Abstract
Environmental problems are typically addressed through mitigation, which seeks to prevent environmental damage from occurring, and remediation, which seeks to clean up and repair environmental damage that has already been done. Mitigation is almost always more desirable than remediation. The “Ban Fracking Act” introduced in the U.S. Senate in early 2020, along with a similar bill in the House was intended to mitigate the presumed risks that fracking poses to air, water, earthquakes, and climate change. None of the large-scale studies done so far have been able to show that environmental risks from the fracking process are any more widespread or severe than the environmental risks from any other kind of oil and gas development, all of which are significantly less than the risk of mining and burning coal. Opponents of oil and gas have erroneously conflated “fracking” with the production of fossil fuels in general, leading many environmentalists and some politicians to believe that a national ban on fracking will encourage renewables to fill the energy needs of the nation. This is a laudable goal, but it defies economic reality. Nearly three quarters of domestic natural gas is produced from fracked wells. A fracking ban will lead to gas shortages, and large industrial users are likely to switch to coal, exacerbating climate change. There is no argument that humanity needs to move away from the use of fossil fuels and into a cleaner energy future. However, banning fracking is not the same as banning fossil fuels. Coal is mined, not fracked, and a fracking ban will do nothing about coal. Fracking can be greener, and the use of less toxic chemicals should be pursued. However, greener alternatives will not be used by industry unless they cost the same or less as standard chemicals and perform as well or better. Environmental damages caused by fracking and shale gas development can be remediated by controlling air pollution, water contamination, stormwater runoff, and allowing terrestrial ecosystems to re-occupy the drill pad. Effective monitoring requires site access and field data. These requirements could be enforced by oil and gas regulators if enacted into regulations by state legislatures.
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Soeder, D.J. (2021). Mitigation and Remediation. In: Fracking and the Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59121-2_10
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