The official justification for the DRBC fracking ban is a fear-mongering diatribe. It supposes equipment failure and human error. It’s analysis paralysis.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman philosopher and statesman who died at his own hand in the year 65 AD on the order of Emperor Nero. He lived in especially fearful times. Yet, he penned a wonderful line on fear. It ought to be required reading at about the age every youth enters adulthood:

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

It’s hard to think of a more teachable quote for the ages when it comes to the matter of dealing with the new. Newness is never necessarily goodness. Still, nothing much good happens without the new either. Nowhere is this more true than with respect to the shale revolution. It has delivered so much that is good—cheaper energy, cleaner energy, rural economic development. But, it is the subject of unprecedented fear mongering in support of the DRBC fracking ban.

The official version of the justification for the DRBC fracking ban comes down to one simple thing; speculated risks. Here is the key sentence, where the DRBC references an EPA study that was very supportive of the safety of hydraulic fracturing:

The study attributed these to equipment failure, human error, failure of container integrity, and other causes, including but not limited to well communication, weather and vandalism.

Read more:

http://naturalgasnow.org/justification-drbc-fracking-ban-fear-mongering-diatribe/