Dateline: 7 March 2012
There is a man in Sempronius, a vocal proponent of hydrofracking, who has suggested to me that I’m opposed to hydrofracking because I don’t have enough land to have a gas well and make a lot of money from it. In other words, that I’m jealous of him and other pro-fracking landowners who hope to make a lot of money as a result of gas drilling on their land. And it is my jealousy of their good fortune that drives me to oppose hydrofracking.
Well, as I’ve made clear, I’m not opposed to hydrofracking. I’m opposed to current hydrofracking technology that has proven itself to be unsafe for communities where it has been used. And I’m not opposed to any good business venture, as I explained in This Essay. As for what motivates me to raise concerns and voice objections about hydrofracking in Sempronius, I offer the following essay. It gets to the heart of why I have taken the position I have taken.
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I think it would be an interesting project to survey elected officials at all levels of government, all across America, and see how they would answer this question:
What is the primary purpose of government?
I have a feeling that there would be a range of answers, but there is only one correct answer...
The primary, fundamental, and most legitimate purpose of government is to protect people, and especially to protect weak and innocent people who are not capable of defending themselves. Furthermore, government serves to punish those who do harm to innocent people. By punishing those who do harm, justice is served and a message is communicated to others, that they will pay a price if they harm innocent people.
Not all governments in the history of the world have protected their people. As we know, some governments have, and currently do, actively oppress and harm innocent and defenseless people. But we in the Western world see such governments as morally wrong, even evil.
If we accept that the fundamental and most legitimate purpose of government is to protect the innocent from harm, then it follows that the primary function of any elected government official is to protect the life and liberty of those they represent. This is true on national, state, and local levels of government.
On the level of Sempronius town government, we don’t usually deal with weighty matters related to protecting people in our town (we have no police force). But we do have a judge and we do have some laws designed to protect the general public. For instance, we have local laws that pertain to dogs. We don’t want dogs running wild, we want dogs to get their rabies shots, and if there is a dog that is determined to be dangerous, we have laws in effect that allow us to deal with that. All of this is to protect the health, safety and general welfare of all people in our community.
But, for the most part, we at the local level of government are more focused on maintaining town roads (so they are safe) and, with that in mind, spending tax dollars responsibly. When something like unconventional gas drilling (hydrofracking) comes along, we in local government are faced with an unconventional issue.
What makes this issue so hard is that there are competing interests involved. Some landowners want the money that they believe will come to them when gas wells are drilled on their land, while other landowners are concerned about the negative impact that gas drilling may have on them and their families.
So hydrofracking becomes a contentious issue and local government officials (like myself) are faced with responsibilities and concerns that they have never faced before.
When a big, contentious, unconventional issue like hydrofracking comes along I think it helps for government officials to go to the fundamentals, to take a closer look at the precepts that government-as-we-know-it are founded on, to clearly understand our most important responsibilities as elected public servants.
When I do that, when I consider that the health, safety and welfare of the entire community I represent is my most important responsibility, then I have to make a determination if hydrofracking is safe, or safe enough by any reasonable standard.
To determine that, I need to look at the established track record of hydrofracking. And when I’ve done that, I’ve gotten very concerned. I see innocent people who have been, and are being, harmed by this heavy industrial activity near their homes. It is hard not to see it if you really look.
And, in the end, I find myself faced with choosing to support the narrow economic self interests of a few in our community, or to protect the general welfare of all in our community. That being the case, my choice becomes very clear, especially when the people who may suffer harm are people I know and who trust me to do what I can to protect them from this harm. That is, after all, what all of this boils down to.
In time, if the gas industry, with its unconventional gas drilling technology, can make their technology much safer, and establish a track record that attests to that, it would make all the difference. In the meantime, I believe it behooves our town to enact a moratorium in order to better understand this issue and the impact it will have on our community.
Better safe than sorry.