The Brits are considering banning fracking. A writer for the Global Witness advocacy group, Jon Noronha-Gant said this:
“The government’s decision to ban fracking is a win for people over polluters.
Fracking is a dirty fossil fuel drilling method that exposes people to earthquakes, water pollution and more planet-wrecking emissions.
Aside from destroying our environment, we also know that it wouldn’t give the UK more jobs, cash or security – unlike its renewable energy counterparts. Any party would be senseless to back fracking.”
The same is true for the US. Renewable energy is already meeting 25% of US needs. It is competing with fossil fuels that are heavily subsidized by advantageous legislation. The producers take no responsibility for the harm done by the uses of their product or the damage done in extracting it fromd the ground.
Renewables employ lots of people. Technological advances in batteries are making storage practical so that surplus energy can be stored, and battery storage promises to reduce the inefficiency of transmission from source to user as well. Imagine what is possible if the US fully embraced clean energy, and leveled the competitive playing field so that fossil fuels carried the costs they so artfully dodge!
It’s called a “permit” because our society is accepting as necessary, something that is not otherwise desirable.
Billions of gallons were contaminated during the “extreme drought,” and for what? Cheap fuel. Only it’s not cheap. The price at the pump doesn’t include anything for the harm done in making that fuel or by burning it.
Here is a Reuters article about a government study that concludes fracking doesn’t necessarily hurt our water. The problem with such studies is always in the circumstances that were not considered. Keep in mind that the process involves punching a big hole through many different layers of strata, lining it with a big pipe and attempting to fill the gaps between pipe and strata with a cement-like substance. If successful, nothing leaks from the casing, and nothing can move up or down along the outside of the casing. The problem is that metal expands and contracts, the earth itself moves, and the pressures inside the pipe are extreme.
If you have ever had a wet basement, you know the problems inherent with holes in the ground and water. Once that hole has been punched it is there forever. Even if the well is properly sealed, the hole, the steel, the bentonite are all there to move and loosen and eventually leak. So be skeptical when you read reports like this:
The study does not consider the disposal of produced water.
It’s a driller’s dream, little regulation or enforcement, vast amounts of fossil fuel to be exploited. The Patagonia region of Argentina is a land of opportunity. What could possibly go wrong?
The ongoing and expensive problem of orphan wells should remind us NOT to allow environmental costs to become “externalities” in the energy economic model. The industry continues to exploit it’s political power and economic dominance, leaving the rest of society to clean up the mess and suffer the health consequences. Fossil fuels are killing us slowly and will for generations to come.
