It’s good to see fracking reviewed in the VSU Spectator, including that it’s coming to Georgia unless we stop it, and we should stop it. It’s unfortunate the story ends with a bad idea when there’s a much better idea already rapidly being deployed: solar power.

Stephen Cavallaro wrote yesterday for the VSU Spectator, Fracking hits Georgia,

Fracking, the process of harvesting the environmentally unfriendly natural gas called shale that is being pushed by the government, plows its way through Georgia.

More like being pushed by fossil fuel companies who have bought too many politicians.

In March, I discussed a deal backed by the government between British-owned Centrica and American-owned Cheniere. The agreement was that Cheniere would spread toxic chemicals across America in order to fuel millions of British homes.

Kind of like the wood pellet plant in Waycross that exploded in June 2011 while making pellets to fuel the Tilbury, England biomass plant that exploded in February 2012.

And of course fracking is the source of the natural gas for the Sabal Trail pipeline Spectra Energy wants to run through Georgia.

While the fracking industry builds momentum throughout the nation, so does the opposition. Even British activists are taking action to deter the growth of fracking in their nation. Early this month, fracking was banned in France.

Global fear toward fracking is justifiable. Over the year fracking has been deemed a cause of earthquakes in Arkansas and Texas. Early this month, Duke University equated an increase of fracking to the rise of pollution in a Pennsylvanian water supply, and according to Southeastern Naturalist, it has been killing endangered fish in Kentucky since 2007.

He concludes with a bad idea:

An alternative to fracking that is breaking ground is known as waterless fracking. Waterless fracking employs propan instead of water to perform fracking processes. The new method, while not completely eco-friendly, does open new doors to safe alternatives to fracking.

Excuse me? Why are we injecting massive amounts of anything into the ground? It doesn’t have to be water to cause earthquakes, and propane isn’t very healthy for anything, either.

There’s no excuse for fracking of any kind when we can get all the energy we need from the sun and the wind. As Thomas Alva Edison said 82 years ago:

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

And we don’t have to wait. Utilities are running scared of solar power which is beating their stock prices hands down because even with fracking natural gas prices are not going to keep going down, while Moore’s Law keeps driving solar prices down and deployments up like compound interest.

Solar will win like the Internet did: so fast it will make your jaw drop. There’s no point in paying dirty tribute money to fossil fuel companies that makes us all more dependent on them, now that the solar sun of jobs, energy independence, and clean air and water is already rising on Georgia.

No fracking, no pipeline.

-jsq

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