Debbie Wasserman Schultz on fracking in debate with Tim Canova

[Ford_Prefect]

54. You left out the damage done in North Dakota, largely ignored by MSM in its haste to hype the rush.

My nephew worked up there until the price crashed. The state cannot clean-up the toxic spills or replace the destroyed aquifers. The methane plume over the Bakken area is at times almost dense enough to be seen from space without satellite enhancement.

The Earthquakes in Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are unlikely to end in the foreseeable future. We had several here in North Carolina since they began in Pennsylvania. In some areas the quakes happen almost daily and at a rate and strength that was rare a half century ago. Breaking the shale is half the cause. Injecting the spent toxic/water mix into the old well heads to dispose of it makes it much worse.

One feature often obscured is that, unlike traditional oil wells of Texas or Oklahoma, fracking wells have a relatively short production life and must be restarted a number of times to turn a profit. This multiplies the impact on the environment and can sharply reduce the real production value as we have seen in North Dakota, Ohio and Pennsylvania. A notable side effect in North Dakota is that down-turns in pricing have closed many if not most drilling companies and sites, sharply curtailed production and left many without work, enormous debt among drilling producers and local business, and failed drilling outfits, along with a toxic landscape the state has no tax money to deal with.

Yes, currently we do need fuel and oil to run the infrastructure and make products and fill our ever-increasing fuel tanks. For over 50 years we have been warned that there was a price to pay for continuing to avoid moderating that need. Recent investigations have shown that the oil and gas industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure we voters and those in Congress did not find out just how much damage it was doing to the planet and the very thin layer of atmosphere we humans require to live on it.

The physics of the situation are pretty damning without getting into the outright fraud and other illegal activities undertaken to hide the damage.