1. The exploitation of the Marcellus Shale is a foolish, and fundamentally 'in-human' activity on the part of corporations -- including multinational oil-and-gas corporations but also accounting firms, transportation companies, universities, and other for-profit and not-for-profit entities.
2. I see the behavior of these corporations as flowing from a singular fact of their existence -- they quite literally 'have no soul'. That is, unlike us, they are (a) immortal, (b) answerable to no 'higher-power' (in whatever way you understand that), (c) immune to human feelings of shame or regret, and (d) created - by us - to perform a very simple, very ruthless task: to maximize profit (or, as is now fashionable to say, 'maximize shareholder value').
3. I've only picked up a smidgen of Yiddish, but I understand 'Mensch' to be the antithesis of that corporate character. Therefore, a 'Marcellus Mensch' might be 'someone who looks at the Marcellus Shale from outside the corporate mindset: one who cares fundamentally about the human condition, and the impact of Marcellus development on humankind.'
