Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future Read Free Page B

right about now.
    Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this book is directed toward anyone and everyone who cares about the fate of our planet. The only realistic way to avert catastrophic climate change is to dramatically and quickly reduce our consumption of fossil fuels. That project will pose economic and technical challenges. But politics may present the biggest obstacle of all.
    There are two kinds of arguments for policies to reduce reliance on oil, coal, and gas—environmental and economic. Environmental arguments point to the consequences of rising greenhouse gas emissions from burning hydrocarbons, including rising sea levels, extreme weather, and likely catastrophic impacts to agriculture. Economic arguments highlight the inevitability of future fossil fuel scarcity as society burns these finite, nonrenewable resources in ever-greater quantities. The clear solutions in both cases: find other energy sources and reduce overall energy consumption now .
    The fossil fuel industry has, quite understandably, fought back against both economic and the environmental arguments. Oil companies (notably ExxonMobil) have not only funded the efforts of climate-denial front groups to sow doubt about what is in fact established science (ExxonMobil now officially acknowledges the reality of human-induced climate change), they have also mounted a sustained public relations campaign to undermine the credibility of peak oil analysts. At the same time, the industry would like nothing better than to divide its opponents, and it has achieved some success in this regard: a few climate activists have mistakenly disavowed peak oil, perhaps because they see it as a distraction from, or dilution of, their own message. They often point out that if industry estimates of fossil fuel reserves are correct, burning all that oil, coal, and gas will result in environmental destruction on a scale beyond our ability to comprehend; with so much at stake, why quibble about when oil production rates will max out? Meanwhile, a few Peakists have made the foolish claim that climate change is not a serious problem because the global economy will crash due to soaring energy prices before we are able to do really serious damage to the environment.
    Success in shifting energy policy depends upon coordination of environmental and economic arguments against continued reliance on fossil fuels. Are there enough accessible hydrocarbons to tip the world into climate chaos? Absolutely. But activists concerned about climate change would do well to embrace economic (supply constraint) arguments against fossil fuel dependency. By erroneously reinforcing industry hype about the future potential of shale gas, tight oil, and tar sands, they keep the debate exactly where the industry wants it—as a choice between environmental protection on the one hand and jobs, economic growth, and energy security on the other. It’s a false choice and a losing strategy.
    * * *
    Here’s what readers can expect to find in the pages ahead. After a quick overview in Chapter 1 of what the peak oil and gas discussion is all about and why it matters, we will take a close, hard look in Chapter 2 at fracking—what it is and what it means. In Chapter 3, we’ll examine key producing regions, the rates at which per-well output tends to decline over time, and trends in drilling. And we will explore the implications of those data.
    We will then look at the environmental costs of unconventional oil and gas in Chapter 4, sampling reports from the front lines of the fracking fields across the United States regarding impacts to water and air quality, land, and public health. You may be surprised to learn who is fighting the drilling juggernaut—it’s not just environmentalists.
    In Chapter 5, we’ll inquire who actually benefits from the fracking boom and explore Wall Street’s role in the current mania. Investment bankers make money on the way up (as bubbles inflate) and on the way down (as