Forest presented to Professor Mike Ripp’s freshman level Environmental Studies class on frac sand mining. He introduced himself and CSP and gave an overview of frac sand mining here in Crawford County before showing the film The Price of Sand and continuing conversation from there. Conversation ranged from frac sand mining to fracking to bomb trains and pipelines and export facilities and all over the fossil fuels chain. This led to the inevitable question: but anything we do to get energy will have some of these consequences, right? What are the alternatives? Forest spent some time elaborating on how some of those might look and emphasized that he didn’t have all the answers, but that the possibilities are really endless once we really shift our priorities in research and funding. Forest also learned that Pattison Sand Company (who had presented to the class the week before) had told the class that the dust coming off the sand piles at the loading site was steam! Forest thought they had long ago dropped that excuse, as they no longer say that to the neighborhood next to the operation or the City Council. Apparently only to those they think they can mislead…