Read all the ThinkProgress coverage from the Durban climate talks.

The delegates assembled in Durban, South Africa to tackle the civilizational challenge of manmade climate destruction burst into sustained applause on Thursday when a young American interrupted the proceedings to speak on behalf of the United States people. Abigail Borah, a 21-year-old student from Middlebury College and member of the youth climate delegation, spoke out in the plenary hall as US climate envoy Todd Stern prepared to address the assembled environmental ministers. “I am scared for my future,” she said, because of the “obstructionist Congress” and the “empty rhetoric” of President Obama:

I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty. We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive.

Watch her speak, from Democracy Now:

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Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

So much for the oil and gas industry claim that the practice of hydraulic fracturing has never polluted a drinking water well.

On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency officially threw that claim in the waste pit. It announced that an investigation of water contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming had linked the chemicals found in a ground water aquifer that was a source of drinking water in private wells to the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of nearby natural gas wells.

The agency said in a news release:

EPA’s analysis of samples taken from the Agency’s deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards and high methane levels.

Fracking is a widely used industry practice to stimulate production of oil and gas from deep wells. It involves the pumping at high pressure of large quantities of water mixed with sand and chemicals to fracture underground rock formations and release oil and gas.

The oil and gas industry – along with some prominent federal officials – have long claimed that because fracking occurs so far below groundwater aquifers that migration of the chemicals used in fracking into drinking water supplies was not possible and had never occurred.

Last May, for example, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson testified on Capitol Hill that she was not aware “of any proven case where the fracking process itself affected water.”

Now it looks like she’s going to have to revise and extend those remarks. And it looks like the industry is facing some tough times ahead as it seeks to keep up a rush of shale gas development in fields stretching from New York to Texas.

For more information about the need for greater scrutiny on fracking, see Kenworthy’s report on “Bringing Fracking to the Surface“

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday for the first time that fracking — a controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells — may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution.

The draft finding could have a chilling effect in states trying to determine how to regulate the process.

The practice is called hydraulic fracturing and involves pumping pressurized water, sand and chemicals underground to open fissures and improve the flow of oil or gas to the surface.

The EPA’s found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath a Wyoming community where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals.

Health officials advised them not to drink their water after the EPA found hydrocarbons in their wells.

This APNewsBreak is certainly a bombshell for an industry whose favorite (very dubious) talking point had been “we’ve never had one confirmed case of groundwater contamination.”

Of course, the important and influential NY Times series on natural gas fracking reported back in February that “The dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.”

And the industry insiders who made up the DOE Fracking Panel warned last month of “a Real Risk of Serious Environmental Consequences” Absent Regulation:

It is the Subcommittee’s judgment that if action is not taken to reduce the environmental impact accompanying the very considerable expansion of shale gas production expected across the country – perhaps as many as 100,000 wells over the next several decades – there is a real risk of serious environmental consequences and a loss of public confidence that could delay or stop this activity.

The new EPA finding certainly supports that warning.

Here is more from the AP story on the implications of the preliminary finding:

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