Being an environmentalist is particularly chic these days as more and more celebrities jump on the bandwagon.

Ever since docudrama director/hack Josh Fox went on a one-man crusade against hard statistics and intelligence, it’s been all the rage for people to protest hydraulic fracturing as a means to extract our natural resources here in the United States.

Fox and his supporters make all kinds of unsupported claims that, to put it lightly, stretch the truth in regards to what ‘fracking’ is and what its impacts are on the environment. The movie “FrackNation” effectively refuted nearly all of the damning claims made by the hardcore enviro-crowd and their knowledge vacuum.

Few Americans fully appreciate what energy does for us in this country, or ever contemplate the vital implications of American oil production on third world, poverty-stricken areas around the globe. The biggest factor that separates the developed world from third world countries is the availability and reliability of cheap energy.

Affordable and reliable energy allows businesses to start and provide jobs and products to the people. Buying oil overseas leads to the United States financing third world dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere, many of which are guilty of human rights violations. The old battle cry from the left during operation Iraqi Freedom was “No Blood for Oil.” It seems logical that these same people should then conclude that it would be preferable for us to extract our own energy and thus forego the need to secure any energy supply routes in the Middle East.

Of course, this is not the case. Instead, enviros advocate for using high tech batteries and solar panels, among other things, most of which require rare earth metals that have to be strip mined from the surface of the earth, leaving huge scars on mountains and habitat destruction. These processes cause much more surface damage than drilling for oil and natural gas, which utilizes today’s best technology to drill multiple wells on one pad, thereby reducing energy companies’ footprint dramatically.

History shows that there are always groups of people who are afraid of what they do not understand, much like some Americans in the 1800s who were scared of the sight and speed of train. They came along in the end, and we hope the enviros will on this issue too.

clvaugha@mavs.coloradomesa.edu