The summer going into my senior year of high school, my family loaded up the car and embarked on a two-week road trip out west to some of the visit some of America’s greatest national parks that included Yellowstone National Park, Grand Canyon National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
It took us four days to drive out west to Yellowstone National Park and another four days to drive back from the Grand Canyon.
For some, the sheer thought of driving for days upon days in a car with six other passengers seems like a page out of a horror novel.
However, driving across the country allowed me to experience the sheer beauty of this country and grasp on just how large it is.
America the beautiful
Hours in the car just seemed to speed right by as the landscape that laid outside of the window was beautiful, captivating and ever-changing.
True to its namesake “Big Sky Country,” Montana was filled miles and miles of rolling fields of golden prairie grass waving in the wind against deep blue skies as far as the eye could see.
The boiling sulfuric geysers in Yellowstone were a sight to behold as they took on many forms from a thick bubbling hot-chocolate to a crystal clear blue.
The snow-capped mountains in the Grand Tetons National Park gave the feeling of insignificance as it arched far above the prairie that surrounded it.
Driving into southern Utah to explore Bryce and Zion Canyons was captivating as the landscape shifted from forests to the desert to the red rock canyons with tall cylindrical “hoodoos” and natural bridges.
The Arizonian sky proved to enchanting experience. Upon nightfall, every inch of the sky was magnificently lit up with stars. Even the Milky Way was visible.
None of these experiences would have been possible if it were not for the open and protected land.
Taking the land away
However, this preservation of land for future generations is being threatened.
Recently, the government reduced the size of two Utah National Monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase, by two million acres.
National monuments are on the way to becoming national parks but have not reached “park” status yet.
According to the New York Times, this move suggested that in the future that “dozens of other monuments [could be] at risk and possibly opening millions of preserved public acres to oil and gas extraction, mining, logging, and other commercial activities.”
This development is not projected to occur in the future, but it is already happening today.
The current administration is currently increasing the amount of federal land leased to major oil and gas companies.
However, a Forbes article notes that the reason the numbers look so high is that the Obama administration looked to reduce federal land leasing. It proceeds to point out that the current numbers are comparable to those of the Clinton and Bush administrations.
“There is nothing unprecedented about the current leasing program,” author David Blackmon said.
Politics aside there is a huge issue with whom the land is being leased to. Most of the land is leased to oil and gas companies who plan to use it to profit off of the land’s natural underground resources. In order to do this, they must construct sites in which they will oil drill or “frack” from the earth.
What is “fracking”?
The real problem lies in the method of “fracking”, formally known as hydraulic fracturing. According to Live Science, fracking is a “drilling technique used for extracting oil or natural gas from deep underground.”
Not only are the fracking projects a major eyesore, but they pose severe health and environmental consequences.
In the award-winning documentary, “Gasland”, the filmmaker, Josh Fox, researched the effects that oil fracking has on residents living near a huge fracking site in rural Wyoming.
Flammable toxic fluids left behind by the drilled deep into the groundwater and eventually make their way into the homes of nearby residents. When a lighter was held by the running tap water, it ignited into a fire.
If toxins like volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or hydrogen sulfides are not released into the groundwater, then they end up in the air.
Health and Environmental Consequences
Local residents who have inhaled the polluted air have noted that they have experienced an increase in health issues. They believe that these issues are linked to the toxins from the fracking sites.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, there are hundreds of toxins that are leaked into the air from the fracking sites. They are known to have debilitating health effects including cancer, bone marrow damage, loss of consciousness and repository issues, like asthma and difficulty breathing.
Overall exposure to these toxins can result in the development of respiratory issues and “including heart problems and harm to the liver, kidney, endocrine, immune, reproductive, gastrointestinal and auditory system.” It can also cause birth defects in newborn children.
Environmentally, the toxins also pollute the air and watersheds, increase smog and kill local wildlife.
The worst realities of this are that future generation will be withheld the opportunity to encounter America and it’s natural beauty.
Rather in the future, the captivating landscape filled with grazing wildlife could just be filled with unsightly fracking sites with large 18 wheeler trudging along gravel roads, exhuming large clouds of black exhaust.
Worst of all, future generations would be withheld the opportunity to experience America’s natural beauty the same way that it is today.
