Wenonah Hauter

Harvard Book Store welcomes executive director of Food & Water Watch WENONAH HAUTER for a discussion of her book Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment. This event is co-sponsored by Food & Water Watch.

About Frackopoly

Over the past decade a new and controversial energy extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has rocketed to the forefront of U.S. energy production. With fracking, millions of gallons of water, dangerous chemicals, and sand are injected under high pressure deep into the earth, fracturing hard rock to release oil and gas.

Wenonah Hauter, one of the nation’s leading public interest advocates, argues that the rush to fracking is dangerous to the environment and treacherous to human health. Frackopoly describes how the fracking industry began; the technologies that make it possible; and the destruction and poisoning of clean water sources and the release of harmful radiation from deep inside shale deposits, creating what the author calls “sacrifice zones” across the American landscape.

The book also examines the powerful interests that have supported fracking, including leading environmental groups, and offers a thorough debunking of its supposed economic benefits. With a wealth of new data, Frackopoly is essential and riveting reading for anyone interested in protecting the environment and ensuring a healthy and sustainable future for all Americans.

Praise

"A truly powerful manifesto about one of the greatest environmental fights on our planet today—from one of its greatest champions!" —Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author of Oil and Honey

"Real life anti-fracking superhero Wenonah Hauter delivers the definitive story on how big oil and gas corporations captured our political system and schemed to frack America—and the growing grassroots movement to retake our democracy and protect our planet." —Mark Ruffalo, actor, director, and advisory board member of Americans Against Fracking

"Even though I have lived every chapter of this book, from beginning to end, I couldn’t, as a reader, put it down. What makes Frackopoly so riveting is not the economic evidence, public health data, and the political analysis—although that’s all here, too—but the brilliance of the author as the teller of this tragic-yet-hopeful tale. Wenonah Hauter is that rare narrator—a gifted writer and an environmental leader with a box seat in the public arena. A must-read for all who care about climate change, democracy, clean water, breathable air, and energy policy. Which is to say, all of us. Read this book and let your eyes be opened to the hoodwinking of America by the fracking industry." —Sandra Steingraber, biologist and author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment