Congratulations to all forum-participating CarrHillians! Durhamnicks! Chathamites! A preliminary public, moral victory has been won!
The slumberous corporate news-fuscation, subserviently compliant and complacent state bureaucracy and positively illusioned N.C./ legislative elite (including Gov. Beverly From-Sunnybrook-Farm Perdue) foregone-conclusioned, and widely-prognosticated and anticipated (with an occasional condescending nod to the well-being of Mother Nature’s well water) martial plague of hydro-fracking in Triassic Basin, North Carolina, has been delayed for two years.
The Gas Rushers have not yet fully surrendered to reason, but the delay is a hard-fought reprieve from impending petro-state-legislated fiat. It is a hard-won democratic, public victory. Your words and your voices forced the perceived mighty to begin to take personal, moral responsibility for the complexity of our ecological conscience, our environmental consciousness and our existential wovenness with homeland, homeair and homewater.
A breath of Carr-Chapa-Chatham Spring has occurred. The vocal siege of DENR in the presence of their overlords by the one voice: steadfast, eloquent, passionate, prepared, persistent, sincere, wry, fragile, gentle, tough, thoughtful, anguished, vulnerable, irritated, outraged, humorous, poetic, courageous, forceful, skeptical, assertive and imperative. “Fracking, you say? No thank you! We will pass on that pestilence.â€
Your conscience and your rationality were heard. You were the beloved community those nights, from wherever you came, and from whichever urge urged you to speak. Your heartfelt witness has become sand in the gears of what was until the recent public forums an unrelentingly Ignorant-of-the-People’s-Wellbeing assault and fraud on, and deception of, public sensibility and justice, civic harmony, community integrity and a decent glass of water to drink. Until one week ago, the frack fix was in for this summer, but you flummoxed the beast. Now it must recalculate.
Although no person of very high public moral standing and trust in favor of fracking has yet stepped forward to take personal responsibility for the eagerly awaited utopian age of fracking in North Carolina (and it is unlikely that any will), the beast does have a conscience, if only a corrupt and cynical one. Your conscience stirred its conscience. You spoke truth to power. And your voice was heard.
Bravo Carhillians and Greater Eastern Piedmonters!
Mac Cullen
Chapel Hill