Video Four: Pollute First, Clean Up Later

Just as fracking technology has crossed over from the fields of Pennsylvania and Texas to the mountains of Sichuan, so have the questions about its risks and consequences. If fracking regulations in the United States are too weak, then in China the rules are practically nonexistent. Tian Qinghua, an environmental researcher at the Sichuan Academy of Environmental Sciences, fears that fracking operations in China will repeat a pattern he's seen before. "There's a phenomenon of 'pollute first, clean up later,'" he says. "History is repeating itself." It didn't take us long to find people whose lives were being impacted by fracking in remote, rural China.