Fracking: Two Views

  |  October 9, 2012

We happened on this opinion piece about fracking in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Or, rather, opinion pieces. They’ve posted two opposing views, so readers can try to parse out the arguments and make up their own minds.

View number one:

“While I agree that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has much to learn about the economic and job-creation values of natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation, it’s a mistake to think that lesson would be forthcoming from former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

“Mr. Rendell kept himself at the beck and call of antifracking environmental groups to the point of issuing a moratorium on drilling on state lands—something that subsequently has been done safely, with minimum disruption, producing millions of dollars for the state treasury.”

View number two:

“Eight million people live and work in upstate New York. We own homes and businesses. Agriculture is a $5 billion-a-year industry in New York state, much of that coming from the very same land areas that gas companies would like to tap. Upstate New York has abundant access to a precious resource that should be preserved and protected, from the Great Lakes to the Finger Lakes to the Adirondack Mountains: clean, fresh water. Many, many upstate New Yorkers are not willing to create long-term, irreversible damage to water supplies and the agricultural industry for a short-term infusion of natural-gas revenue.”

Upstater has no official take on fracking. All we can say is that it’s very hard to make an informed decision about it. Some folks say, hey, it hardly affects us upstate. Others say it could affect us all over the state. Does this editorial help at all?

Read On, Reader...