We face challenges in communicating energy, climate, and other resource challenges and opportunities for moving forward toward a prosperous, climate-friendly future. Considering the recent climate scientists’ rap video, Who’s a climate scientist?, perhaps it is past time to more regularly sharing videos ‘with a message’.
With that in mind, here is My water’s on fire.
As per Todd at Explainer.NET,
The best explainers are direct, concise and easy to understand. But investigative journalism is rarely any of those things, instead reflecting the messiness of real life. It’s impossible to sum up a massive, immersive experience like “Buried Secrets” in a two-and-a-half minute song. Instead, the intent is to bring people in, to create an easily digestible package that compels news consumers to dig into the real meat of the story. …
An explainer is not “everything you need to know about X.” It’s not a shortcut to becoming an armchair expert. But it is the starting point, the big picture, the tiny bundle of information that gives users the context to appreciate and understand the most challenging and rewarding works of journalism.
Here are the lyrics:
Fracking is a form of natural gas drilling
An alternative to oil cause the oil kept spilling
Bringing jobs to small towns so everybody’s willing
People turn on their lights and the drillers make a killingWater goes into the pipe, the pipe into the ground
The pressure creates fissures 7,000 feet down
The cracks release the gas that powers your town
That well is fracked….. Yeah totally frackedBut there’s more in the water than just H2O
Toxic chemicals help to make the fluid flow
With names like benzene and formaldehyde
You better keep ‘em far away from the water supplyThe drillers say the fissures are a mile below
The groundwater pumped into American homes
But don’t tell it to the residents of Sublette Wy-O
That water’s fracked…. We’re talking Benzene…What the frack is going on with all this fracking going on
I think we need some facts to come to light
I know we want our energy but nothing ever comes for free
I think my water’s on fire tonightSo it all goes back to 2005
Bush said gas drillers didn’t have to comply
with the Safe Drinking Water Act, before too long
It was “frack, baby, frack” until the break of dawn.With the EPA out it was up to the states
But they didn’t have the money to investigate
Sick people couldn’t prove fracking was to blame
All the while water wells were going up in flamesCause it’s hard to contain all the methane released
It can get into the air, it can get into the streams.
It’s a greenhouse gas, worse than CO2
Fracking done wrong could lead to climate change tooNow it’s not that drillers should never be fracking
But the current regulation is severely lacking
Reduce the toxins, contain the gas and wastewater
And the people won’t get sick and the planet won’t get hotterWhat the frack is going on with all this fracking going on
I think we need some facts to come to light
I know we want our energy but nothing ever comes for free
I think my water’s on fire tonight
“My Water’s On Fire Tonight” is a product of Studio 20 NYU in collaboration with ProPublica.org. The song is based on ProPublica’s investigation on hydraulic fractured gas drilling. See also FRACK YOU, Mother Earth!
1 response so far ↓
1 frflyer // May 13, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Wake up and smell the coffee, America. Most of the ways we are now going after fossil fuels are more environmentaly dangerous and usually more expensive than how it has been done in the past.
Fracking
Deep water drilling
Arctic drilling
(now that the Arctic is losing it’s sea ice as a result of burning fossil fuels, they want to drill for more oil there.)
A good rule of thumb is that when you find you have dug yourself into a hole, stop digging.
Mountain top removal for coal, with it’s destruction of hundreds of natural water ways.
Alberta Tar Sands where America’s Canadian oil comes from, has been called the most destructive project on earth. 3 times the CO2 emissions of normal oil.