The fracking debate is being waged all over North America. The oil industry loves using the process to extract hard to get to oil. Those against it are afraid fracking is responsible for using too much water, for contaminating ground water and for causing earthquakes. This is the first of two letters to the Baltimore Sun we are sharing with you here on iKan Media.
Don’t be deceived by anti-fracking crowd and the lies they spread.
With the House of Delegates recently voting to institute a three-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, it’s clear that politics could trump science in Maryland (“Md. shouldn’t make the same mistake as New York in banning fracking,” March 31).
While nationally-funded anti-fracking groups like Food & Water Watch and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network have been working overtime to deceive residents throughout the state, it’s important to note that governors on both sides of the aisle across the country, as well as President Barack Obama himself, have looked at the science and rejected fracking-ban activism.
Take, for instance, Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, a Democrat who recently said that a ban on fracking would carry “grave consequences.” He pointed out, “We can’t find examples in Colorado, or more than one or two examples, where fracking, in any sense, has caused harm or been sufficiently dangerous to the public that would justify us to ban it.”
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown of California looked at the science and said that the activists campaigning to ban fracking “don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”
And of course, here in Maryland, there’s former Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat whose administration completed a three-year study and concluded that Maryland’s regulations will effectively manage the risks of fracking.
It’s time for Maryland to put science ahead of politics and move forward with development that would bring thousands of jobs and economic growth to our state.
(Comment by Matthew Dempsey, Potomac, Maryland in the Baltimore Sun)
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