I had forgotten all that is Ithaca until I ventured off campus to have breakfast at a restaurant in town. In transit I stopped at an intersection only to watch a seemingly innocuous car pull beside mine. It was at this moment I noticed the sticker affixed to the bumper of this Ithacan’s car: “Fracking is Immoral.”
Newcomers to Cornell will not immediately recognize the issue with “fracking,” a method of extracting natural gas that may cause minor earthquakes, however bear with me. Sure, “fracking” carries minor risks to the terrain and the locals but the reward carries great sums of money. One can object to the risks of “fracking” and oppose the method on such grounds, but how is it innately wrong to extract natural gas? Must nature’s fart reside under earth and rock until the Apocalypse is fulfilled?
Another traffic light, this one at the driveway to my destination, stopped me in front of an auto-mechanic’s garage. The man, evidently struggling with his business, was not offering free washes when you buy a new set of tires. Instead he appealed to the inner-hipster that resonates through the local anima. Puttering in the wind, a sign by his driveway read “Jiffy Lube Supports Big Oil; Come Here.”
One may get the impression I am complaining about Ithaca when in fact I am not. I am delighting in its novelty in fact. What other town gave Nader more votes than Bush? or hosts a Green Party Convention? or elects a Socialist mayor? or grades 6-year olds on how accepting they are of other people? Ithaca is the Left wing dream. Unusual, isn’t it, that Al Gore, Ralph Nader, half of Hollywood, and all other eco-socialist luminaries have not moved from their carbon emitting downtown-LA penthouses and into their (and Rousseau’s) utopia, replete with no economy and no threat of industry in the near-future (assuming they bring down the frackers).
