More Onion

(To read the first post on this topic, see below:  "Hydrofracking - Starting to Peel the Onion")

There are arguments for hydrofracking which really need to be carefully considered. Chief among them seem to be the economic benefit of increased industrial activity, and the assertion by many proponents of natural gas that it is cleaner-burning than the fuels it may replace, such as oil and, especially, coal.

Any new industrial initiative will create jobs and, at least initially, an economic boost. Looking further, we have to ask: are the costs worth the result? Another question of interest to many in Otsego County: how many of these jobs will go to Otsego County workers who are currently looking for work?

Studies of the economic impact of drilling in the Marcellus Shale have been done by both New York State (here's the economic assement report) and PennState University; these are just two of the countless sources of information on this topic. The Penn State study does not appear to consider the negative impacts on the local economy that the NY study does: increased truck traffic, increased fire and police protection, increased housing costs (although other studies suggest falling property values over time). There are a couple of studies that suggest that unrestricted horizontal gas drilling would have, at best, a zero or negative net economic impact (and I'll post these when I find them). The question of whether the increase in employment will have a positive impact on Otsego County unemployment is certainly an important question to ask, as we weigh the costs and benefits.

Is the methane recovered from the Marcellus Shale a cleaner-burning fuel than those it will replace, providing a more environmentally friendly approach to the energy crisis? This isn't a simple question, and we have to answer it completely before we become enmeshed in an endless web of subsidies and structural changes like we with did with, for instance, ethanol. Initially seen as a highly green (corn-based) additive to gasoline, it turns out that no one can show that it saves us anything – many experts say it takes more to produce ethanol than it saves in gasoline. But the growing of corn for ethanol is now so embedded into our agricultural and economic system that it's hard to walk it back. Meanwhile, the impact on the world grain economy is causing higher prices for basic food in the poorest of countries; certainly not an outcome that anyone advocated in the beginning.

So we have to be careful. Even the apparently self-evident truth must be examined. Here's a summary of a report by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, along with some opposing points, which suggests that replacing coal-fired power plants with plants burning natural gas would not actually reduce carbon release into the atmosphere. It's complicated. Let's learn, and talk, a lot more before we leap.