm 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.760 that she'd bought had good water, and when fracking came, 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.880 the loss of that water represented for her really really 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.559 a tragedy. And it's a result of this frac pund right, Yeah, 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:39.400 So next to her house, unbeknownst to her, there was 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.520 at least a six acre waste pond that was almost 0:09:43.520 --> 0:09:45.959 as big. They live on eight acres of land, so 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:49.360 if you want to imagine it, it was this tar black. 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.600 It actually, at one point many points actually went septic 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.160 like a wound. It started to rot, it got infected, 0:09:55.559 --> 0:10:00.360 and was off gassing massive amounts of hydrogen sulfide. FRAC 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:05.120 pond super basically is you know, you pump into the earth, 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:09.600 you pump a ton of water. As the technology advances, 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:12.360 so too does the amount of water and chemicals we use. 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:15.160 So at that point it was like two million gallons 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.280 of water. Now we could look upwards of eight millions 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:22.240 and millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals are 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:25.600 pumped down to the earth. What's in that pond is 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:28.720 everything that comes back out, So it's all that waste, 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:31.840 but it's also ancient bacteria that's been in the earth 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:36.000 obviously for millions of years, along with radioactive material, so 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:39.480 all of that and masses of salt because all of 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.920 this area was an ancient inland sea, which is why 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:45.120 it's rich in fossil fuels. So all of this comes 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.600 back to the surface, and because of Pennsylvania's geology, it 0:10:48.720 --> 0:10:51.440 had to be stored on the surface. And where these 0:10:51.440 --> 0:10:54.839 guys really went wrong is that, yes, these ponds exist 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:58.800 in places like Texas, not eight hundred feet from somebody's house. 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:03.760 So the pond itself was leaking, but also it was 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:06.720 what was in the air was making them sick. And 0:11:06.840 --> 0:11:09.400 at one point you had it wasn't just the hydrogen 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:12.800 sulfide that was rotting this pond. You had workers come 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:17.120 in in hazmat suits applying a biaside that's a known 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:22.360 carcinogen acroleine. They are wearing masks and white outfits. Right 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:25.520 where a few hundred feet away. You have Stacy in 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.199 her neighbor Beth in cool lots right watering their goats 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:31.520 for the fair. One of the oil and gas workers 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:36.760 describe the smell as rotting beef jerky. Okay, to call it, 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:40.079 I've smelled it. To call it sewage doesn't even do. 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.040 It's like, it's an insult to sewage. It's an insult 0:11:43.080 --> 0:11:46.839 to sewage. It is ungodly the smell when this thing 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.200 is rotting, Okay, So what does that mean for it 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.240 to be rotting and leaking? So, first of all, this 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:54.600 is one of the problems with the pond, and this 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.040 is one of the problems with the technology because these 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.360 guys didn't understand when and they lined the pond with 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:05.880 two layers of basically black garbage bag. Okay, the lining 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.120 was compromised in all kinds of ways. First of all, 0:12:08.360 --> 0:12:12.280 wildlife deer and foxes got into the pond and ripped 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:15.280 up the lining. That could be how it leaked. There 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:18.680 was a leak detection unit, a way to detect the leaks, 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:21.800 but it was put under both of the liners of 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:23.880 the pond, which means that by the time the thing 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:30.319 is ripped, you already have groundwater. Being impacted by every 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:35.720 element of what's what's in that pond, radioactive material, anti freeze, 0:12:36.080 --> 0:12:40.600 all kinds of carcinogens. So and it isn't that nobody 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:44.319 knew the pond was leaking. The Department of Environmental Protection, 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:48.280 the state agency, the regulators issued what are called notices 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:52.280 of violation that said very clearly, the pond is leaking. 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.640 And again internal documents that came out in the course 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.920 of the lawsuit from the oil and gas company there's 0:12:58.920 --> 0:13:03.000 one worker saying we all know they leak. So Range 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:06.800 was using many of these ponds. When I finished the reporting, 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:11.160 they still had a couple. And these ponds are a serious, 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.760 serious problem. Done right on the surface, but all wrong underneath. 0:13:14.960 --> 0:13:17.559 So it's a classic example of checking the boxes. You've 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:19.679 lined the pond, you've got the equipment in place that's 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:23.199 supposed to be watching this, but in fact the surface 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:27.360 box checking does nothing for the underlying reality, does absolutely nothing. 0:13:27.360 --> 0:13:30.800 And who's designing that pond somebody who's come from landfills 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.560 because you have such a demand for labor, and in 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.800 Pennsylvania you didn't have to know how. So again, I mean, 0:13:38.120 --> 0:13:42.000 just time and time again, the failure on every front 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:46.600 is it's human like. The scale of this is tragedy, 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:51.000 human tragedy, again and again, and it shows you how 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.840 dangerous it can be these failures, even when it's done 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:57.720 according to regulation quote unquote, what drew you from your 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.520 previous work because going from the tenth parallel fought lines 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.920 between Islam and Christianity to fracking. You know, I was 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:09.040 in rural Nigeria some years ago, northern Nigeria, doing what 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:12.040 you do as a journalist. So I was riding on 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:15.600 an empty oil barrel across a flooded river. I've never 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:20.040 done that as a journalist. It sounds maybe fun. I 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.160 think I see that in your future. So we were, 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:25.240 we were crossing this river and a bridge had collapsed, 0:14:25.240 --> 0:14:29.120 and it was about two weeks after the bridge in Minneapolis, 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:32.640 I thirty five w had collapsed, killing thirteen people. And 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:34.800 there was something about that moment where I thought, you know, 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:37.560 I've been traveling the world for more than a decade 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:41.120 looking at the problems that so much of the world faces. 