I’m sorry, New Yorkers. The sad news came last week: You will be denied the benefits and pleasures of a life with natural gas fracking.
Activist NY Governor Andrew Cuomo banned the practice, bowing to Big Environmentalists, and denying good, honest New Yorkers access to high-quality, flammable drinking water. Here, in a spirit of mourning and loss, is the bold, bright future that New Yorkers have been denied:
* The excitement of the unknown: The recipe for a boring life is stasis. This day repeats the last, every day the same. With fracking, New Yorkers could have had some mystery in their lives. What would fracking do to NY residents? Would it make them sick? Would it give them superpowers? Would it grant them immortality? WHO KNOWS?! No one has yet done the science to say. So, instead of waking up each morning and checking to see what new powers and/or diseases this mysterious and sexy new presence had given them, New Yorkers must simply awake to the same steadily, boringly warming climate as the rest of us.
* Enriched water: If you’re anything like me, you’re tired of boring old water. What even IS it? It’s clear, there’s nothing floating in it, and it has no taste or any real benefits to the human body that anyone ever has been able to discern. Enter fracking: Do you know what fracking is? Fracking is like the MiO of groundwater. Is your water table boring and lifeless, full of familiar Oxygen and vanilla Hydrogen (twice, for crying out loud)? With fracking, you can inject some texture-rich sand and some delicious, probably nutrient-rich chemicals right in there. Millions of gallons of fascinating toxins adding up to a vibrant chemical stew. Delicious. Squirt some!
* Dancing: Have trouble shaking your thang? Get a little nervous about demonstrating what it is in fact that you are working with? Knee joints locked in position? Dancing can be intimidating if you’re shy or repressed, and there’s a decent chance some of those rural areas in upstate New York suffer from some of that. In steps fracking, ready to (literally) shake things up in this stick-in-the-mud town. Fracking, you see, can cause earthquakes. Not the big, scary California-style earthquakes. Just little pleasant ones that get your knees knocking and your hips gyrating. That’s right: Andrew Cuomo just banned dancing.
* Flambeau! Dancing’s fine, but not nearly as sexy as a flaming cocktail. Such an intoxicating mix of danger and excitement, elegance and class. Usually, you’d have to go to a top-flight club or an embarrassing college bar to get it. But with fracking, you can enjoy a flaming drink without even buying liquor. Methane leached into wells by fracking can turn a glass of water from your home faucet into a nightclub treat: full of toxins and fully on fire.
* Anti-Polar Vortex: The good citizens in America’s energy companies are hard at work trying to fight the scourge of really cold winters. The 2013-14 winter froze us all solid, and frackers would have done their part to combat such frigidity by pumping methane into the atmosphere. And methane kicks carbon dioxide’s ass as a greenhouse gas, with over 20 times the globe-warming power. Even better? Natural gas drilling can take you to California, giving your town the same air as sunny Los Angeles! That’s Hollywood, baby!
These are the harsh truths, of loss and deprivation. But with knowledge, hopefully, comes action. Get out there and donate to an energy corporation today.