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Seeing opportunity in North Dakota's oil boom
Daniel Brock was a teacher before he heard about a job in North Dakota's oil fields.
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The oil rush in North Dakota has made the state one of the most prosperous in the U.S. Not everyone who's made his way to North Dakota is an experienced rigger or roughneck -- or someone out of work looking to get started all over again. Some are just...taking advantage of an opportunity.
Independent radio producer Todd Melby is working on a year-long project, called Black Gold Boom, out of Williston, N.D. Marketplace is airing some of his portraits of the people and places he's run across.
Today, Daniel Brock, a man who gave up teaching to work in the oil fields.
Black Gold Boom is an initiative of Localore and the Association of Independents in Radio.
Marketplace from American Petroleum Media. You won't be winning any awards for this "peak credulity meets peak bullsh_t" series (James Kunstler's phrase, my application of it). Firstly, putting these oil co. infomercials under "sustainablility" is appalling. There is nothing sustainable about fracking. Hydraulic fracking is a ponzi scheme with the collaboration of the banks to yet again soak the American public. Only this time, they are destroying our water supply, polluting our air, fracking our food supply, destroying soil substructure, and storing vast quantities of radioactive toxic and carcinogenic waste--forever. The fact is (though there seems to be little interest in facts here), there MAY be 20 years worth of oil and gas IF we frack ourselves into an industrial wasteland. A few will profit handsomely, but fracking is forever. When the short term oil co. profits end, our children and all future generations will be left to pay the price for our profligacy.
We need a carbon tax to correct the energy market to reflect negative externalities in the price of fossil energy. Then there will be so many jobs in renewables and energy conservation. Hundreds of thousands of jobs, if not millions. And it would help to pay down the debt and avert the fiscal cliff while averting the climate cliff too.
