The links below provide an outline of the material for this lesson. Be sure to carefully read through the entire lesson before returning to Canvas to submit your assignments.
This week will focus on Natural Resource Extraction and, in particular, the energy industry and natural gas drilling. Rising energy demands around the world since the Industrial Revolution place an increasing burden on the environment and those who work and live in the landscapes of oil and gas drilling, and the pollution resulting from the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels is distributed unevenly. We will use our previous work - especially ideas of "scarcity," "nature," and environmental justice - to think about social, environmental, and economic costs, and about more just and sustainable ways we might regulate the extraction of natural resources.
Check the calendar in Canvas for specific due dates.
In your assignments, you are expected to include the full citations for these and other materials as detailed in our Quick Guide to Citations & References [1]. Note that some of the information is (deliberately) missing from the references provided above! You will have to find the rest of the information yourself!
Let's dive in!
Tom Wilber has worked as an environmental journalist for more than 17 years and has won awards for his coverage of the Marcellus Shale and natural gas extraction. Below is the jacket material and trailer for his book Under the Surface:
Running from southern West Virginia through eastern Ohio, across central and northeast Pennsylvania, and into New York through the Southern Tier and the Catskills, the Marcellus Shale geological formation underlies a sparsely populated region that features striking landscapes, critical watersheds, and a struggling economic base. It also contains one of the world's largest supplies of natural gas, a resource that has been dismissed as inaccessible—until recently. Technological developments that combine horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") have removed physical and economic barriers to extracting hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of gas from bedrock deep below the Appalachian basin. Beginning in 2006, the first successful Marcellus gas wells by Range Resources, combined with a spike in the value of natural gas, spurred a modern-day gold rush—a "gas rush"—with profound ramifications for environmental policy, energy markets, political dynamics, and the lives of the people living in the Marcellus region. Under the Surface is the first book-length journalistic overview of shale gas development and the controversies surrounding it.
Control over drilling rights is at stake in the heart of Marcellus country—northeast Pennsylvania and central New York. The decisions by landowners to work with or against the companies—and the resulting environmental and economic consequences—are scrutinized by neighbors faced with similar decisions, by residents of cities whose water supply originates in the exploration area, and by those living across state lines with differing attitudes and policies concerning extraction industries. Wilber's evenhanded treatment gives a voice to all constituencies, including farmers and landowners tempted by the prospects of wealth but wary of the consequences, policymakers struggling with divisive issues, and activists coordinating campaigns based on their respective visions of economic salvation and environmental ruin. Wilber describes a landscape in which the battle over the Marcellus ranges from the very local—yard signs proclaiming landowners' allegiances for or against shale gas development—to often conflicting municipal, state, and federal legislation intended to accelerate, delay, or discourage exploration.
TOM WILBER: Before frack became a loaded word, there was a time when the public was generally enthusiastic about shale gas development. I began covering the story of the Marcellus Shale when I was a reporter for the Press & Sun-Bulletin in 2008. Few people then really appreciated what the Marcellus was or what it was worth.
Landmen were leasing rights to all the land they could find for $5 an acre. When a group of farmers in Broome County landed to deal with a Texas company, XTO Energy, to lease 50,000 acres for $110 million, that's when people began paying attention. People who were sold on the prospects of clean-burning natural gas as a means to cleaner energy, national independence, and untold fortunes for the working farmer facing tax debts.
And then, on January 1, 2009, Norma Fiorentino's well exploded. It was an event that became iconic of the greatest environmental movement since Love Canal. Norma is a plumber's widow and home health aide who lives across the border of New York state in a trailer on a 7-acre homestead in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania.
NORMA: DEP was here today. And he said, I have to take your well and I have to take two different sites because, he said, the last one came back 25% gas. So whatever you do, don't drink it, he said.
TOM WILBER: I think of Norma as the Rosa Parks of the anti-fracking movement. Under the Surface chronicles the circumstances that ushered in a new era of on-shore drilling. It's a story of hope, naivete, and dashed expectations. And it's the story of a clash of ideology in two states straddling one of the richest natural gas resources in the world.
As you read and reflect, consider these questions:
Seamus McGraw grew up pitching hay and spreading manure on the same fields the gas companies are now prospecting, and he still lives in the woods of northeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and four children. McGraw is a freelance writer who has published extensively on the drilling industry in his home state.
