I was shocked in the presidential debate that Harris gave staunch support for fracking. I was under the impression that democrats are against fracking, and remember people being critical of Fetterman for supporting it.
I also grew up in an area that was heavily impacted by the pollution from fracking. People who worked in the field were seen as failures of moral character who chose profits over the health of their children. How is it that both major parties are now in support of it? I feel like I must be missing a piece of the puzzle.
Many don’t. I don’t. I’m not gonna vote trump over it though.
Are you gonna vote for the lying cop or the lying criminal?
Probably the lying cop since a criminal is proven guilty?
Fracking has granted the United States independence from OPEC, and turned the US into the largest exporter of oil. The US now has the pricing power on the world oil market. This has huge geopolitical implications.
Back in the 2000s it was completely different. All of the geopolitical wonks were pushing renewable energy as a means of OPEC independence. And now that independence has been granted, but we still have the oil.
Meanwhile, as others have stated on this thread, the immediate problems from fracking have been mostly fixed, including the earthquakes. Long term, I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen with all of that dirty wastewater going back into the ground.
So on balance, there’s a good reason for the leadership in both parties to be on board with fracking: oil still rules the world, and fracking lets the United States rule the oil markets.
Yeah, and I’m fine with that short term. But only if it’s very short term and only if we use it as a brief reprieve to build out renewable energy faster than otherwise. That seems unlikely
What’s more disappointing is that she had been historically anti-fracking. Tossed all of that out though, I suppose.
On one hand, I get it. To ensure herself a smooth election, keep the funding from your enemy.
On the other hand, fuck man I just want a President with policy that won’t destroy the planet.
When they needed PA to win the election.
Because nothing matters if we lose the election and we can’t win the election without PA.
I’m not convinced democrats have been completely against fracking. I think it’s location based as fracking does or can have extreme negative consequences on the surrounding environment, so doing it around a major city aquifer probably isn’t the greatest idea. Fracking out in the middle of nowhere might be more positively embraced.
Pennsylvania is a swing state and likes fracking politically. As Republicans support fracking, this could be the one issue that convinces some Pennsylvania voters to vote Republican over Democrat.
She’s still a politician. It’s easy to put her on a pedestal because she’s NOT Trump, but without him, how excited would you really be about Harris?
Fracking technology has some potential upside in the climate discussion, https://time.com/6302342/fervo-fracking-technology-geothermal-energy/
A ban on fracking might not be the best solution if you want to move the technology towards something more beneficial to the fight against climate change.
Money
Liberals aren’t on the side of anyone but billionaires, be they neoliberals, conservatives, or “post-liberals.”
The sooner you accept that the more American politics will make sense.
There isn’t any pollution from fracking, though.
If you can’t believe the assistant gynecologist, who can you believe
I thought the problem was that fracking produces oil, which is processed and burnt for energy ultimately releasing excess carbon? Idk it’s been a while since I’ve caught up with climate science :/
Fracking is usually for natural gas I think
Fracking is used for oil and for natural gas. And it absolutely pollutes local water supplies, aside from also using a shit ton of water, causing tremors, and wrecking wildlife habitats.
If there’s one benefit for it, it’s that it improves energy independence because it allows us to tap more difficult wells cost-effectively.
But that’s a bit of a stretch, because divesting away from fossil fuels also improves energy independence.
Maybe try typing the word you’re talking about into Google before speaking so confidently out of your ass. What are you, Ace Ventura?
Why would anyone care about “tremors”?
It’s because of the electoral college. Most states give all their electoral college votes to whomever wins the state rather than dividing the votes equitably. This means Pennsylvania – a swing state – will go either all-red or all-blue. The state has a lot of fracking, and a lot of people making money off it, so Democrats are trying to appease pro-fracking to get votes.
The people getting harmed by fracking are stuck without anyone on their ‘side’, but will presumably be more likely to vote blue because that side favors more regulation and pro-environment stuff. Note that all Harris said was she wouldn’t ban fracking. She didn’t say she wouldn’t make it difficult to do. My guess is any attempts to make it cleaner will get crushed by Congress and the Corrupted Supreme Court that has sided against Unions, workers, citizens, and the planet – all to favor of their sugar daddies. So even if the next President wants to do something about fracking, it would be a hard to actually do anything.
