And as the environmental policy director for citizen action. Her previous book, the battle over the future of food and farming in america, was originally published in 2012 and has now been released in paperback, unveiled the corporate control of food in the united states. Her latest book, frackopoly, reports on the history of hydraulic fracturing, arguing that the rush to fracking is dangerous to the environment and human health. Environmentalist and author bill mckibbon praises frackopoly as a truly powerful manifesto about one of the greatest environmental fights on our planet today. And the Huffington Post calls it a comprehensive history of fracking in america. Its well written, timely and very important. Were very pleased to bring the conversation to Harvard Bookstore tonight. Please join me in welcoming wenonah hauter. [applause] and thank you to Harvard Bookstore and all of you for coming this evening. So in the mid 1990s, i worked on a Renewable Energy project called powering the midwest. We knew in the 90s that renewables were ready, that Energy Efficiency was ready, and we really needed to make a transition. So a couple of years ago we had been working on frackinging at food and water fracking at food and water watch for several years as the First National group to call for a ban on fracking, and i started looking at some of the statistics about how far we had come with Renewables Since the mid 1990s when i worked on this project. And it was stunning. As of 2015, only 5 of our electricity is generated from solar and wind energy. We need to do so much better. And yet here in a state like massachusetts where youre not really suffering from fracking but you are suffering from all of the infrastructure to really promote fracking and to allow it to expand. So i decided to write this book because you really need to know where youve been to know where youre going. And i wanted to see how wed ended up with monopolized oil and gas industry that has so much power over our democracy and over the future. So i started in, at the turn of the century, and i want to talk about that history tonight, and i mean the turn of the 20th century, not the turn of the 21st century. But before i get started on that history, i want to know how famiar people are with fracking. Maybe i should start by defining it and talking a little bit about the impacts and why we care that theres so much oil and gas drilling and fracking across this country. Come on in, theres plenty of room. So fracking is a science fictionlike process that uses large amounts of water, toxic chemicals and very fine sand. Its injected deep underground in a well, and then over multiple stages the fracking takes place. The wells are drilled about a mile, up to two miles into the ground, and then a horizontal tunnel is drilled. Again, it could be as much as a mile or two miles. Then this toxic mixture of sand chemical sand, chemicals and water is injected under very, very High Pressure in multiple stages to fracture the rock, usually shale, and to release the oil and gas. And although were talking a lot about frackinging being for natural gas, since, since 2012 s been for oil. So what is this doing in the communities where the fracking is taking place . These are called sacrifice zones. There have been 140,000 wells fracked in the last about ten years. And today 17 Million People live within a mile of a well. And theres a lot of infrastructure to support fracking and the drilling and fracking for oil and gas. Were talking about thousands of miles of pipelines, compressor stations and processing facilities. Now, compressor stations, the fracking and drilling itself, the processing facilities, all of these have a lot of impacts. They let a lot of chemicals, things like benzene, methane, a whole range of chemicals are emitted into the area that makes the People Living near those facilities sick. And there have been, since 2013, 62 studies written about the Health Impacts. 94 of those studies show adverse effects and Health Impacts in living near where fracking is taking place or the compressor or processing facilities. Now, lets talk about the water. Fracking uses 50 times more water on average than conventional drilling. So were talking for one well anywhere from 1. 7 million gallons to 13 million gallons in a state like texas. Lots and lots of water is used. And fracking, of course, is going on in some of the driest places in the nation, places like texas that have been having a drought, california. And in a state like colorado, frackers are actually competing with farmers for water in auctions and having a real impact. Now, when youre using injection to send all of this water and chemicals and sand deep underground, a lot of it comes back to the surface, right . And its bringing not just those fracking chemicals. And we know that although the companies dont have to disclose exactly what the chemicals are, we know that there are over 400 chemicals that are used many of them carcinogenic or with other health effects. Now, a lot of that water comes back up out of the wells. On average each day, about 10. 5 billion gallons of water. Thats a lot of wastewater. And it has to be dealt with. One of the ways that its dealt with is by injecting it deep underground. Its called deep can well injection. Deep well injection. And we know that that has its own impacts, right . Earthquakes. And this isnt something that i just made up for the book, this is something that the Geologic Service and a lot of authorities have now confirmed. Fracking wastewater injected deep underground causes earthquakes. And many a state like in a state like oklahoma, its been really shocking. Before fracking started, there were one or two serious earthquakes over 3. 