Abstract: If fracking is so bad, why are you supporting it?…
It’s quite possible that when discussion around fracking turns nasty, I am the only person that sees its connection to the foot soldiers throughout history who have faced condemnation for the orders of their masters. Except in this case, we are those ‘foot soldiers’, and we are also our own masters.
I have a habit of seeing connections that others say don’t exist. My wife says I’m just ‘otherwise’; and yet Malcolm Gladwell, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner do exactly the same thing, and their careers have been highly lucrative! I must write these things down.
But I digress. In 2004 when news broke that American military police guards at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had been torturing Iraqi prisoners of war, the finger of responsibility was jabbed at the guards, then their direct commanders, then the American military machine, and, finally, at ‘society’ in general.
The guards claimed they were simply following orders, and that these orders were either directly given or indirectly understood.
This is a common defence where foot soldiers have been involved in atrocities. When dragged before a tribunal to account for their actions, they have claimed they were ‘just following orders’.
But what if they had been directly or indirectly sending a demand up the chain of command to execute those actions for which stood accused? Would it be fair to demand they account for those actions?
It’s a rhetorical question, and one that should be borne in mind whenever public opinion cries foul over fracking, or to use its more accurate name – hydraulic fracturing. This relatively new development is used by the energy industry to access untapped reserves of oil or natural gas, such as that locked within shale rock.
It’s a highly technical procedure that involves powering large amounts of water and chemicals, under extreme pressure, into fissures within the shale to release the reserves of gas. It’s geologically invasive, and, to a relatively high degree, experimental.
It’s also highly controversial and, in some countries, even banned.
But have those who condone fracking ever stopped to think why energy companies are doing it? Is it because they get some kind of perverse kick of rupturing the ground beneath our feet – the geological equivalent of dropkicking the neighbour’s Maltese poodle? Do they bottle the gas and put it on shelves to proudly admire over a six-pack of beers? Are they training for a Fracking World Cup?
Of course not. Energy companies are fracking because we demand cheap fuel. Every time the price of fuel goes up, we complain, and so we should; but when we do, we send a message up the chain of provision that we’re unhappy. This puts pressure on energy companies to find better/easier/cheaper sources of fuel. But fuel doesn’t grow on trees…Actually, that’s not entirely true. Fuel is trees, just long dead, seriously squashed trees.
As a result, some perilous digging and drilling needs to take place, and that has nasty consequences for our planet. However, we believe the planet is big enough to take the occasional knock or two. Or three.
But what if every time an oil well was drilled a baby panda died? I’d hazard a guess people would be unhappy; but they’d still fill up with fuel, after all, how else are they going to get their children to soccer practice.
It’s the price we conveniently forget to pay for being a consumer – the damage done in the provision of the products we consume. Every iPod is packed with rare earth minerals; innocent animals die for every plate of mince; and, of course, petrol comes from a particularly messy procedure that fuels wars.
But we demand affordable products and reward companies that find us the most affordable products by buying them; and in the process we send a message, either directly or indirectly, up the chain of provision that we don’t really care what they do to get them.
In a way it’s like the guards at Abu Gharib sending a message up the chain of command saying, “we’d really like to beat these people, but we don’t want to be accountable for our actions, please can you just give us the order to do so”; and their commanders, wanting to keep their soldiers motivated, doing just that.
As consumers we’re no mere footsoldiers at the bidding of our masters; it is we who send the orders. Fracking is nasty, there’s no denying that; but until we come to terms with the fact that it’s what we’ve ordered, we have to be guarded in condemning it.
Originally published in the June 2012 edition of Leadership