Fracking and the Test of Time

  |  June 17, 2013
fracking

Discussions at certain country dining room tables turned to fracking this weekend. An employee of the EPA sat with several open-minded but leftish-leaning upstaters (who admittedly know little about geology and who also greatly enjoy the benefits of electricity) and held forth on the subject. The best thing for all involved, he said, was time: the longer our region can hold the gas companies back, the more time they’ll have to develop safer methods of extracting gas. And not just safer, but cleaner. According to our source, so much methane is released into the atmosphere during the fracking process that it generates as much greenhouse gas, or more, than it claims to save with this cleaner technology. (This report says the technology is already getting greener.)

One of the open-minded, leftish, mostly ignorant listeners asked a question: don’t the gas companies become more powerful as time goes on, more able to market their vision of clean technology (never mind the methane and the stories of ruined groundwater), more likely to make good friends in Albany?

There’s no way to know, of course, because, well, only time will tell. But what do you think? Should citizens try to delay fracking for as long as possible to make it safer and cleaner? Or is it better for the companies to act now>

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