Fracking... And Our Cynical Elites

The most compelling television I came across last night was the above opener to Chris Hayes' show. It's a jaw-dropping look at the "not in my backyard" ethos of our political elites. They are more than happy to frack up Oklahoma to the point of causing hundreds of earthquakes in a matter of days, pollute the drinking water in West Virginia so that hundreds of people are made sick before hundreds of thousands of people have no water to use at all, and make the water in Pennsylvania flammable. They have the power to do these things because of unfair policies the politicians they own legislate.

But, as Hayes pointed out last night, when fracking comes to their idyllic neighborhoods… just watch the piece. It's another one for a modern day Madame Defarge to take note of. Keep in mind… Pennsylvania voters dumped corrupt fracking-backer Tim Holden in 2012 and replaced him with progressive environmental champion Matt Cartwright. This year the slime balls who run the DCCC are again trying to elect a pro-fracking politician, ex-CIA agent Kevin Strouse, instead of reasonable and independent-minded scientist Shaughnessy Naughton (PA-08). The DCCC is up against a very educated electorate in Bucks Countyand their shill may be in for as unpleasant a surprise as Tim Holden was last cycle. This was from a guest post Naughton wrote for DWT almost half a year ago:

Cynical DCCC bumper sticker. Does Strouse have one on his car?

Basing National Policy On Credible Evidence-Based Research
-by Shaughnessy Naughton

When it comes to fracking, our policies on drilling ignore its potential public health and environmental risks. To me, that’s crazy! We should not be risking our community’s health just to make a profit. It’s simply wrong. There’s so much we don’t know, including whether or not gas and brine can make a path to the surface and what kind of seismic activity fracking causes.

This issue is particularly potent in my district, which has the Delaware River running along it. The River contributes to the entire region: at 330 miles it is the longest American river east of the Mississippi, providing drinking water for more than 15 million people, as well as water needed for industry, and irrigation for Pennsylvania’s important farming regions. Moreover, the Delaware River basin is prone to severe floods, so chemical storage near the source of so much drinking water is a serious hazard.

Fracking uses a toxic chemical cocktail called fracking fluid, but companies refuse to say what exact contaminants are in the fluid, claiming that the contents are proprietary information. The Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania’s largest drilling site, has unknown levels of radon, a radioactive gas that causes lung cancer. Rather than allowing fracking companies to hide behind the cloak of “trade secrets,” I support full disclosure and transparency of the chemicals that drillers inject underground.

My primary opponent, who moved to Pennsylvania from DC earlier this year, doesn’t seem too concerned about fracking. When asked about his views on climate change, he recently told a local newspaper “I support natural gas drilling.”

Well, I don’t agree. It would be irresponsible to frack locally and even remotely threaten a source of drinking water for 15 million people. In fact, we already have a moratorium on fracking in Pennsylvania’s Bucks and Montgomery counties passed in 2012. The fracking ban in the two counties operates as both a state and federal moratorium; the federal moratorium came in 2009, when the administrators of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) determined they needed to ban fracking along the length of the River until guidelines were drawn up.

We need to keep the federal ban in place, and make sure that Obama doesn't succumb to the energy lobby's pressure to lift the moratorium. In fact, I support making the moratorium a permanent ban. My opponent, on the other hand, clearly seems to think that there is a “right way” to risk our public health.

We as a country need to stop taking short-term gains in exchange for long-term losses. We need to start investing seriously in research on clean energy alternatives like wind, solar, and rain energy. Most importantly, we need to start basing our policies on scientific facts.