The Oil and Gas industry is spending literally hundreds of millions of dollars on PR and lobbying at the national, state, and local levels to confuse the clear and evident facts of significant public health risks, environmental damage, and questionable national economic interest in fracking.
You may want to review what the long term story ends up being every single time a large industry puts out an aggressive PR campaign proclaiming what they are doing is perfectly safe and good for everyone. Spoiler: it's not true. See Big Tobacco, or hey... how about Big Oil & Gas every time they massively poison the environment with a spill catastrophe.
The massive shale reserves often cited by the industry that dwarf OPEC's caches are not exploitable via fracking. Fracking's effect on GDP is estimated at something like 0.5%.
Players in Oil & Gas have a clear strategy. They are trying to do their dirty work in our back yards and make short term gains on aggressive time tables before anyone realizes how poisonous their techniques are in densely populated zones. They have moved relatively quietly for many years, but they've brought this industry too close to too many people and we are finally realizing what they are up to.
Federally, somehow these operations are exempted from clean air and water acts. In Colorado, we have the added bonus that our state sold our mineral rights literally from under our feet... land ownership and mineral ownership are legally separate and virtually never sold together. Energy companies can effectively set up shop right under your dream home and there's nothing you can do about it.
By the time the pollution cases and fallout become more and more commonplace over the next 10 years, they'll have exploited the majority of the shale deposits within residential. Tough luck for anyone who lives on top of it or next to frack zones.
We may have to frack and drill and perform heavy industry for energy needs. That doesn't mean we have to do it on top of grade schools and dense residential neighborhoods. Heavy residential makes up a tiny fraction of the exploitable shale resource area in the U.S. There is absolutely no reason to frack within areas where people live in numbers. It is irresponsible and greedy.
Links to more info:
Fact Checking videos from Frack Free Colorado:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZx8kWdWUxk (first in a series)
Fracking Hell: The Untold Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEB_Wwe-uBM
Marcellus Reality Tour - Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5QqidiEEHw
An Aerial View of Hydraulic Fracturing Along the Marcellus Shale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQfCzZiF9a8
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