You can read more of his coverage of the Marcellus Shale here:
Pittsburgh Quarterly articles:
Workers wanted: the Marcellus Shale [2]
Marcellus Shale: A Tricky Situation [3]
Click on the image below to watch an interview with the author.
As you read and reflect, consider these questions:
Nancy D. Perkins is Associate Dean and Professor of Law at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She teaches Property and Environmental Law, and her research and scholarship explores the intersection of these two areas with a special focus on sustainability, equity, and feminism.
This article examines the legislation regulating horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale, with a particular focus on Act 13, which privileges the zoning rights of the state over those of local municipalities, and which Perkins argues prioritizes the interests of drilling companies over local social and environmental concerns. Since the writing of this article, this provision has been challenged in court.
Click on the link below for recent news coverage of Act 13 of Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale drilling law.
"Pennsylvania Supreme Court declares portions of shale-drilling law unconstitutional" [6]
As you read and reflect, consider these important questions:
Matthew T. Huber is an assistant professor of geography at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. His article, like Perkins', confronts the tensions between the regulation of natural resource extraction at different scales. Unlike the other articles for this week, his does not focus on natural gas, but rather on the oil industry. However, his analysis is central to our discussion of the Marcellus Shale, because "peak oil" is often raised as justification for extracting natural gas quickly and in maximum volumes.
You should notice similarities between Huber's article and our previous engagements with ideas of "scarcity" in Weeks 2 and 3. You will also notice parallels between the discussion of the dangers of overproduction between this article and our look at the national corn industry. Remember, geographers who study human-environment relations and natural resource management have long been interested in the different meanings of resource scarcity. Pay close attention to how maintaining overproduction or resource scarcity serves different interests, and how this conflict has influenced resource extraction.
As you read this article, consider the following questions:
The outline should be approximately 2-3 pages, and should include the structure that your final essay will follow. For each section of your outline, you should provide key supporting sentences that explain what you will write in your paper. You should also indicate where you will include some of the resources that you listed in your annotated bibliography.
Your outline should:
Here is an example of what part of your outline might look like:
Boykoff, M. T., & Boykoff, J. M. (2007). Climate change and journalistic norms: A case-study of US mass-media coverage.Geoforum,38(6), 1190–1204.
Hannigan, J. (2014).Environmental sociology. New York: Routledge.
Swim, J. K., & Bloodhart, B. (2015). Portraying the Perils to Polar Bears: The Role of Empathic and Objective Perspective-taking Toward Animals in Climate Change Communication.Environmental Communication,9(4), 446–468.
Weingart, P., Engels, A., & Pansegrau, P. (2000). Risks of communication: discourses on climate change in science, politics, and the mass media.Public Understanding of Science,9(3), 261–283.
You should begin working on your outline so you not rushed when it is due in week 10. Your outline should be submitted as a word document or a pdf file.
When you are ready to submit your outline, return to Canvas and open the Final Essay Component: Outline assignment in the Lesson 10 module.
NOTE:
If your submission is late, you will NOT be assigned anyone to peer review and you will miss out on the 20 available peer review points. Also, no one will review your work, so please be on time.
Peer Reviews:
After the Tuesday night due date has passed for your initial outline submission, please return to the Final Essay Component: Outline assignment page in the Week 10 module in Canvas and click on the "Peer Review" link to see who you have been assigned to peer review.
This week, we have learned about how natural resource extraction is shaped by political struggles, and how it can transform the environment and the lives of those who live and work in landscapes of extraction. We have focused on the natural gas and oil industries to consider the social, economic, and environmental impacts of natural resource extraction. We have studied how ideas of scarcity and overproduction influence decisions about who has the right to extract what resources, where, how, and what kinds of protections are put in place for the people and environments that are impacted the most. And, we have also examined how government regulation can shape the impacts of natural resource extraction.
All assignments will be submitted in Canvas, check the calendar in Canvas for specific due dates.
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog430/node/280
[2] http://pittsburghquarterly.com/pq-commerce/pq-energy/item/20-workers-wanted.html
[3] http://pittsburghquarterly.com/pq-commerce/pq-energy/item/1075-marcellus-shale-tricky-situation.html
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYGMnG2hRsc
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYGMnG2hRsc
[6] http://www.post-gazette.com/local/2013/12/19/Pennsylvania-Supreme-Court-declares-portions-of-shale-drilling-law-unconstitutional/stories/201312190254
[7] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog430/280