ADM in Decatur was recently awarded $99 million dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for a carbon sequestration project.  Carbon dioxide which would otherwise enter the atmosphere will be turned into its liquid form and injected deep below the ground near its Decatur facility and Richland Community College.  The hope is to contain more carbon dioxide, commonly produced by factories and store it deep within the earth, instead of having it released into the air and atmosphere.  Carbon dioxide is thought to be a major contributor to global warming .

Carbon sequestration is really nothing new.  In fact the oil industry has used it for several years to help attain hard to get oil supplies.  It has been tested several places in the world but not on a massively large scale.  It’s a very political topic.  Most lawmakers are for it.  It seems to address global warming while helping bring in big dollar industry to their constituents, however residents often aren’t as gung ho for the practice.  People in both the United States and Europe have protested such experimenting in their communities.  They sometimes are successful in blocking carbon sequestration projects in their area.

A major proponent of carbon sequestration is the coal industry.  If sequestration proves successful, more coal power plants and coal burning factories could be built and utilized.  However, there are risks with the containment of so much carbon dioxide below the ground.  It wouldn’t take a very large leak to wreak a lot of havoc.  Carbon dioxide wells would have to be monitored for decades, if not hundreds of years.  Future generations will have to make sure leaks don’t occur from such wells, even if future generation have moved on from our reliance of fossil fuels.

What could a carbon dioxide leak do?  Well, there are pockets of carbon dioxide naturally occurring on our planet.  In 1986 1,700 people died from a sudden release of carbon dioxide from beneath Lake Nyos in Cameroon.  Humans and animals died of suffocation from the release.  Such a scenario seems very unlikely in Decatur but suggesting the Gulf of Mexico would fill with oil, from a spill that so far can’t be contained, seemed unlikely three months ago.  Things happen.

We now know that science and technology is limited and we aren’t nearly as smart as we sometimes give ourselves credit for.  We should know large companies often cut corners and can be less than truthful with the public.  We should know that government regulations are often not enforced and government officials are sometimes literally in the sack with the industries they’re supposed to regulating.  We should ask ourselves if we trust big business and our government to be honest with us.

Are the residents of Decatur guinea pigs for the project?  What about the earthquakes that happen in this region?  Is it really a good idea to experiment in a populated area?  Shouldn’t we have a say in whether this goes on under our backyards?

Carbon sequestration may prove to be completely safe but I don’t know that I enjoy being the mouse in the laboratory.

More Links:

• One community’s fight against carbon sequestration
• Another article about the same community’s successful fight to stop a carbon sequestration project in their county.
• Another interesting link