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I keep writing about this in @RealHotTake but I’m continuously seeing politicians and pundits misunderstand both the fracking industry and what a “fracking ban” would entail, so gather round for a 
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First, the industry. Fracking has never been cash-flow positive. This is a debt-addled industry that has been subsidized by the government, and oversold. The only people who made $ off it were early investors, off later investors. That's a ponzi scheme.
I don't think that was the intention; early folks like Chesapeake Energy really thought they would get to a point where they could generate a profit, it just never happened. So now you have companies that can't produce gas cheaply enough, demand dropping, and a glut
Which is why they've started to quietly declare bankruptcy, including Chesapeake. Always paying management out top dollar while defaulting on their loans and "restructuring" of course. Another thing they get rid of in bankruptcy? The requirement to properly retire assets...
That leaves thousands of wells & drill sites for states and counties to deal with, costing them billions of dollars before we even get to the impacts on water, soil, air and human life. But what about the jobs?! Jobs aren't a great trade-off for health, first of all, but also...
The oil and gas industry is *constantly* over-reporting jobs and then quietly adjusting numbers downward. Check out this amazing gif @hughrmacmillan made for @WeAreDrilled to illustrate this:
But, but Pennsylvania! Okay let's look at what Pennsylvania voters actually say about fracking because guess what? They don't love it! https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fracking-ban-polling_n_5d701602e4b09bbc9ef95ef9
It turns out, people are not so into the idea of radioactive waste in their watersheds, or toxic emissions in their air, or noise pollution in their neighborhoods. https://publicherald.org/pennsylvania-is-discharging-radioactive-fracking-waste-into-rivers-as-landfill-leachate-impacting-the-chesapeake-bay-ohio-river-watersheds/
Which brings us to "fracking bans." First off, it's unlikely that the federal government even *could* ban fracking, it's more of a state issue, or even a local county or city ordinance issue. But also, I don't think most voters or pundits for that matter, understand what a ban is
Here's a more recent poll, from Axios, a generally extremely pro-fracking publication, lest you think all the other polls are biased against fracking: https://www.axios.com/pennsylvania-fracking-poll-4e215784-4838-4120-b9f3-29147742f5fb.html
Okay so, on the ban front: This keeps getting painted as somehow on day 1 a Biden admin would just start dismantling pipelines and laying off workers with no plan in place. Literally no one is suggesting that. The word climate activists use most is "transition"
When fracking first really became a thing, the companies doing it pushed it as a "bridge fuel", something that would get us off coal to something with lower CO2 emissions, and help renewables scale. It has done as much bridging as it's likely to do, and we're at a crossroads:
Eliminate natural gas suddenly and you run the risk of reviving coal; continue to build out *new* natural gas infrastructure and you run the risk of staying hooked on natgas, a fossil fuel with extremely high methane emissions, for decades.
So step one of a "ban" would be no new fracking projects. And probably the main way the fed would get involved there would be through permitting of pipelines, but really you need state legislation, or "home rule" in counties/cities directly impacted by these projects.
In parallel, you need to scale up clean energy and transition workers. A fairly easy transition would be to put them to work remediating fracking wells and drill sites. Longer term, you train people to work on new forms of energy. Again, none of this is sudden or impractical
The most radical thing required here is a shift in perspective that goes beyond swapping one energy source for another and thinks about how is this system serving or damaging people at every point along the way? How are workers, communities, and end customers impacted?
THEN, once you've stopped new projects, scaled other options, started to transition workers, then you begin the process of decommissioning existing operations. We have *been* doing this with coal for years now, it's not a big mystery guys.
If you're reading this wondering "what about nuclear?" good question, I'm still conflicted on that front. On the one hand, it's the cleanest energy we know how to make so if the goal is rapid decarbonization it makes sense. On the other are the issues of cost, safety, & waste
I still can't figure out why so many nuclear advocates tend to also support fracking. Why not propose that nuclear supply the baseload and put fracking out of business, for example?
