Event

Fueling our Future: The Cost of American Energy in the 21st Century

Join Prof. Eliza Girswold and Prof. Dan Fagin in conversation on resources, communities, development and fracking!

When the fracking boom comes to her hometown of Amity, Pennsylvania, Stacey Haney is intrigued by reports of lucrative natural gas leases and strikes a deal with a Texas-based energy company. Soon trucks begin rumbling past her small farm and a fenced-off drill site rises on an adjacent hilltop. Then domestic animals and pets start to die, and her own children become sick. When she appeals to the company for help, its representatives insist that nothing is wrong.

Against local opposition, Haney and her allies doggedly pursue their case in court, and a community that has long been suspicious of outsiders faces wrenching new questions about who is responsible for their fate, and for redressing it: The corporations that are poisoning the land? The environmentalists who fail to see their economic distress? A federal government that is mandated to protect but fails on the job?

What does the resource curse mean in a domestic context? How do US communities experience energy development on the ground? In Amity and Prosperity, Eliza Griswold tells the story of the energy boom’s impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia through one woman’s transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist.

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Professor Griswold is the author of “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America“.

In her book, Prof. Griswold tells the story of the energy boom’s impact on a small town at the edge of Appalachia through one woman’s transformation from a struggling single parent to an unlikely activist.

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