Leaders of the world’s seven rich, large countries called Monday for their nations to phase out the use of fossil fuels by the end of the century to combat climate change.
It’s an ambitious goal, to be sure, but the irony could hardly have been greater in one key respect. As The Guardian reported on the same day, five of the so-called G7 nations have actually increased their use of greenhouse-gas-heavy coal in the past five years.
“Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and France together burned 16 percent more coal in 2013 than 2009 and are planning to further increase construction of coal-fired power stations,” The Guardian said.
The two exceptions? The U.S. and Canada. And, as The Guardian correctly noted, the main reason the U.S. was able to accomplish this feat was because coal could be replaced by some utilities with relatively affordable natural gas, thanks to the revolution in production brought about by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.
Fracking remains controversial in environmental circles, but it is helping the U.S. achieve a lighter carbon footprint.
Nor has it been the environmental catastrophe that activist groups insist. Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a lengthy report saying it had found no evidence that fracking has led to widespread, systemic pollution of drinking water — long one of the biggest arenas of contention.
Yes, there have been problems, the EPA confirmed, but the number of cases in which water was polluted as a result of faulty well construction and other factors “was small compared to the number of hydraulically fractured wells.”
Indeed, the EPA estimates that 25,000 to 30,000 new wells were fracked annually in the U.S. from 2011 to 2014, and an unknown number of older wells, too.
Several major environmental groups claim the report actually vindicates their hostility toward fracking, but that is a strained interpretation at best. No major industrial process is flawless. And since fracking has been occurring literally for decades — although not on the present scale — serious problems with water quality would very likely be evident by now if they were an unavoidable byproduct of the process.
And yet the EPA report clearly indicates there is no evidence of significant problems with water pollution because of the huge increase in fracked wells.
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
