[gruez]

>and you know on the scale of BP pouring millions of oil into the ocean, I reckon what this guy is doing is absoloutley fine and the environmental damage is well within range of what the local environment can cope with and recover from within a reasonably small time frame.

But BP serves millions of customers. If you normalize by that (ie. pollution divided by customers), my guess is that digging up ponds is more environmentally damaging than buying gas at the gas station.

[kiliantics]

if you destroy the support systems that all organic life depends on, then you aren't serving the customers all that well...

[gruez]

I think you're misreading my comment. It's not to say that it's okay for BP to spill oil, it's that all things considered, the environmental impact of a tank of gas (extracted using current methods) is much less than what this guy is doing. Imagine the alternative: rather than every american filling up at the gas pump, they're dredging up ponds/ditches for methane. How much environmental impact would that cause? Is that better than the occasional oil spill we get?