Columnist Austin Miles looks at the pros and cons of fracking and its place in Appalachia.
In 1987, the Brundtland Commission released "Our Common Future," a report that sought to integrate development and the environment and unite the world in the path toward such development. For that idea, the commission coined the term "sustainable development," which it defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
For Gro Harlem Brundtland, the chair of the commission, the environment and development are inseparable. The environment is where we live, and development is our attempt to satisfy our needs and aspirations within the environment. To consider them as separate issues is a dangerous mentality which will lead to ecological crises. One of the central issues for sustainable development involves energy. Ideally, sustainable development will involve renewables like wind and solar, but these are expensive and Americans crave cheap energy. For this reason, fracking proliferates to the detriment of renewable energy. Soon fracking may begin in Athens County in the Wayne National Forest, which is a controversial possibility.
In the minds of most environmentalists, fracking is antithetical to sustainable development. It will inevitably harm our ecosystems and our communities, and so cannot be part of a sustainable future, nor can it in anyway function as a bridge to such a future. You must either choose fracking or choose healthy ecosystems. Supporters of fracking, in contrast, may often contend that you can choose to sell the rights to the gas squeezed underneath your land or to remain in poverty. Both sides are correct to some extent.
Fracking has resulted in the contamination of groundwater with excessive levels of methane and endocrine disrupting chemicals. It threatens nearby stream ecosystems due to contamination from wastewater and toxic chemicals and the development and machinery associated with fracking increases air pollution. Moreover, accidental methane emissions associated with fracking may undo its reputation as a greener fuel, and investment in natural gas could impede the development of renewables. With proper regulations, however, many of these negative impacts could be mitigated.
Fracking also has its benefits, chiefly economic. With fracking come jobs, improved infrastructure, revenues and taxes. Higher incomes, higher land values and landowner royalties may also result from investment in fracking. Generally these benefits apply not only on the state or national level, but also on the local scale.
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These benefits, however, may be short-lived. The extraction industry flows through a pattern of booms and busts, and any community enjoying a crumb of prosperity as a result of fracking may soon find the money slipping away. Without diversification these communities will rise and fall with the extractive industries upon which they depend.
Thus, in a sense, dependence upon fracking for many communities in Appalachia is foolhardy because it assures a lack of security for its residents. But dependence on fracking also promises a boom, which small communities can use to their advantage. They can use the revenues generated from the boom to develop resiliency and a sense of sovereignty. They can create a community where people will want to stay, where they will want to raise their children, someplace where they won’t feel they have to leave to realize their dreams.
With regulation, fracking could provide this boom without the harm usually associated with it. Environmental organizations, however, will not settle for regulations, declaring that only a ban will be sufficient to prevent social and ecological damage. The extractive industries, then, neither banned nor regulated, continue to frack uninhibited by legislation like the Clean Water Drinking Act, the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act.
Fracking itself may not seem sustainable, but it may be an important stepping stone toward the realization of sustainable development. One of the principle goals of sustainable development involves meeting the basic needs of all, with overriding priority given to the world’s poor. The poor in Appalachia, however, are not allowed to develop, held back both by environmentalists and their zealous opposition to fracking as well as the fracking industry itself and its cycles of booms and busts.
The environmentalists insist upon renewables as the only sustainable option, which is true, but they are much too expensive for most in the region, nor anybody who expects cheap energy. The fracking industry, meanwhile, may contend that the economic boon it provides will sustain local communities, which is also true, but it is a temporary boom. The local communities will fall with the industry if they do not invest in diversification, in resilience or in independence.
Austin Miles is a senior studying biology. Do you support fracking in Southeast Ohio? Email him at am343011@ohio.edu.
