Who has the worst job in the world? My choice this week is Austin Holland, the state seismologist for the state of Oklahoma. For years, this must have been a very sleepy job, tantamount to having a job studying coastal erosion in Iowa. But then Oklahoma has been on yet another oil and gas binge, and this apparently has made Austin Holland's life a living hell.

Meanwhile, the state seismologist, Austin Holland, readily acknowledged that the industry has tried to influence his work - even as he and his colleague, Amberlee Darold, are pelted with "hate e-mail" from quake victims. "I can't really talk about it," Holland said, taking a cigarette break from the dirty work of burying instruments near a cow pasture southwest of Oklahoma City. "I try not to let it affect the research and the science. We're going to do the right thing."

Oklahoma had a staggering 567 earthquakes registering over 3.0 in 2014. Scientists, to whom we must never listen because they threaten our freedom, have attributed this to the wastewater wells that the extraction industries dig deep into the earth. This has caused some consternation among the locals.

"The question is: Is it all about profits, or do the people have any rights at all?" said Robert Freeman, 69, a retired Air Force contracting officer who is trying to rally his neighbors in Guthrie to demand a moratorium on new disposal wells. "I understand the oil and gas industry is the economic lifeblood of the state. I get some of my paycheck from the oil and gas industry," added Lisa Griggs, 56, a Guthrie environmental consultant. "But they don't get to destroy my house."

Actually, ma'am, they do. That is the abiding truth of the extraction industries. The earth is theirs, including the earth under your house, and if, one day, the earth under your house becomes the earth over your house, that's your bad luck. There are wells to be drilled in other parts of the earth that the extraction industries own. But don't worry, your state government will study the whole business.

State officials insist they are doing all they can to develop new regulations. In September, Gov. Mary Fallin (R) named a coordinating council to study seismic activity. And the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, an elected three-member panel that regulates oil and gas producers, has imposed new restrictions on wells in seismically active areas.

Of course, the industry in question has its own science that it can throw out there concerning Forces Beyond Our Control.

For the most part, Oklahoma oil companies and their representatives have declined to engage in the public debate. When industry representatives have ventured forth, they have denied responsibility for the quakes. At a luncheon hosted by the Oklahoma City Geological Society last summer, Glen Brown, a Continental Resources geologist, blamed a worldwide surge in seismic activity that has nothing to do with wastewater disposal. "There's a hysteria that needs to be brought back to reality that these [quakes] are light and will not cause any harm," Brown said, according to local news reports.

(Brief Aside: it's remarkable how much all the other American corporations learned from the tobacco industry as regards fudging responsibility for the damage they do. They are all Brown and Williamson now.)

The problem for the people of Oklahoma is that there is no politician who yet feels threatened enough by the people under whom the ground is shaking to stand up to the people whose reckless pursuit of private profit is causing the ground to shake in the first place. The state needs a political earthquake and those, alas, are much more unusual these days,

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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