This kind of human - induced slip happens at very small scales all the time at geothermal plants and other locations where water is pumped into the earth. (scientificamerican.com)
A big obstacle is that traditional, high - temperature geothermal plants require drilling as much as three miles into the earth's crust. (discovermagazine.com)
Their commercial - scale geothermal plants have been built in areas that would otherwise have been forced to depend on expensive oil imports and environmentally hazardous fossil fuels. (treehugger.com)