Causing Harm.to Others Quotes

That’s the course of human history. Cities, highways, factories, modern civilization require tearing up land and displacing people and other living things. It’s impossible to get the resources we need to live as we do without disturbing at least some people and doing some harm to—or at least changing—the natural environment. Civilization disrupts the natural world. We disrupt the natural world. But we’re not going to go back to living in caves. We’re not going to stop cutting down trees or damming rivers or, least of all, digging up sand. The challenge is to figure out ways to do those things that are responsible, sustainable, and limited. We have to do as little of them as we can get away with. In the specific case of frac sand, though, there’s a valid argument to be made that we shouldn’t be doing it at all, because fracking itself is especially fraught with serious environmental hazards. There are plenty of reports of fracking operations contaminating aquifers and even causing earthquakes, as well as possibly elevating the risk of cancer and silicosis among people living near them.27 What’s more, society doesn’t necessarily need the oil and gas it yields. In an ideal world, it could be replaced with solar and wind power.