Apr
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Jessica: Class 19
April 1, 2015 | Leave a Comment
Judging the term “fracking” strictly on the merits of the word and not on its definition, it sounds like something I would not support. Seeing a billboard of “I support fracking” promoted, would turn me off to whatever “fracking” is. Basically, the word itself is just unpleasant. The full term hydraulic fracturing doesn’t make it seem any nicer. Now once you consider the actual process and the environmental effects plus the political controversy behind it, fracking definitely does not seem safe or beneficial to anyone. There are many reasons as to why I believe fracking is unsafe and instead we should look towards providing alternate energy sources, preferably renewable. The entire process of fracking seems so exhausting and timely. It’s great that we have natural resources waiting to be used up but at what cost?
First off, the process of getting to the shale rock and retrieving the natural gas is such a waste. The amount of resources used to get to the rock is massive and could be utilized for other needs. The amount of water needed to drill into the shale rock is tremendous, and water is already a depleting resource globally. Additionally, the chemicals used in fracking probably isn’t the greatest for the environment and it is clear that the chemicals spread after their initial use. I can understand why fracking is beneficial as it is another resource and it leverages gas prices, however I do not think this is a good long term solution as an energy source.
Drilling a massive hole and releasing all these chemicals and water into the earth so the gas can be exposed and utilized has multiple environmental repercussions. If fracking was occurring far away from residents and wildlife, I think it would be less controversial. However, since the shale rock is in areas where there are established towns, people are being affected by the repercussions of fracking.
I was surprised to see that the UK also had fracking going on, not realizing this practice affected other countries. The UK had a surprising amount of existing licenses as well, and the potential for growth was exponential. With New York banning fracking, I hope the UK does too because if all the areas undergoing consideration for licensing get approved, the water and viable resources put into fracking will deplete the UK, although they will have natural gas. The majority of the UK seems to have a lot of shale rock, and thus natural gas, but depleting that entire nonrenewable resource from fracking with the addition of the resources used to get the gas out, will not be worth it for the UK in the end. Optimistically speaking, I hope some parts of the UK realize the mess fracking can cause and ban it in most areas and follow suit of New York. Considering fracking has already started as a practice in retrieving gas, I do not see it being completely obliterated, however I can see it being reduced.
Overall, I hope lots of areas follow in New York and Governor Cuomo’s decision to ban fracking and ultimately look for other resources. Fracking could never work in the long term anyway since we would eventually dry out the shale rock and have to look for other resources again, after all the damage has already been done. In essence, I hope we will be able to develop and find a way to move to more sustainable types of energy and renewable resources where there are no major repercussions to residents and the environment.
