Author Archive

Protesters are super-gluing themselves to fracking sites now

Grist: In the past week, three women super-glued themselves to objects at fracking test site Barton Moss to protest the announcement. One of them even dressed up like Where’s Waldo (although, fun fact, they call him Wally over there): Last Thursday, this 21-year-old glued herself to the gate at Barton Moss. She managed to delay fracking trucks’ departure for two hours, after which she was arrested and other protesters marched by the trucks as they left. Unfortunately she also, uh, ate some of the glue...

Guess who’s cashing in on fracking? The Amish

Grist: Since the Amish are opposed to cars, electricity, and orgies, you might think they’d frown on money, too. Like, “Keep your wealth in hay bales” could totally be an Amish saying, or maybe “bonnets over Benjamins.” But while greed and materialism aren’t part of an Amish paradise, nearly 40 Amish families in eastern Ohio are taking piles of cash from oil and gas companies. Chesapeake Energy and others are paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars, tax free, in order to drill on their property....

Fracking linked to rape, meth addiction, and STDs

Grist: Yet another reason to hate fracking: It’s connected with an increase in STDs, car crashes, drug-related crimes, and sexual assault in areas where the oil and gas industry sets up shop. Or in Vice-speak, fracking workers have “an insatiable appetite for raw sex and hard drugs." Writes Peter Rugh on Vice: Critics of fracking have compared it to raping the Earth, but where drilling has spread, literal rape has followed. Violence against woman in fracking boomtowns in North Dakota and Montana has...

Oops: Illegal carcinogen found in nearly 100 shampoos

Grist: You’d think that something you buy at the grocery store and slather on your head would be tested to make sure it won’t kill you. Or at least that it wouldn’t include a suspected carcinogen banned in at least one state. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. Amanda Just of Ecorazzi writes: The Center for Environmental Health, based in Oakland, California, did some independent laboratory tests on 98 shampoos and soaps to determine if they contained cocamide diethanolamine, also known as cocamide DEA,...