Today’s Examiner editorial – “Obama’s EPA stifles new energy gains” – focuses on yesterday’s announcement by the agency that it has decided to spend millions of dollars on a new multi-year study of a topic it has already studied numerous times in the past and found no dangers to public health.
The new study will look at the potential public health threat to water quality allegedly posed by hydraulic fracturing, the 60-year-old technology used to gain access to vast pools of oil and natural gas deep underground, mainly in shale formations. Not once has the technology been credibly linked to any public health threat to water quality anywhere in the U.S..
Recommended Stories
But no matter, because the Left – including President Obama, the federal environmental regulatory bureaucracy, environmental activist Democrats in Congress like Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, and the environmental non-profit advocacy groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council – have targeted hydraulic fracturing precisely because of its success in making possible the tapping into these incredibly abundant new supplies of oil and natural gas.
That these groups are coordinating their efforts is clear from the conjunction of the EPA study announcement with the Washington premiere earlier this week of the virulently anti-fossil fuel propagandamentary movie, GasLand.
Hydraulic fracturing is a direct threat to the development of the “green” energy industry of solar, wind, biomass, and ethanol, and it is a huge obstacle to achieving the Left’s goal of killing all uses of fossil-based fuels, including oil, gas and coal, in order to “reduce America’s carbon footprint” in the quixotic battle against global warming.
As today’s editorial explains, the two critical contextual facts here include the reality that fossil fuels will account for three-fourths and more of America’s power production for the foreseeable future, and that it is impossible to envision a credible scenario in which the alternative fuels can replace even a fourth of the fossil-fuel-based power production required to keep the American economy going, much less growing.
The inevitable result then will be choking of the American energy industry’s ability to find and produce critically needed new supplies of fossil fuels, which will mean energy will cost far more and supplies will become inconsistent and unreliable. We will, in effect, be reduced to a Third World energy economy.
Since it’s clear the purpose of the new EPA study has nothing to do with protecting public health and everything to do with taking a giant step toward stopping fossil fuel exploration and development, it seems logical to assume EPA will not wait until the projected 2012 completion date for the analysis before moving on the policy front.
After all, if there is a chance – real or imagined – that hydraulic fracturing might represent a public health threat, agency officials would no doubt argue that they are required under the law to take whatever actions they deem necessary as soon as possible to limit or eliminate entirely all uses of the technology, pending the outcome of the study and the agency’s deliberations that follow.
This new study then is potentially a perfect illustration of the dead hand of bureuacracy being used to advance the Left’s ideological agenda in the energy field.
So I asked Enesta Jones, an EPA spokesman, if the agency would take interim actions against hydraulic fracturing. As you can see from the email exchange that followed my original query, the EPA spokesman was evasive and unresponsive. Veteran Washington observers know what that means – the answer to my question is almost certainly “yes.”
Here’s the email exchange:
MT: Will there be any temporary policy changes now pending the outcome of the study? In other words, does EPA intend to take any measures now to slow or stop hydraulic fracturing operations either already in place or being planned by the energy industry, such as the Marcellus Shale natural gas activities?
EPA: As results from the study become available, EPA will use them as appropriate to inform decision making about hydraulic fracturing.
MT: Since it’s a multi-year study, what about before the results become available?
EPA: We expect to complete the study by 2012.
MT: So between now and 2012, is EPA considering any interim policy changes regarding hydraulic fracturing pending the result of the study?
EPA: EPA will continue to review information as it becomes available and use it to determine what steps need to be taken to protect underground sources of drinking water, within the limits of its authority.
By the way, this is exactly the kind of evasiveness that journalists of all stripes too frequently get from government spokesmen on controversial issues, so next time you see a reporter being exasperated with a flak, remember that getting the runaround gets really old really quickly.
