The industry has to divert a very considerable portion of their limited funds (they have trouble getting capital, you know) to influencing favorable legislation and fooling the public. They blast rural areas where they operate, destroying wells and streams, converting forest and meadow into access roads and drill pads and miles of pipeline rights of way, destroying assets of rural people and reducing the area available for photosynthesis.

Fracking is a pursuit of the dregs of gas and oil so tightly attached to the source rock it takes many truckloads of manufactured chemicals and five times the volume of water as product that comes out of the ground – all hauled over public roads by diesel trucks. The return on both money and energy is near the point of insufficient return to justify the effort.

We all know about the amount and effect of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere. Or perhaps deny the facts determined by the experts who study such things. It is already affecting our weather in many parts of the world and sea level everywhere. In a few decades life itself will be at risk.

So Mr. Orndorff and his cohorts sit in town, protected from heat by air conditioners, from bad water and drought and flood by urban government, doing well financially while doing harm to rural folks and slowly but surely to all of humanity. Why is it so hard to see what is happening in the distance? An inspection of the oil and gas patch would help society.