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When and why did democrats begin supporting fracking?

I was shocked in the presidential debate that Harris gave staunch support for fracking. I was under the impression that democrats are against fracking, and remember people being critical of Fetterman for supporting it.

I also grew up in an area that was heavily impacted by the pollution from fracking. People who worked in the field were seen as failures of moral character who chose profits over the health of their children. How is it that both major parties are now in support of it? I feel like I must be missing a piece of the puzzle.

memfree ,
@memfree@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s because of the electoral college. Most states give all their electoral college votes to whomever wins the state rather than dividing the votes equitably. This means Pennsylvania – a swing state – will go either all-red or all-blue. The state has a lot of fracking, and a lot of people making money off it, so Democrats are trying to appease pro-fracking to get votes.

The people getting harmed by fracking are stuck without anyone on their ‘side’, but will presumably be more likely to vote blue because that side favors more regulation and pro-environment stuff. Note that all Harris said was she wouldn’t ban fracking. She didn’t say she wouldn’t make it difficult to do. My guess is any attempts to make it cleaner will get crushed by Congress and the Corrupted Supreme Court that has sided against Unions, workers, citizens, and the planet – all to favor of their sugar daddies. So even if the next President wants to do something about fracking, it would be a hard to actually do anything.

Etterra ,

That and because there are Democrats who are bought by the oil companies, just like Republicans.

machinin ,

It seems like the fracking industry has cleaned up a lot of their shit? We aren’t hearing the stories of water on fire, earthquakes in areas like Oklahoma, etc.

I’m just guessing. I haven’t seen any criticism of the industry recently.

memfree ,
@memfree@lemmy.ml avatar

Are you trying to greenwash fracking??? Industry never cleans up. There’s no profit in it. You would hear them advertise their ‘commitment to nature’ if they rescued one tree or bunny from their own contamination. When you hear nothing, they are continuing to wreak havoc.

machinin ,

Sorry, no greenwashing, just guessing. I just haven’t seen the criticisms like we had 10 years ago.

I agree that politicians don’t have much reason to speak against it without pressure, but I haven’t seen any pressure from citizens about it recently.

I could very much be out of the loop, so if you have any recent articles critical of the industry, I’d be happy to see them.

memfree ,
@memfree@lemmy.ml avatar

I believe the main issue is that it doesn’t get ‘clicks’ these days because everyone already knows about it. “Dog bites man” doesn’t get as many clicks as “Man bites dog” and all that. Still, a quick search brought up a couple articles from the last 12 months that weren’t stifled:

tangential: …npr.org/…/methane-emissions-much-higher-than-gas…

machinin ,

Thanks, I do appreciate this. It’s good to be reminded.

vzq ,

The argument given back in the day was “energy independence”.

The options (simply put) were 1) give money to shady middle eastern dictators 2) drill in ANWAR or 3) innovate in domestic production (fracking).

Renewables were still not up to par and nuclear was not seriously considered because the carbon thing was still an afterthought.

I’m not condoning this shit, I’m just explaining the state of play as I remember it.

jaggedrobotpubes ,

Democrats have the backwards idea that trying to be conservative enough to siphon off republican voters is how they’ll win, while they’ve got this mass of chronically ignored, disconnected progressives who they never serve “because they don’t vote”. And they don’t vote because no one represents them.

Just eternally chasing that cracked out meth head of a party over to the right.

Kethal , (edited )

Without evidence I will say it’s more likely that she has significant funding from the fracking industry and is under the thumb of rich executives. The difference is that they likely understand that supporting fracking could cost them the election, but they know that by not supporting it they lose a huge source of funding. They have weighed the costs, benefits and risks, and decided it’s a risk worth taking.

A good solution is to get corporate money out of politics. There are narrow ways to achieve that, but a broad solution that fixes a lot of problems is to end corporate personhood. This organization has made steady progress toward that and I think is worth supporting. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Move_to_Amend. Considered signing up for their email list.

Another solution is more wisely voting. People don’t vote in primary elections, but they’re more important than the general elections. They determine what the field of candidates looks like. Vote in primary elections. You don’t necessarily want to vote in primary of the party you most align with though. An obvious example where you’d vote in a different party is if you live in a gerrymandered district. There’s a near 100% chance the gerrymandered party candidate will win. It doesn’t matter who the other candidated are. Vote for the least bad candidate in the other party. You won’t get everything you want, but you’ll get more than you would otherwise. It will also force the party to change.

That’s not the only time you’d vote in a party you dont align best with. Maybe you’re relatively happy with all of the candidates in a party, so why split hairs if you’d be ok with any of them? There are so many considerations that the only advice is to keep an open mind about party membership, evaluate where you make the most impact (not what looks the most like you) and vote in every damn election, primaries included.

wildbus8979 ,

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/f995ef4e-857b-4925-a706-42b62b4cdac2.jpeg

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

this is one time I side with the NIMBY’s.

fracking is awful and we need to kick the oil habit anyhow. it absolutely fucks up the local enviroment, and destroys the water table. the full name is literally hydraulic fracturing… because the process is basically taking something you can’t normally get oil out of, pumping in a shit load of water until the bedrock shatters to fucking hell.

it lets you get to the oil, sure, but it also releases the oil (and all sorts of other shit, like gases) so that it gets into wells and everything else.

Basically the only people that are pro-fracking are the assholes that are perfectly okay fucking over every one else, and the assholes that take their money.

CrimeDad ,

What is even the difference beyond rhetoric between these two candidates? They both hate immigrants and Palestinians, love Israel and fossil fuels, and neither have a tenable plan to improve the economy for the working class. Don’t let anyone give you a hard time about not voting for either.

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