This award-winning author, biologist and environmental health researcher explores the threats to climate and public health from extreme energy extraction including hydraulic fracturing (fracking). From strip-mining of frack sand in Wisconsin that releases carcinogenic silica dust to the deep-well injection of fracking waste in Ohio, which has been linked to earthquakes — these new methods of extracting hydrocarbons are shock-and-awe operations. Of particular interest are the living organisms that inhabit Earth’s deep geological strata. Far from being inert, our nation’s bedrock is an underground “coral reef” of microbes, another invisible ecosystem that’s linked to life in ways not yet fully understood here on the sunlit surface of our planet.
