The bottom of the fault, Eliza griswold [America]

. . Original title:? Harmony and Prosperity: A Family and the Division of America

. . ISBN:？ 9787549636693

. . Brief introduction of content. .

This book tells the story of poor families living in natural gas mining areas involved in environmental crisis.

Stacy Henny is a nurse and a single mother. She worked hard and brought up two children. In order to live a better life, Stacy rented the farm land to a natural gas company. Soon, a large number of trucks passed by her small farm, and a fenced drilling site appeared on the top of the nearby hill. Livestock and pets began to die, and mysterious diseases began to afflict her children. She turned to the natural gas company for help, but the company representative insisted that everything was all right.

Stacy hired a lawyer, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, to investigate whether there is pollution in water and air. Mr. and Mrs. Smith looked through a lot of documents and finally found the hidden evidence. Stacy and Smith stubbornly sued the court regardless of the opposition of vested interests, exposing the destruction of the land on which they lived for hundreds of years.

Who is responsible for the misfortune of the Heini family? Is it a capitalist with dirty blood in his veins, a vested interest who also lives in this land, or a government department that neglects its duties?

The Seven-year Immersion Report shows the eternal contradiction between energy development and environmental protection, and at the same time reveals the plight of the American bottom people struggling between capital and government.

. . Author's brief introduction. .

Eliza Griswold, born in 1973, is a top contributor to The New Yorker.

1995, graduated from Princeton University.

20 19 won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction, the highest honor of American documentary, with "Fractured Bottom".

He also won the Anthony Lucas Book Award, the American Pen Poetry Translation Award and the Rome Award. She currently lives in new york with her husband and son, and is a resident writer at new york University.

I used to be a freelance translator, and my translation direction was humanities and social sciences, history and literature. The translated works include Natasha's Dance, Emperor Meiji, Sakamoto Ryoma, Meiji Restoration and so on.

. . A brief comment .

#

Thanks to the publishing industry in recent years (especially the Shanghai translation), the nonfiction works of American miserable life series and Japanese miserable life series come one after another. Before watching "The Bottom of the Fracture", I thought it was about "American Tragic Life Series"+1, which should be a familiar road: a small town where unemployment and poverty spread, a group of poor people who love life, through constant struggle with fate, in many ways. But it really looks like it. However, it is found that it is much more difficult than this way, and it is difficult for atomized individuals to use external forces to fight against energy companies. The original common "rescue angels" have broken their wings one by one, and the whole story has been cast a shadow of powerlessness and gloom, with occasional light, but there is no way to save people. Perhaps many problems can only be "entrusted to the wisdom of future generations." The reason for deducting a star is also relatively simple: the translation of this book can certainly be done better.

#

Calm but not sensational, tells the story of the poor people abandoned by capital and government.

#

There is a composition topic in middle school-an egg is weak, but if it falls from the 30th floor, it can kill people. At that time, I wrote about my mother, and in this book, I also saw my mother's characteristics.

#

Stacy regards the Supreme Court's decision as the most important achievement in her life since Harry and Page were born. Although the verdict can't bring any benefits to her and her two children, Stacy's hope of changing public opinion is growing under the economic pressure of 20 13. By the end of that year, Stacy's debt had reached $224,000, including the cost of the camper, the mortgage of two houses and Peggy's English tuition. Stacy blamed all the economic recession on gas wells. Every day something new stimulates her, and she seems to be getting farther and farther away from the life she expects. She was so convinced that her kindness, combined with her confused efforts, would eventually succeed. In Stacy's mind, she used to think that she was different from her parents: her parents worked tirelessly every day and were still trying to realize their American dream of upward mobility. Now she can't get on like them, but it's not her fault. After the core values of this optimism collapsed, it was replaced by a new painful world view. The whole world is against her. She has to cope with the intense work in the hospital every day. She must work hard to coordinate three jobs, a teacher and a nurse, and work with Shelley in an orthopedic hospital. Shelley has suddenly become very busy and happy recently.

Quoted from Chapter 28 Nightmares

#

Bauer has worked for American steel companies for 40 years and has been in eight countries, including Venezuela, India and Thailand. What he witnessed in the mining industry in remote and poor areas gave him a terrible premonition. "I have seen places that are extremely rich in resources but poor, just like Appalachia." He said. In his view, the problem lies not in resources, but in a set of mechanisms formed around resource exploitation: government corruption. "Natural gas is trendy, charming, changeable and lively, but money is heavy." Bauer said. Under the influence of all these factors, the oil and gas industry has supreme political power in Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. He believes that this natural gas boom is eroding public welfare in the form of political expenditure, such as more than one million dollars entering the governor's campaign treasury.