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:43.240 But it's time to look at the problems that America 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.840 is facing. You know, since the nineties, liberal economists have 0:14:47.320 --> 0:14:50.360 talked about something called the resource curse. Yes, right, that 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.520 why is it that people who live on land richest 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:55.800 and natural resources tend to be some of the poorest, 0:14:56.080 --> 0:14:58.680 right right. And there are a lot of complex causes. 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:01.360 A lot of that has to do with corruption, But 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:05.040 it doesn't just apply we look at that in Nigeria, 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.080 you know, we cast that away from ourselves, but it 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:11.560 applies in America too, and really nowhere so more than Appalachia. 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:13.320 And that's what I wanted to explore. And it's a 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:16.560 great irony that it does apply in America because we 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:18.920 tend to think of it as somebody else's problem, but 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.160 it's actually right here, it's our problem too, exactly. A 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.640 lot of what happened with fracking is that multinationals which 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:30.280 had a practice of operating abroad came back to America 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:33.840 and brought some of those practices, even those contracts that 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:37.280 had safeguarded them while passing the cost on to others, 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:39.520 and they applied them here in the States. How given 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:42.400 the lessons from elsewhere, what we think of as rules 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:44.480 and regulations in the United States, how has that been 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.680 able to happen here? That is the question. In different places, 0:15:47.680 --> 0:15:51.520 I think, because of different reasons. The term I would 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:54.400 use as public poverty. You know, what do you mean 0:15:54.400 --> 0:15:58.240 by that? I mean, in Pennsylvania, basically a failure of 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:03.160 the state to have enough sources to even safeguard regulations. 0:16:03.240 --> 0:16:06.760 I mean before I began this project. And certainly they're 0:16:06.800 --> 0:16:09.040 a husband and wife legal team in the book, you know, 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:13.480 and they're no hand ringing environmentalists. The wife, Kendra Smith, 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:17.640 is a corporate defense attorney who mostly handles asbestos and 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:21.040 exposure cases for railroads, and she defends them, right, and 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:25.760 she defends railroads, and yet for this case, she decided 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:28.080 to take on her first plane off case and to 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.920 switch sides, and both she and her husband the reason 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:33.440 they did that is they, like so many of us, 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.840 had assumed that the regulations were not only in place, 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:40.120 but they were also being enforced. And the truth is 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:44.280 neither of those is accurate. So it was really you know, 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:46.320 one of the things that I think we have to 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:49.360 do a better job at is you know, when we 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:54.520 see people talking about fracking, they're usually talking about the 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:59.320 abuses of the corporations themselves. But Kendra, who's a corporate 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.920 defense attorney, would make the case that that's what corporations do. 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:06.040 They protect their own interests, that it's really the failure 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.520 on behalf of the state that is most shocking in 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:11.760 this case. And is it a failure on the state's failure. 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:13.600 Is it a failure to put in place the right 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:16.040 regulations or is it a failure to enforce those are 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:17.920 in place that are in place, or is it both? 0:17:18.160 --> 0:17:21.920 It's absolutely both. So when it comes to how they 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:24.920 even think, how they even come up with the adequate 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.240 with the regulations at all, what they're doing is they're 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.440 usually working with the oil and gas company. That's not new. 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.800 That's how regulation is made. You know, the regulation from 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:38.000 the beginning can be compromised because corporate interests are involved 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:42.080 in establishing what the regulation should be. But in this case, 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:46.160 there are two other problems. One is that these sites 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:51.240 are so isolated, they're so protected that the regulators are 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:54.520 dependent on the companies for knowing what the hell is 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.960 going on there. You know, they they don't have the expertise, 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.600 they don't have the instrument it's to test. They need 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.600 the companies themselves to tell them what's going on. And 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.760 that is obviously a problem. On top of which they 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:10.320 just have inadequate numbers of people. They don't have enough 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:12.639 bodies to go out there and do the kind of 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.880 regulation that needs to be done. Is that a microcosm 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:18.360 of regulation in America? In other words, what you just 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:22.000 said is perhaps exacerbated by the conditions in Appalachia. But 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:23.919 on the other hand, it reminds me a lot of 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:26.840 what