How would you vote on a bill that would...

[Peter the Lefty]

Yay (D-leaning I)
There are other ways of becoming energy independent, and the fracking corporations are running around destroying Pennsylvania to the point where I think they deserve to be banned.

[RogueBeaver]

Nay (R)

Why cut ourselves off from a means of becoming energy independent?

[MATTROSE94]

No I support drilling on 1% of the ANWR as long as there is no subsidization or oil refineries. In the meantime we should be providing tax incentives for families and households using renewable sources of energy.

That actually seems like a pretty good idea that I would support as well.

[politicallefty]

I have problems with this practice in light of some its nasty side-effects. It should be heavily restricted until the safety issues can be resolved.

[traininthedistance]

Yea (D), though just saying that loses a lot of important nuance; I'm not necessarily in favor of a ban everywhere, in perpetuity, but I am in favor of a temporary ban/moratorium, as well as possibly saying that there are certain areas where a permanent ban is appropriate.

The problem with the "regulate, don't ban" approach, in a nutshell, is that there are no backsies when it comes to groundwater*.  You poison an aquifer, you can't unpoison it.  We don't have the technology to do so, and even if we ever do develop such technology, there is an excellent chance that it will be so expensive/energy intensive as to claw back the energy gains we've made by drilling.  Look, I understand the argument that we need energy, and that fracked gas is cheaper and cleaner than other fossil fuels (though it's not as cleaner as one would think due to the problem of leaky transmission pipes)... that's not my main objection here.  The water issue is much, much more salient; and you see it already with people's wells becoming undrinkable, forcing them to pay zillions in bottled water (which, again, claws back some of that energy gain) or move, with no recompense.  To say nothing of the fact that it costs millions of gallons of water to do these things in the first place, which can provide extra stress on areas grappling with water shortages (and there are guaranteed to be more of them as time goes forward).

And, as I've mentioned before, it's personally important to all eight million of us who live in NYC, since our water source is unfiltered Catskills water which has remained very good, without need of any treatment plants, due to an aggressive campaign many years ago to buy up land around the reservoirs and preserve it.  You start fracking in NY, you could send that whole edifice falling down, throwing billions upon billions of dollars of unfunded obligations at the city, quite possibly a higher bill than the value of any wells in that area in fact.  So, to say that we "need the energy" is the very definition of penny-wise, pound-foolish- you're liable to not actually net much energy when all the external costs are accounted for.

Now... I'm not saying that this analysis holds everywhere, forever.  Perhaps out in West Texas we can make the collective determination that the energy is more important than use of the aquifers (though, ofc, the farmers out there who are drawing on that fossil water to make a living might still object), and perhaps the industry can eventually figure out a foolproof way to do it that guarantees that you're not going to get more scenes like this:



Until then, though, no just no.  Get it right first.

* This sort of analysis holds for a lot of environmental issues, in fact; you're not going to be able to undo (just for instance) an extinction, or mass desertification, or (at least on human lifetime scales) CO2 emissions.  This is why extra prudence is always required on environmental issues, and consequently why getting it right here is so much more important than most other issues.

[muon2]

I lean pretty strongly toward, "Yea (I/O) (D)" but am open to being persuaded that regulation would suffice.

Perhaps the fracking bill passed in IL this year and supported by the major environmental groups in the state can persuade you that a strong regulatory framework makes a ban unnecessary.