Quoted from Chapter 20 Supervision of Quanzhou

#

The summer of 20 12 is Batman's summer and election season. The Rise of the Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale, is showing in the cinema. The film is set in Pittsburgh, showing a collapsed Gotham city, with desolate rubble on the abandoned sidewalks and cracked water pipes hissing and emitting steam. These post-industrial landscapes and crumbling infrastructure are symbols of our time. The collapse of the material world reflects the collapse of social order. Collective is not important anymore: every man, woman and child can only rely on themselves, and even Batman can't control them. Around Harmony Town, residents set up signposts at their doorsteps to express their different demands and dissatisfaction with local and domestic affairs. In the five-kilometer-long Hemeling section, such road signs abound. From the high-speed exit, someone set up many red and black signs there, which read "Stop fighting against coal, Obama steps down". Less than a mile ahead, someone got a backlit street sign (the kind you might see in a drive-in restaurant) that said, "Dashan is not a good neighbor." Mountain+drilling = no water! The mountain said, please prove your story. " There is also a street sign that only says "The water quality was ok before".

Quoted from chapter 22, everyone is heading for destruction.

Tap water only solves part of the problems in Harmonious Town. When the hot summer comes, the drought begins, which makes the problem of over-exploitation of groundwater more serious. Throughout Washington County and surrounding areas, the water level of many streams is 50% lower than normal. Lack of rain is one of the reasons. Every time a well is drilled by fracturing, the water pipe is put into the stream and the waterwheel that pumps out 4 million gallons of water is not small. Anyone who drives around Harmony Town and Prosperity Town will find that the fresh water in two local reservoirs is gone. These two reservoirs were bought in 2005 by a natural gas tycoon, who is a real estate developer. It is legal for drilling companies to use their own water. It is also legal, or almost legal, for them to pump water from federal streams. Theoretically, there is a rule on how much water a stream can pump, but no one carries out that rule, so the water is getting less and less. "We don't know how much stock we have, so we can take it." Ross Riley, a biologist in the Army Corps of Engineers, told me later. Over the past 30 years, she has witnessed the water quality in this area getting better step by step. However, with the return of industry, both water quality and quantity are declining. There are many similarities between coal mining and natural gas mining: both are run by large enterprises that successfully resist regulation, which may cut profits. "We started coal mining in18th century and19th century," she said. "/kloc-it will be 0/00 years before our supervision is in place. I don't think this industry will be faster. Until then, everything was in a state of laissez-faire. " Riley is talking about federal waters managed by all citizens. Due to stupidity and negligence, the state government is opening the door of a vault to encourage everyone to run. Economists describe the "tragedy of the commons" as follows: herders who share pastures will inevitably put their cattle needs above others, and they will continue to increase the number of cattle, thus occupying more pastures than their due share. These hitchhikers get the benefits of the commons until they run out. It is human nature to put personal interests above collective interests. The theory of "tragedy of the commons" has always been used to support the case of individual property rights: since the collective cannot protect the jointly owned property, then we can divide it and let the individual take care of his share. But what if the end of the commons is not necessarily a tragedy? What if people can work out effective measures to share public resources and pass them on from generation to generation? Elinor ostrom, a professor of political science at Indiana University, believes that the solution to the tragedy of the commons in the 20th century is to follow common sense. Sharing has been successful in the past and will be successful in the future. Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. She died on 20 12.

Quoted from chapter 22, everyone is heading for destruction.

In the history of Harmonious Town, the management mode of public water bodies is sharing. Pump water from Dodd's well until it is drained. Take turns using volunteer fire engines to pump water from streams and fill reservoirs. Let Stacy and Shelley, who live next door, go to the neighbor's house with empty milk cans and ask for water. However, this concept of sharing cannot be extended to extractive industries. Coal, oil and gas companies are not ordinary neighbors who take turns sucking public straws: they are industrial tigers. This is where government supervision can intervene in theory. But it is not easy to do this. First of all, the cash-strapped state government cannot effectively supervise the water level of federal streams. Secondly, the flow of people between enterprises and those departments that should supervise them weakens the enforcement of laws. Third, many people in West Pennsylvania are hostile to government supervision-they think this is another example of the federal government disturbing people and meddling. This situation does not only appear in Harmony Town and Prosperity Town. Rachel carson's hometown Springdale is only an hour and a half's drive from here, and many residents there feel the same way.

Quoted from chapter 22, everyone is heading for destruction.

. . Pay attention to friends? Come across a good book. .