No energy transition occurs without human and environmental impacts. Fracking brings pipelines, rigs, and trucks, which can disrupt peaceful landscapes that people rightly care about. Frackers have created small earthquakes and improperly disposed of fracking wastewater. These problems are serious and should be addressed, but they are nowhere as bad as coal mining, which has in many ways become worse throughout the decades, not better, culminating in mountaintop removal and the destruction of river ecosystems.74 What explains the lower environmental impact of natural gas fracking as compared
...more
