Reader Responds to Fracking Impact Report
Editor’s Note: The following letter to The Business Journal was submitted Dec. 27 in response to a story published Dec. 20.
By Lauren Schroeder
POLAND, Ohio – The article “Fracking Ban Could Cost Ohio $245B, US Chamber Reports” in the Business Journal is disingenuous. The underlying article “What if Hydraulic fracturing was banned? The economic benefits of the shale revolution and the consequences of ending it” by the Global Energy Institute of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce does not mention the cost of global warming resulting from combustion of fossil fuels, including natural gas.
These costs include increased flooding, intensity and frequency of storms, droughts, forest fires, desertification, disease outbreaks, and extinction of millions of species, migration of millions of people from coastal flooded areas or interior regions where climate warming reduces food production, direct hyperthermia deaths of millions of people and the list goes on.
These consequences of climate warming attributed to burning fossil fuels from will far exceed the Chamber’s estimate of $245 billion national loss from a fracking ban.
The Chamber’s report also failed to mention the economic benefits from an expanding renewable energy industry.
An honest assessment of a hydraulic fracking ban must also take into account the external cost of climate warming and the economic benefits of an alternative fuel industry.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
