Our own worst enemies

    I think there’s some irony in the hydraulic fracturing debate going on in Commerce City.
    For those not keeping tabs on this issue, residents have voiced their concerns over what chemicals are being pumped into the ground as part of the hydraulic fracturing process and the impact those chemicals may have on the environment, especially groundwater.

    I think those are valid concerns. And while aiming to stop the process of hydraulic fracturing might be a bit of a pipe-dream (no pun intended), I don’t think it’s unreasonable for oil and gas companies to disclose what chemicals they are using to reach mineral and gas deposits.
    The irony for me comes in the fact that we have a real big problem with a Halliburton or, in this case, Hillcorp, crew showing up in our backyard and drilling for oil.
    We come up with clever protest signs “Like get the frack out of Denver,” and, “Are you trying to fracking kill us?” (Full disclosure: Didn’t see the last sign, made it up, might even get it on a T-shirt).
    My point is if there’s even a presumption that somebody else might be threatening our health and well-being, we get pretty damn upset, even if we don’t definitively know that we are being put at risk.
    But, as for what we do to our own environment and our bodies, willingly? That’s a completely different story.        We flush old prescription medications down the toilet. We let antifreeze run down the gutter to the storm drain. We chuck trash out our car window on to the highway. And I’m just skimming the surface of our environmental faux pas.
    And ourselves?
    We smoke. Am I trying to take away that right from you? Absolutely not. But if a government agent came to your door and told you “You need to inhale these highly addictive but extremely dangerous chemicals every 15 minutes every day for the next 30 to 35 years,” we would lose our minds.
    And we don’t even have to go to the super-charged debate of tobacco usage to see this.
    We  are killing ourselves with fast food. And the government knows they can’t stop us. So they had fast-food restaurants put the nutritional ingredients of their products at the front door of the restaurant.
    They had to do this because    making fast food chains post on their doors, “Eat this food and Die!!!” would have been decidedly anti-capitalistic.
    And we still didn’t care. Our kids are getting so fat and eating so much junk food, that some state governments are stepping in and taking toys out of kids meals to serve as a deterrent.
    We had a new fast-food restaurant open in Brighton a few weeks ago. You know what I saw? A parking lot so jam-packed that I had to go to another fast-food restaurant with a smaller line because I don’t have time to waste when it comes to clogging my arteries.
    You know what I didn’t see?
    Protestors.
    Not a single one. No clever signs like “Go Home Toxic Death Burgers.”
    But I bet if you would have put a fracking rig behind that restaurant, you could have put together a pretty startled group of residents worried that the chemicals being pumped into the ground were contaminating the oil used in the deep fryer.
    We spend more time worrying about what someone else might be doing to us than what we are doing to ourselves.
    If some of these oil and gas companies really wanted to get us then they wouldn’t waste time pumping dangerous chemicals into the ground.
    They’d open fast-food franchises. We complain a lot less when our mouths are stuffed full of French fries.