Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono Recruit Famous Friends for Anti-Fracking Clip
Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon have put up billboards, run a TV ad and presented petitions in opposition of fracking, now they've recruited celebrity friends including Liv Tyler, Susan Sarandon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt for the new video to their song "Don't Frack My Mother," which debuted last summer on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
The song is the latest entry in their Artists Against Fracking campaign to persuade New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo not to allow gas companies to use hydraulic fracturing in New York state to extract natural gas trapped deep within underground rock.
The video intersperses shots of Lennon, Ono and actors and musicians, also including Maggie Gyllenhaal, SNL's Fred Armisen and members of the Strokes, Wilco and the Black Keys, with statistics about fracking and drilling. As Lennon pleads, "Please, don't frack my mother," Ono interjects, "Don't frack me!"
Cuomo last fall postponed a decision on fracking until February, but the state missed a procedural deadline last month that will further delay efforts to finalize regulations on hydraulic fracturing. Missing the deadline required the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to re-propose the regulations, and allow 45 days for public comment.
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The hippy in me would love to live on sunbeams, rainbows and the wind. The engineer in me just loves the whole petrochemical industry.
One side says it's the cleanest, easiest accessible source right now while the other says it's a ticking time bomb ..why don't they find the middle road for economic and environment?
Fracking is a method that has been used for many years. It has been used safely with no more impact than traditional gas production. But traditional gas production has its problems. You have to know what you do and even if you do there are always risks for earthquakes (depending on the soil and rock-formation), environmental impact from things like condensate that will also be produced and that might leak and than of course there is safety for people; it is still a dangerous, flammable gas. But generally speaking both shale (won by fracking)and traditional gas are not unsafe energy sources compared to others. Traditional gas is preferred because it is just easier and you have to put less energy in to getting it out of the ground than shale gas.
Fracking as it is done currently in the States has some serious issues however, because people doing it are using needlessly dangerous chemicals, don't dispose of them properly, and there is often no infrastructure, like pipelines, waste disposal etc. Many of the issues that exists (burning water for instance) are the consequence of a bad finishing of the wells, drilling in unsuitable areas and simply people wanting to becoming rich as fast as they can without out a care for the world. Proper regulation done by people who know how things work could minimize these things. But it isn't as simple as forbidding fracking I think.