0 magnitude. Today there are as many as 5,400 earthquakes, thats a recent figure, annually that are picked up on, with seismic equipment. Huge number of earthquakes. And this is happening in multiple states, ohio, arkansas. There are a lot of other impacts, but you can see that this is something if you live in a community where fracking is taking place, youre probably concerned about it. Your family members may be sick, having rashes, nosebleeds and even more serious impacts. And thats why theres a big movement that has sprung up in these communities against fracking and drilling which ill touch on in a minute. But now i want to turn more to the story about how we ended up with an extreme Energy Practice like fracking taking place, why were continuing to use fossil fuels even when our Global Climate is threatened. And as i was saying earlier, that story does begin at the turn of the 21st century when j. D. Rockefeller, who you probably learned about in a history class, had rolled up the oil and gas industry, controlled 90 percent of it, used a lot of ruthless and unethical practices to drive other companies out of business and to really control a resource that was very important at the time. Originally, it was used for kerosene which people depended on for lighting their houses. Now, around the turn of the century, well, some other companies formed. Texaco and gulf were formed around oil found in texas. And in europe there were two other companies. Im going to call all these companies by their modern names, because with the mergers and acquisitions through history, theyve gone through dozens of changes. So were talking about some very Important Companies that have done a lot of lobbying and have a big impact on where we are today. So the European Companies are shell and bp. The u. S. Companies were formed after Rockefellers Standard Oil was broken up. And youll remember from history that Teddy Roosevelt challenged the oil industry under rockefeller, and there was a proceeding, and they ended up breaking up Standard Oil Rockefellers company into about 30 companies. Now, thats usually the end of the story. But, actually, that should be the beginning of the story, because standard oil wasnt really broken up. Standard oil got to write its own plan, and each of those 30 companies with exxon actually getting about half the value of the original standard oil, rockefeller maintained an interest in each one. And the three rockefeller companies were exxon, chevron and mobil. And, of course, we know exxon and mobil eventually were merged, and actually texaco and gulf also merged into chevron. So were actually talking about four companies today. But for most, a good chunk of the 20th century, there were seven companies that were really almost dictating Public Policy. And the American Companies had a huge impact on our tax policies, the research that was actually done for the oil and gas industry, the whole system of energy that we actually use today. And this got very dramatic in 1928, kind of the beginning of the oil and gas industrys drilling in the middle east. Now, youll remember that the middle east was created really at the breakup of the Ottoman Empire by france and britain, and the oil industry was already there and interested in the resources. So in 1928 when oil was found in iraq, the Big Oil Companies the seven, theyre called the Seven Sisters named after a greek mythological story of atlas daughters who fought amongst themselves. But if there was ever an attack on one of them, they all gathered round and protected her. So they were nicknamed the Seven Sisters. And thats kind of how they behaved. So when this oil was found in iraq, there was a lot of overproduction. So the Seven Sisters got together in one of their cabals, drew a red line around or the middle east, made an agreement amongst themselves that they would only go in and drill for oil as jointly. They would never go in alone. This was so that they could watch one another. And that they would actually limit production, fix prices and break basic antitrust laws. Now, soon after this agreement was made, the three largest of the Seven Sisters exxon, bp and shell met at a castle in scotland and decided on a set of principles for how they would actually accomplish this price fixing and moving Forward Together to break basic antitrust and monopoly laws that we have in this country. And they met periodically after that. Meanwhile, they were having a big effect on the rules that were being written and the laws that were being decided on. Prior to world war ii and then after world war ii. But let me step back a minute and talk about the Utility Industry a little bit, because today we have this cabal of the oil and gas industry, the big electric and gas utilities and actually the banks which ill get to in a little bit. But in well, the oil industry was rolling up and really dictating the rules around oil and gas drilling and discovery. There was a man named samuel insole who was doing the same in the electric utility and gas Utility Industry. He did something thats similar to what happened with the Housing Market in 2008, 2009. He actually owned, had an ownership in about 5,000 gas and electric utilities in 30 states, but there was a Holding Company structure or we would call it a Multinational Corporation today, and the Participant Company kind of milked the Parent Company kind of milked these utilities charging them big rates and fees for services. Meanwhile, he had investment companies, a number of them, and he sold the stock over and over and over again to these different utilities. And this all contributed to the crash of the great depression. Now, im