Energy Crisis Vs. Environmental Crisis

Natural gas drilling is one solution to our current energy crisis, but at what cost to our environment? According to Steve Horton, an earthquake specialist at CERI, there seems to be a connection between the amount of earthquakes Arkansas has experienced lately, and the disposal of wastewater in injection wells, a side effect of drilling. Horton told fox news that seismic activity has increased since starting the injection wells in April 2009. Hanan Mahdi, a seismologist at the U of A noted a similar connection in an interview in which she stated that there could be two kinds of seismic activity in the area - one natural, the other caused by pumping salt water into the ground. While we do need alternative resources of energy it is obvious that more research should be done before beginning new processes that have the potential of causing environmental problems.