Status Updates From Amity and Prosperity: One F...

"Some feel that the price was worth paying; others don't."

"We uglified our land and called it progress."

"For the administration, the economic and climate benefits of fracking outweighed the possible environmental hazards. But in Stacey's eyes, Obama was sacrificing her family in favor of some fucked-up utilitarian principle." "It was Stacey against most of the world, and Stacey was losing."

Any action has an equal but opposite reaction. A zero-sum game. Someone loses. Suffering is all in the game. But for what?

"Obama, like many others, saw natural gas as a 'bridge fuel': a necessary step in the transition from coal to renewables. In his administration's efforts to stave off climate change, some fossil fuels seemed better than others. Replacing coal-fired power plants with those fueled by natural gas would reduce America's carbon emissions by half."

"The farm was lost to her now, and so was the hopeful young woman who'd lived there, so sure that hard work would yield her the life she dreamed of. Now, much like her parents, who were often jobless workaholics, Stacey no longer believed that hard work yielded anything other than exhaustion."

To quote Min Jin Lee, "a woman's lot is to suffer."

"In Pennsylvania, from 2007 to 2016, tracing the arc of the gas rush, thirty-seven people had moved between the public sector and private industry. Public institutions couldn't retain skilled people because they couldn't afford them. The best people tended to go work for industry."

"According to a mandate adopted by Justinian, the sea, shoreline, air, and rivers belonged to everyone as part of the commons: Salus populi suprema lex esto. The welfare of the people is the supreme law."

"The argument is that (these corporations) are creating jobs, but they're destroying our long-term wealth, which is based in property. People who can afford to will leave, and that will gut our tax base."

Relevant due to the data center debates. Who wants to live near that?

A good nutshell of ideology: "I'm not opposed to industry, but by the same token, I will absolutely defend people's constitutional rights" when threatened.

"As he saw it, this gas boom was eroding public welfare in the form of politicasl payouts like the million-plus dollars that went into the governor's campaign coffers."

For context, former Republican governor Tom Corbett received "$1.17 million in campaign donations from the oil & gas industry."

"The DEP and the oil and gas industry seemed to be on the same side, and, sitting at one table on the far end of the courtroom, they weren't even trying to hide it."

Corporations, from natural gas, to oil, to AI data centers. All pass the buck. All make big promises of investment, but like every parasite, they drain until there is little left, then they head somewhere else. They socialize their costs down to everyone else. Their lobbyists do the talking and dirty work.

"When coal and steel were at their peak, the rivers of the rust belt were so toxic they caught fire."

"Exploiting energy often involves exploiting people."

This book was