That and because there are Democrats who are bought by the oil companies, just like Republicans.
this is one time I side with the NIMBY’s.
fracking is awful and we need to kick the oil habit anyhow. it absolutely fucks up the local enviroment, and destroys the water table. the full name is literally hydraulic fracturing… because the process is basically taking something you can’t normally get oil out of, pumping in a shit load of water until the bedrock shatters to fucking hell.
it lets you get to the oil, sure, but it also releases the oil (and all sorts of other shit, like gases) so that it gets into wells and everything else.
Basically the only people that are pro-fracking are the assholes that are perfectly okay fucking over every one else, and the assholes that take their money.
Democrats have the backwards idea that trying to be conservative enough to siphon off republican voters is how they’ll win, while they’ve got this mass of chronically ignored, disconnected progressives who they never serve “because they don’t vote”. And they don’t vote because no one represents them.
Just eternally chasing that cracked out meth head of a party over to the right.
How big is that mass, really? Here on lemmy, a few hundreds or maybe thousands, globally? In 2016, Bernie running against a weak candidate in the more progressive party got 43% of the vote.
It does no good to falsely believe we have some critical mass of progressives when the data shows we don’t. Instead we need to continue grassroots work to keep expanding the progressive base, so someday your fantasy actually becomes true. It is not yet true though.
We gain nothing from denying reality.
easily 20% of registered Democrats.
That’s an interesting example, I’ll have to look it out and see if the context bears it out. I say that as although yes he might have only gotten 43%, the question is how many registered voters didn’t vote and how many eligible but unregistered voters there were.
Vermont has a fairly high voter turnout, but looking at Vermont’s Secretary of State 2016 had a voter turnout of 63% of Voting Age Population from census population. So that 185k of 505k thousands people who didn’t vote.
Also if I have the right numbers from Vermont’ SOS, that’s 43% of the state total 63% who voted.
I’ve read other demographic breakdowns on those who don’t vote which is worth looking into, but it’s hard for me to see someone say that there isn’t a mass when we have this huge population of American citizen who don’t vote. Something between 35-45% of the US just doesn’t. That’s a huge swath of disenfranchised people.
I agree, but I’m leery of any argument saying those are mostly progressives. Anecdotally, progressives are usually more activist than the rest of the population, not less.
Without evidence I will say it’s more likely that she has significant funding from the fracking industry and is under the thumb of rich executives. The difference is that they likely understand that supporting fracking could cost them the election, but they know that by not supporting it they lose a huge source of funding. They have weighed the costs, benefits and risks, and decided it’s a risk worth taking.
A good solution is to get corporate money out of politics. There are narrow ways to achieve that, but a broad solution that fixes a lot of problems is to end corporate personhood. This organization has made steady progress toward that and I think is worth supporting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Move_to_Amend. Considered signing up for their email list.
Another solution is more wisely voting. People don’t vote in primary elections, but they’re more important than the general elections. They determine what the field of candidates looks like. Vote in primary elections. You don’t necessarily want to vote in primary of the party you most align with though. An obvious example where you’d vote in a different party is if you live in a gerrymandered district. There’s a near 100% chance the gerrymandered party candidate will win. It doesn’t matter who the other candidates are. Vote for the least bad candidate in the other party. You won’t get everything you want, but you’ll get more than you would otherwise. It will also force the party to change.
That’s not the only time you’d vote in a party you don’t align best with. Maybe you’re relatively happy with all of the candidates in a party, so why split hairs if you’d be ok with any of them? There are so many considerations that the only advice is to keep an open mind about party membership, evaluate where you make the most impact (not what looks the most like you) and vote in every damn election, primaries included.
LOL. She needs Pennsylvania. That’s it.
That’s an interesting possibility - is there any data to support it?
Here in Georgia the fight is in the center, for sure.
