• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Renewables ‘Set to Soar’ with 440 GW of New Installations in 2023: IEA June 4, 2023
Greek Industrial Giant Announces 1.4-GW Alberta Solar Farm, Canada’s Biggest June 4, 2023
Shift to Remote Work Cuts Commutes, Frees Downtown Space for Affordable Housing June 4, 2023
2.7M Hectares Lost, Nova Scotia at Ground Zero in ‘Unprecedented’ Early Wildfire Season June 4, 2023
Is Equinor’s Bay du Nord ‘Delay’ a Cancellation in Slow Motion? June 1, 2023
Next
Prev

Anti-Fracking Evidence Collides with Local Culture for Appalachia Residents

September 28, 2021
Reading time: 3 minutes

Ruhrfisch/Wikimedia Commons

Ruhrfisch/Wikimedia Commons

 

Residents of small-town Appalachia have been forced to weigh their concerns about methane in their drinking water against a desire to protect a culture of co-operation, self-reliance, and sovereignty, a U.S. author says. 

After spending time with a Hughesville, Pennsylvania, family who had refused to go public about their neighbourhood’s poisoned water, environmental sociologist Colin Jerolmack realized their choice to stay quiet “wasn’t about what was in it for them. It was about defending their community,” he writes in a summary of his latest book, Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town, for The New York Times. 

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
Subscribe

In the wake of a tumultuous town hall meeting eight years ago, Jerolmack recounts that he thought the patriarch of the family, Tom Crawley, was primed to become an “accidental activist,” given his frustration about a fracking company whose activities had left their drinking water bubbling over with methane—and a local Republican politician’s failure to address the problem.

Likewise present at the meeting were representatives of the Responsible Drilling Alliance, a local anti-fracking group. When he saw them approach Crawley, Jerolmack expected the resident would be thrilled to find someone willing to back his cause. 

“I was wrong,” he writes. Not only did Crawley rebuff the Alliance, he also refused to give any further details about himself or his water problems to a local paper. 

What Jerolmack later learned was that Crawley and his wife were concerned that drawing attention to the issue would put the family who owned the property on which the fracking well sat at risk of harassment by anti-fracking activists—something he said the community had already experienced in 2013, when an Artists Against Fracking tour bus full of “celebrities and journalists from New York City” came to town.  

“Do you have the right to come protesting in my area because of something that’s not going to affect you and you live 100, 200 miles away?” asked Crawley. He also wondered how many of the people who protest fracking “live in a high-rise building that’s heated by gas.” 

While the alliance that approached Crawley was a local organization based in Williamsport, just 27 kilometres from Hughsville, Jerolmack says he agrees that “anti-fracking activism is not, for the most part, NIMBYism—it’s largely a not in your backyard movement spearheaded by progressives living in urban and coastal areas.”

The Crawleys, he writes,  “feared that ‘raising a stink’ about their problem might invite greater oversight of the industry” and hurt the economic prospects of their fellow townspeople: “the neighbour whose family farm was no longer a millstone to unload now that it was bringing in gas royalties, or the friend who was laid off but found a better-paying job driving a water truck for the oil and gas industry.”

The Crawleys were also determined to protect cherished “small-town community norms” like land sovereignty, a value that might seem imperilled by anti-fracking messaging about the need for “greater government regulation over personal land use decisions.” 

“Viewed in this light, the Crawleys’ continued public support of fracking, and their dismissal of environmentalists, was a way of showing solidarity with the community and protecting its ostensibly rural way of life,” writes Jerolmack.



in Climate & Society, Demographics, Energy Politics, Fossil Fuels, Jobs & Training, Jurisdictions, Media, Messaging, & Public Opinion, Oil & Gas, Shale & Fracking, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

sunrise windmill
International Agencies & Studies

Renewables ‘Set to Soar’ with 440 GW of New Installations in 2023: IEA

June 4, 2023
119
Pixabay
Solar

Greek Industrial Giant Announces 1.4-GW Alberta Solar Farm, Canada’s Biggest

June 4, 2023
106
Oregon Department of Transportation/flickr
Cities & Communities

Shift to Remote Work Cuts Commutes, Frees Downtown Space for Affordable Housing

June 4, 2023
70

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

/MaxPixels

‘Substantial Damage’, No Injuries as Freight Train Hits Wind Turbine Blade

May 25, 2022
14.6k
Natural Resources Canada

2.7M Hectares Lost, Nova Scotia at Ground Zero in ‘Unprecedented’ Early Wildfire Season

June 4, 2023
140
sunrise windmill

Renewables ‘Set to Soar’ with 440 GW of New Installations in 2023: IEA

June 4, 2023
119
Pixabay

Greek Industrial Giant Announces 1.4-GW Alberta Solar Farm, Canada’s Biggest

June 4, 2023
106
Inspiration 4 Photos/flickr

Cooling Upper Atmosphere Has Scientists ‘Very Worried’

May 23, 2023
498
Equinor

Is Equinor’s Bay du Nord ‘Delay’ a Cancellation in Slow Motion?

June 1, 2023
859

Recent Posts

Oregon Department of Transportation/flickr

Shift to Remote Work Cuts Commutes, Frees Downtown Space for Affordable Housing

June 4, 2023
70
Clairewych/Pixabay

Demand Surges for Giant Heat Pumps as Europe Turns to District Heating

June 4, 2023
80
nicolasdebraypointcom/pixabay

Factor Gender into Transportation Planning, IISD Analyst Urges Policy-Makers

June 4, 2023
33
moerschy / Pixabay

Federal Climate Plans Must Embrace Community-Driven Resilience

June 4, 2023
48
debannja/Pixabay

Austin, Texas Council Committee Backs Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

June 4, 2023
79
Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-op/Facebook

‘Hinge Moment’ for Humanity Demands ‘YIMBY’ Mentality: McKibben

June 1, 2023
75
Next Post
Jean Gagnon/Wikimedia Commons

Montreal Teacher Steps Down to Protest Climate Education Gaps

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}