Canary or Canard?

The philosopher Montaigne’s notion of man was that he is essentially good in a natural state but civilization corrupts him. Modern science has pretty much shown the truth that man is neither good nor bad, that he is a combination of nature and nurture, and that he is capable of learning new tricks, good or bad, well into old age.
Today, we occasionally hear and see people who still believe, even in the wake of the disaster on Wall Street and the deep recession caused by it, that laissez-faire capitalism is essentially good. They hang on to the myth that markets are rational and by themselves can cure whatever is wrong; and that “civilization” in the form of government regulation only corrupts or stifles progress and success. If we have settled the nature of man question, why haven’t we done the same for business?
A Denver Post columnist, Vincent Carroll, stated in a recent opinion column the following: “From time to time, of course, regulators have been known to become cozy with industry” and then suggests “Is it really likely, however, that every state’s regulators are industry apologists?” The answer is, of course it is likely, given the history of such commissions. They were historically better scouts than sentries. Given the current variety of regulation across many states, their apologies are anything but uniform. Mostly, state regulators have moved from ushering in gas and oil expansion to some widely varied minimal regulation. They have certainly not barred the door anywhere or even set up any high hurdles. In Colorado, for instance, the COGCC has not set minimal bonding and insurance requirements that even begin to match the possibility of disaster waiting to happen. Industry is, by a long shot, more protected than citizenry from potential disaster. In general, what industry has had to sacrifice of late is far less than what little human and natural habitat has gained by COGCC regs.
Given what has happened to health care regulation by state, I would think the oil and gas industry would welcome some federal regulation so that they would have to operate by one set of basic rules regarding water rather than many. (The health insurance industry, for example, would love to have just one federal set of rules rather than those variably imposed by the states.) Since water is far more valuable than gold let alone gas and oil, the Clean Water Act is a good watershed (so-to-speak) benchmark for federal regulation. We’ll need clean water long after gas and oil drilling is history. And we won’t have it if we don’t protect it.
However, for my peace of mind, if federal and state law ends up producing redundancies, that’s all the better. When one agency fails, another can pick up the slack. What we don’t need to find out is that “fracking” was a bad idea in hindsight. And just because Dave Neslin of the COGCC says, “We have no verified example of fracking contaminating groundwater in Colorado” does not mean there hasn’t been any contamination. It is going to take an incredible faith in coincidence to keep that myth going. Better safe than sorry.
Writing this has given me a headache. I think I’ll go take some Tylenol. Oops! I forgot. Tylenol intake may contribute to liver damage, a finding that has just been revealed in the past 24 hours. As I said, I’d rather be safe than sorry.