happens in Washington, DC with the finance industry, right, 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:31.160 government being dependent on business to write the laws. That's 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:33.720 exactly right. And on top of that, I think one 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.359 other parallel there to draw. You know, a friend of 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.399 mine who's a bnchor is always talking about who she's 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:44.000 meeting as regulators. One thing that happens here is that, 0:18:44.040 --> 0:18:47.160 you know, the regulators themselves, these guys who are going 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:51.600 out and doing basically monitoring these sites, are not making 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:55.639 enough money. And you know in the book, one of 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:57.840 the things one of the people who is harmed in 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.399 the course of the book is standing there at one 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.800 of these sites and the state regulator asks the gas 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:08.359 company representative if their jobs available? Right? So then who's 0:19:08.400 --> 0:19:11.800 to blame there? You know, when we say in Pennsylvania 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:16.160 State Impact, the MPR station has done some excellent reporting 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:19.920 on the revolving door between public interests and private industry 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.680 and I think that kind of one day I'm a regulator, 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:27.040 the next I'm working for a corporation that definitely applies 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:29.760 in the financial industry. I never forget. I was sitting 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.240 with Dan mud who was the CEO Fanny May during 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:34.119 the financial crisis, and we are in front of a 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.399 room full of students, and they were complaining about Fanny 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.080 May's behavior and how the regulators hadn't reined it in. 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.720 And Dan looked around the room and said, Okay, raise 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:44.560 your hand if you're here going to the University of 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.479 Chicago planning to be a regulator. Right of course? Right? 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.800 Not a single hand went up, right. And even people 0:19:50.800 --> 0:19:53.359 who do go into regulation are doing that with a 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:55.960 short term thinking, well, I'm going to get the expertise 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:59.119 to flip sides, and are they to be blamed for that? 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.520 You know, we'll have families to support. Isn't another part 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:07.200 of the complexity with what happens with natural resources though, 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:09.640 that there is a very real trade off here, right 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:13.959 The business itself may exploit people, and yet it provides jobs. 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:17.320 And so there's a willingness perhaps on the part of governments, 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:19.880 or an inclination maybe to look the other way because 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:23.600 of this very real issue of jobs a thousand percent. 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:26.800 And this is especially true in Pennsylvania because of the 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:33.080 two thousand and eight crisis. The financial crisis really was massive, crazy, 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:36.080 the ways in which the financial crisis reverberated in all 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:38.520 these ways we don't think about, right whether giving birth 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:40.520 to fracking, which will come back to, but in this 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:45.400 way too, making Pennsylvania need a fracking revolution economically absolutely, 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:50.520 and making basically making politicians willing to sign off on 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.000 vast tracts of land for oil and gas interests where 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.159 they wouldn't have been otherwise because they had to plug 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:59.360 a budget shortfall. And I just want to note that 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:01.679 that was a Republican governor who did that. That was 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.600 Ed Rendell. That was a Democrat. So when we get 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:08.400 into like the easy polarization on fracking in Pennsylvania, it's 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.760 much more complex, and that's one reason it's so interesting, 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.360 well so complex everywhere. If you think about it, it's 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:17.520 President Barack Obama who overturned the ban on exports, right, 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:22.960 So it's a Democrat, a democratic administration arguably somewhat friendly 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.720 to environmentalists, who overturned a forty year ban on fracking. 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:30.320 I'm sorry on oil exports a thousand percent. I mean 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:34.000 time and again in this book didn't take place under 0:21:34.000 --> 0:21:37.240 the Trump administration. This is all on Obama that if 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:40.800 you think about other industries that are resource extractive, whether 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:43.400 coal or iron mining, where I grew up, you had 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:45.680 a sort of alliance among the people who live there 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.000 in the sense of unions and everybody. Kind of maybe 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.640 I'm oversimplifying, but it seems to me that people felt 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:53.719 the same way and were unified in the sense of 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:58.160 better conditions for the miners. But fracking uniquely has divided 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:01.480 communities in a way that I think these other industries haven't. 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:04.240 And what's the other side of this divide? Why were 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:07.840 some people in amity and prosperity extremely supportive of fracking. Yeah, 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:11.199 we're an r We're an our supportive of wrecking. And 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.480 it's really important to say that because for some of 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.159 the people in the community. I'm thinking of a farmer 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:21.640 named Ray Day in particular, fracking not only has allowed 0:22:21.760 --> 0:22:25.480 him to repair the roof on his farm and buy 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:28.439 new tractors, it allowed him to put a first floor 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:31.600 basement into his mother's farmhouse, which allowed her to die 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:35.600 at home. Ray lives on one of the larger farms 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:40.159 in Washington County, and he and his brothers signed a 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:44.520