Hollywood Anti-Fracking Activists Proven Wrong

Celebrity “activists” are everywhere and they love to tell us how to live our lives. They’re often oblivious to the effects of bad policy on real people, and in this case, why would they care about providing affordable energy to the masses? They can afford skyrocketing electricity rates, why can’t you?  Yes, the latest round of celebrity do-gooders have plenty of opinions about fracking. Also true to form, these celebrity fracktivists are terribly misinformed. 

Celebrities such as Hayden Panetierre, Marisa Tomei, Lance Bass, Wendie Malick, Camryn Manheim, and Daryl Hannah, have banded together to make anti-fracking “What the Frack?” videos, asking people to call their elected officials to have fracking banned. These videos claim that fracking pollutes our water supply, makes people sick, and makes climate change worse. The main problem with these videos is that they’re full of misinformation. 

The Western Energy Alliance (WEA) released a video of their own dispelling many of these myths. In an accompanying blog post, they also take the video to task, proving that these claims are false. Don’t believe them? The WEA also quotes experts such as Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who said “I still have not seen any evidence of fracking per se contaminating groundwater.” It doesn’t get any clearer than that. Point by point, the celebrity activists are proven wrong. 

The truth is fracking is safe, effective, and good for our economy. Jon Haubert of Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development (CRED), a group dedicated to education on fracking, spoke with Freedomworks.

“Even though we’ve been safely fracking since 1947 and more than 90 percent of today’s oil and natural gas wells are fracked at some point during their lifespan,” he said, most “admit to not knowing or understanding what it involves.  And the problem is worsened when uninformed Hollywood actors jet in and out of town with a script in hand focused more on drama, than reality.”

Haubert when on to explain the economic impact of a fracking ban.

“When we talk about banning fracking, we’re talking about outlawing a process that is absolutely critical to developing our vast energy resources,” he said,  “and is $30 billion per year economic juggernaut, pulsating economic activity and desperately needed revenue.”

Our economy is not in a position to turn down this kind of revenue, or turn away jobs, and the data just isn’t there to back up the environmental claims of these uninformed Hollywood activists. With millions of Americans feeling the pinch in their wallets, hopefully they’ll pay attention to the facts and not these fracktivists. I’m all for having informed discussions and disagreements but, sadly, uninformed celebrities seem to have gotten the nation’s attention for now.

 

Image credit: tcktcktck