All these lethal hazards -- and greenhouse gases too!

At a time when all serious climate scientists consider global warming denial about as respectable as, say, Holocaust denial, our politicos seem to have fallen in love with it. Otherwise, how could they seriously offer gas drilling by fracking as the wonder cure for our energy ills? With a deranged fervor matched only by Flat Earthers and Elvis worshippers, they tout the miracles of this widely abundant “clean” fuel. In fact, the only miracle here would be their brains regenerating enough, after long years of huffing methane and money, to face the ”inconvenient truth.”
Now, if natural gas obtained by fracking isn’t exactly clean, that’s all because it isn’t exactly “widely abundant.” If the word “abundant” suggests something readily available, that’s as far as possible from being true here. In fact, to get Mother Earth to cough up the vast reserves of natural gas guarded jealously in her bosom, you have to give her some serious stabs. Sure, she’s a tough old bird, but when pierced thousands of times with slurries of water, sand, and toxic chemicals at pressures of thousands of pounds per square inch, she’s apt to bleed just a bit. In fact, quite a lot. Not surprisingly, one of the things she bleeds is methane, the main component of natural gas. Which is roughly 72 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. Hmmm.
So let’s get this straight. In times when climate experts consider global warming our world’s most deadly threat, we’re investing billions of dollars and running damn-the-torpedoes ahead with an energy that, all things considered, is probably the worst greenhouse culprit of all fossil fuels, outpolluting even coal? Yup, that’s about it. And not only that, we’re putting our air and water at risk, hacking hideous scars in our landscape, disrupting ecosystems , and virtually overturning the lives of tranquil rural communities to do so. Our suits and pols gotta be getting off on some serious methane buzz.
To any sane person, this is criminal madness—and needs to stop. Many will say it can’t, it’s already gone too far; our “corps and govs” stand to lose billions. Sorry, way too fracking bad. Nothing in the U.S. and PA constitutions says that free citizens must play patsy—and at what apocalyptic cost?—for reckless, fume-addled pols and suits asleep at the national wheel. (But I pray we finally learn from this, as citizens or shareholders, that perhaps our most treasonous act is a thoughtless, ill-informed vote.)
In today’s most madcap Flat Earth or Elvis-worship conventions—our state and federal legislatures—the few sane souls who support a moratorium (leading preferably to a ban) look pretty crazy to their peers. In fact, they’re the only rational animals afoot. As for the others, they probably should be in some halfway house or lunatic asylum. Or possibly recalled or impeached. But never again should they see public office without convincing proof—like support for a moratorium and ban—that their brains have fully rehabbed from the heady, toxic cocktail of corporate dollars and gas.