The Truth About Fracking

Let’s say you could see the future. And in the future you saw a guaranteed way to increase state revenue and positively support your local community. Wouldn’t you take it?

Some of my fellow Pennsylvanians think otherwise. We are currently sitting on the gold mine that is the Marcellus Shale gas formation. Yet we can’t take advantage of its limitless potential due to the fear mongering of the environmental lobby and misinformation put out by the left.

Last year’s documentary FrackNation confronts the fear mongers head on, using actual data to show that hydraulic fracturing—or fracking, as it is more commonly known—is not as destructive as claimed to be.

Fracking is obviously not a foolproof process. I have apprehensions about potential environmental contamination, as any mother would. Governor Tom Corbett recently lifted the ban on leasing land near state parks and forests for fracking causes me some concern. However, I do not let these concerns because irrational fears.

The majority of Pennsylvanians—around 58% of voters—support fracking. We know that the oil and gas industry added more than 10,000 jobs in Pennsylvania alone from 2007 to 2011. We know that in the same time period, per-capita income rose by 19% in counties with more than 200 wells, and by 14% in counties with between 20 and 200 wells. We know that fracking is helping America inch closer to energy independence (something you never hear liberals talking about anymore – I wonder why?)

I care about my state. Anyone who does should logically support fracking too. But the left has caused cognitive dissonance in the minds of many impressionable Pennsylvanians. It is time for the truth about fracking’s benefits to finally come out, before we lose out on all it has to offer.