You’ve heard the term. It sounds kind of dodgy. Kind of icky. Sounds like another more familiar bad word. Almost vulgar, really. But in the end, when you boil it all down, all you want to know about “fracking” is: 1) What is it? 2) Should I be “for” or “against” it? and 3) Should I even care?

You can spend months lost in internet link after link and wind up looking like a crazy person who is so dazed and confused that you can’t remember why you even wanted to know what fracking is all about.

Now, this is where the fossil fuel industry wants you to just give up caring. 90% of people will do just that. 10% will march onward in search of “reliable” information. This gets MUCH more difficult to untangle as the fossil fuel industry has paid many millions of dollars to create reports which are actually meant to be used as disinformation, meant to confuse even the smartest and best-meaning person until, voila, they do give up. These bogus “reports” and “conclusions,” when you look only a tiny bid deeper, are just getting recirculated until the subject is too complicated for most people to deal with. Politicians won’t deal with it because they get too much money from the fossil fuel industry and their constituents (you!) are so confused about the subject that they don’t have a clear sense of how much trouble they’re going to get into for letting fracking occur in their states.
Okay, so here are your VERY boiled down answers:

1) What is fracking: Using millions of gallons of water and lots of toxic chemicals, oil and gas companies crack open underground rock formations, forcing deposits of oil and gas tucked deep within the earth up to the surface.
2) Should I be “for” or “against” it: Definitely against. There is not one good thing about this maneuver. Not one thing that is going to help you, me, the planet — only oil company bank accounts.

3) Should I care: Absolutely. Oil companies are injecting YOUR water supply with more toxic chemicals, they are causing earthquakes where they disrupt the earth’s relative stability thousands of feet underground, they are releasing lethal amounts of methane and other GHG into the sky and locking us into a runaway greenhouse effect which is “game over” for Planet Earth.

4) …and I know there wasn’t a #4 but please keep your eye on the ball here – remember the solution to global warming? Remember that it was VERY simple: radically decrease carbon in the atmosphere and reduce the earth’s temperature. Don’t get lost in the quagmire that is deliberately meant to make you give up dealing with it.

What can you do now? Look at the map of the US above this post. Find your state. And tell the Presdient that fracking is unacceptable. He must stand up to the fossil fuel industry and say, “NO” to more carbon emissions. Write an email to President Obama (see below) and tell our government to stop allowing the fossil fuel industry to control our planet’s future.

Send the President a message: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments