motherjones:
Craziest thing you’ll see all day: a dozen cypress trees get swallowed up by a sinkhole.
Craziest thing you’ll read all day: the story of how the sinkhole got there.
(.gif by io9.)
Bayou Corne is the biggest ongoing industrial disaster in the United States you haven’t heard of. In addition to creating a massive sinkhole, it has unearthed an uncomfortable truth: Modern mining and drilling techniques are disturbing the geological order in ways that scientists still don’t fully understand. Humans have been extracting natural resources from the earth since the dawn of mankind, but never before at the rate and magnitude of today’s petrochemical industry. And the side effects are becoming clear. It’s not just sinkholes and town-clearing natural gas leaks: Recently, the drilling process known as fracking has been linked to an increased risk of earthquakes.
We are killing our planet and I really don’t think the majority cares enough to do something about it.