A potential solution here is to dramatically limit or eliminate protections for fracking, but still allow it. If they can pay for any damage they cause, they should be allowed to do it. The problem is that we’re subsidizing these efforts in a number of ways, and giving these orgs way too many protections. We should remove those, but IMO not ban fracking itself, since it can be a very useful way to produce energy in our transition away from coal.
That said, we should absolutely be investing in clean energy. I want to see a renewed push for nuclear power, expansion and optimization of hydro, etc. But we’re not going to switch to green energy overnight (and the US is improving on emissions faster than many other countries), and fracking works well in the short-term as we move away from coal. As renewables get built out, we can reduce how much fracking we do.
In the US, the major source of natgas is now fracking.
And uh, fracking is about the most gross extraction method for anything you can dig out of the ground.
Cool story. How do we pull rare earth minerals, needed for batteries, from the ground?
Typically not by injecting toxic carcinogens into the ground to do so, like we do with fracking.
Also I’ve not heard of any strip mining activities that turn a town’s only water supply into something that’s flammable, but I perhaps missed that?
Or the ongoing incidents of child and adult cancer caused by this itty bitty little toxic waste issue.
A potential solution here is to dramatically limit or eliminate protections for fracking, but still allow it. If they can pay for any damage they cause, they should be allowed to do it. The problem is that we’re subsidizing these efforts in a number of ways, and giving these orgs way too many protections. We should remove those, but IMO not ban fracking itself, since it can be a very useful way to produce energy in our transition away from coal.
That said, we should absolutely be investing in clean energy. I want to see a renewed push for nuclear power, expansion and optimization of hydro, etc. But we’re not going to switch to green energy overnight (and the US is improving on emissions faster than many other countries), and fracking works well in the short-term as we move away from coal. As renewables get built out, we can reduce how much fracking we do.