talking about this because it actually has a big impact on policy today. So when roosevelt came into office, there was a lot of activity around trying to curtail what the oil and gas industry was doing, what the electric Utility Industry was doing and then what the Financial Services industry at the time was doing. There were a couple of laws passed that i want to talk about because when they were repealed, it really allowed fracking and the oil and gas industry to blossom and created these giant utilities. So the first one was kind of an arcane law that you may never have heard of before, but what it did is it actually regulated electric and gas utilityies so they had a fox had to focus on their main business. They couldnt gamble with rate payers money, they needed to have contiguous service operations. And it really dictated the structure of the industry, keeping it from getting too big to fail. So that was one law. It was called the public utility Holding Company act of 1935, but you dont really need to know that. But they werent able to get natural gas included. In fact, that law that i just talked about was probably the most controversial law in the early years of the roosevelt administration. There were 600 lobbyists in washington lobbying against it, large sums of money were spent, and and it passed by one vote. And they managed to keep natural gas out of it. So three years later they came back, and they were actually able to pass another law regulating the Natural Gas Industry, because a lot of consumers had been really ripped off, and there were urban cities that were angry and organizing to try to do something about consumers not having access to affordable natural gas which was very important for heating and for Electricity Generation in some places. So this law did something important, it regulated the price of natural gas, and it gave the authority to a governmental body called the federal policy commission. And they used the cost of what it actually, what the oil and gas industry had to pay to do, to get the resource out of the ground. And then a profit that they added to it which was between 5. 6 and 6. 5 over a 40year period. Pretty good for the times. So this was called costbased regulation. Well, the Natural Gas Industry despised this. They also, the electric industry despised the other law that i talked about. This natural gas act also regulated pipelines. So you just couldnt go around and build pipelines and get ferc to approve it. There was actually a process to see if the pipelines were necessary. People could be involved in the process. It was a hot more dem a lot more democratic. Well, then there was a big debate for the next really til the 1970s. And in the book, i talk about a number of characters who played a big role in this. Some of them are really villainous to. Many of them are big characters. One that comes to mind is bill kerr who was, first, a governor of oklahoma and then a senator elected in 1948. Big belly, wears a white suit, has a big tengallon hat on. I have some pictures of him. Hes actually the great nephew of aubrey mcclendon. For any of you who actually follow this industry, he just died mysteriously. He was a big fraker at chesapeake fraker at chesapeake and driven out of the company for bad behavior. So this is a relative of aubrey mcclendon. Kerr introduced legislation for the oil and gas industry every year to do away with the natural gas act until he died in 1963 from a heart attack while in office. There were other characters like john j. Mccoy whos a favorite villain. He worked for the rockefellers chase bank and was someone who for the next well, he worked as an adviser for nine president s. Hes part of that government that exists thats not elected, but thats always there as an adviser. Had a major impact on Public Policy in a lot of different ways that we dont have time to go into. But he was the antitrust, harvardtrained antitrust lawyer who time and time again stepped in to get the oil and gas industry exempted from antitrust laws. A lot of the times they were just sneaking behind the scenes to do this. And, you know, it matters. This has been a debate since the beginning of our country. Remember Thomas Jefferson wanted to have part of the bill of rights, the right to be free of monopolies. And he didnt care about the price of gas or price of food. What he cared about was the political power that you get when you are such a Large Company that youre bigger than most countries. And thats what happened to the oil and gas industry. So big that really, especially after world war ii, they could just dictate Public Policy and laws. And remember that the amount of oil consumed, drilled for and consumed after world war ii doubled. And part of that was its use for plastic. And also, of course, the industry was able to make sure that it was used for lots and lots of other things that other sources of energy might have been developed. But they really were able to dictate a lot of how our tax dollars were used. So i want to now fast forward, because we dont have that much time, and i want to talk about what happened when these important laws were under attack and repealed. And i guess the story really begins well, well start it with the nixon administration. There were a lot of people in the oil and gas industry very concerned about the environmental laws that were beginning to be passed and the movement, student movement, the real changes in society. The oil and gas industry were concerned about the environmental piece of this, but youll remember there was the warren court extending rights to people, categories of people who hadnt enjoyed those rights before. There was the movement agai