A long-awaited EPA report released Thursday found no signs of “widespread, systemic” drinking water pollution caused by fracking — a conclusion that offers a victory to the oil and gas industry and a major blow to a wave of grassroots anti-drilling movements sprouting across the country.
The results of EPA’s years-long fracking study should bolster natural gas producers, who have benefited from Obama administration climate and environmental policies that have shrunk the coal industry’s hold on the electricity industry.
Let’s begin with that last line first. As we’re dealing withPolitico here, it’s not that they have to get in some praise for The Lightbringer. While there are some benefits to the natural gas industry from Obama’s wholesale war on the coal industry, it’s not booming because of that, as the writer is clearly implying. Natural gas is mostly benefiting from the fact that it is inexpensive and there is a lot of it.
One of the biggest, if not the biggest, talking points for the anti-fracking activists is that it is going to pollute your drinking water, all day, every day. While this study managed to find some isolated incidents of that, it debunks the myth that fracking is letting dangerous chemicals run free into the entire nation’s water supply. This has already been debunked several times, but the anti-fracking loons haven’t let that slow them down.
What makes this interesting is that President Obama is now trying to make his environmental/climate change hysteria “accomplishments” the cornerstone of his legacy. This study doesn’t really dovetail with the goals of his big money green supporters. While they are the people who have motivated him to try to destroy the coal industry, they are also the ones who have tried to destroy the natural gas industry, which makes the implication that Obama is “helping” the latter patently absurd.
There is a lot of money behind the greenies, and this administration has given it even more. They’ll keep spreading lies.
In this case, simply point them to this study and say, “The Obama administration doesn’t agree with you.”