Energy Security/Energy Independence through Fracking?
No. As George W. Bush famously said, “America is addicted to oil.” Do we become free (independent) of an addiction simply by switching to more local drug dealers? Or has that switch and the empowering of domestic dealers resulted only in the corrupting of our government, media and culture, with the end result being more insecurity and dependence on this industry and their dirty fossil fuels?
The only longterm and certain path to energy security and energy independence lies not in simply becoming free of foreign fossil fuel supplies and suppliers. It will only be found in freedom from the unsustainability, non-renewability, and societally corrupting grip of both the foreign and domestic oil and gas industry.
And now the industry seeks to export fracked oil and gas to China, increasing greenhouse gases and the risk of spills, while at the same time enabling China’s expansionism and military growth. This is not "security."
The sooner we embrace the necessity and feasiblity, right now, of clean energy, a clean energy economy and a clean energy future, the sooner we will begin to get clean of this toxic, life destroying addiction.
http://www.thesolutionsproject.org
"The scarcity of and potential competition for resources like water, food and space, complicated by an influx of refugees if coastal lands are lost, does not only create a humanitarian crisis but creates conditions of hopelessness that could lead to failed states and make populations vulnerable to radicalization. These challenges highlight the systemic implications and multiple-order effects inherent in energy security and climate change.”
-Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, in his speech "Empowering Defense through Energy Security”
"I think we have wasted a lot of time that should have gone into seriously looking into and developing alternative energies. And we need to stop wasting that time and get going on it. But the difficult part is that the industry talks about, well, this is a bridge fuel [that] will carry us until alternatives [are developed] but nobody is building them. It's not a bridge unless you build the foundations for a bridge on the other side, and nobody's building it."
-Louis W. Allstadt, former executive vice president, Mobil Oil