How Petrochemicals Are Ruining The American Landscape

sep 28, 2012

Oil Photos: How Petrochemicals Are Ruining The American Landscape
by Kate Orff

"...Americans know what the oil and gas and coal landscape looks like - but do we really? There is a hidden side to America's material prosperity. Most of its harmful manifestations are literally invisible - benzene and dioxins "disappear" into the air, while waste chemicals are pumped underground into injection wells. PCBs, Mercury, and Lead, toxic in the most imperceptible but potentially devastating amounts, persist in our bodies, in river sediment, in soils. "

"...Today, we are starting to understand the consequences at a local, regional, and global scale of the age of the present regime of oil and petrochemicals. What remains to be collectively imagined is what a shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy forms would mean in the future in terms of generating a new American landscape aesthetic of promise and productivity, whether in the form of solar panels arrayed in the desert, rows of plantings of poplars and willows for phyto-remediation and biomass energy off shore wind farms on the horizon, or wave energy off our coasts"

click here to read the article at Huffington Post.com