A few days ago, the Denver Post published an op-ed from a Colorado mother and oil and gas worker. It described, in very personal terms, how the campaign against hydraulic fracturing is really a dishonest attack on more than 100,000 Colorado families whose livelihoods depend on jobs in the oil and gas industry.
The op-ed must have rattled the activists who are pushing four local ballot initiatives in Northern Colorado to ban hydraulic fracturing. Zev Paiss, co-owner of the PR firm that runs Frack Free Boulder, immediately went on the attack by commenting:
“The scientists and their families who work on weapons of mass destruction depend on that regular paycheck too.”
That’s right. Frack Free Boulder says Colorado’s oil and gas families are no better than the people who made the chemical weapons used by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to murder his own citizens. This kind of rhetoric is totally unacceptable and indecent, but sadly, it’s just another example of the extreme tactics used by anti-fracking activists to mislead the public. Look no further than this “Lobbying for Kids” video, promoted by Paiss and his PR firm, featuring the Food & Water Watch official overseeing the four local ballot initiatives, Sam Schabacker:
Before these children were sent to the State Capitol and cynically used as political props, Schabacker made two damaging admissions (at around the 2:30 mark). First, the real objective for Food & Water Watch in Colorado isn’t local bans on hydraulic fracturing, but a statewide ban on oil and gas development altogether. Second, Schabacker admits a moratorium is effectively the same as a ban, despite his organization’s best efforts to call the local ballot initiatives “time outs.” Here’s Schabacker in his own words:
“Whether it’s a statewide ban, or a statewide moratorium, those things are pretty complementary, right? One is a permanent stop to drilling, one is a temporary stop to drilling.”
For those unfamiliar with Food & Water Watch, it’s the $11 million group based in Washington, D.C., that’s financially supporting and standing “shoulder to shoulder” with the campaigns to ban oil and gas development in those four Northern Colorado cities. Food & Water Watch is also the biggest member of Frack Free Colorado, a group it helped create, which “helped [the] four local campaigns get on the ballot” and continues to “support local organizing for bans and moratoriums, and build on our recent momentum for a statewide ballot initiative.” Yet the activities of these groups barely register in local campaign finance reports.
As the Washington Examiner has noted, national environmental groups with combined annual budgets that exceed $50 million are driving the controversy over hydraulic fracturing in Colorado. But they are working hard to conceal their full involvement by reporting only tiny contributions of time and money to local campaign finance reports. That’s because the activists rightly fear what will happen if voters realize these ballot initiatives are really being run by groups that want to shut down domestic oil and gas development across Colorado and the rest of the nation, not just in a handful of cities and towns. This extreme political agenda would be economically disastrous, and more importantly, it isn’t supported by the facts.
If the facts even came close to supporting the claims of the activists, they wouldn’t attack a mother who works in the oil and gas industry with vicious slurs. They wouldn’t demonize thousands of other hardworking Coloradans by likening them to war criminals, and they wouldn’t be indoctrinating children to serve as foot soldiers in a dishonest political campaign.
It’s dishonest because Food & Water Watch, like other “ban fracking” groups, claims hydraulic fracturing is “inherently unsafe [and] can’t be made safer through government oversight or regulations.” But scientists, state regulators, federal officials and even senior members of the Obama administration have repeatedly concluded that this six-decade-old technology is fundamentally safe. That’s why President Obama’s Interior Secretary Sally Jewell – a former board member of the National Parks Conservation Association and petroleum engineer – says “fracking has been done safely for decades,” and her predecessor – Colorado’s own Ken Salazar – recently stated: “I would say to everybody that hydraulic fracking is safe.”
And just in case you think vicious personal attacks are out of character for the Boulder activists who want to ban oil and gas development, think again:
Dave Caletka Is that your contribution to a new energy source in the U.S. power portfolio?….lots of methane in that I've heard. Here Dave, put your money where your mouth is: https://www.facebook.com/frank.chernega.7 My Fronius inverter display indicates that I've eliminated 17.34 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere since Dec of 2008. How much have you eliminated????
Bullshit
Glenn Lasater Asking those bunch of fear mongering anti drillers to prove ANYTHING is an exercise in futility. They want us to continue sending our service men and women to the Middle East to fight the oil and gas wars. We have all the oil and gas we need right here. I say give all the anti's a gun and let them go and fight in the Mid-East.
John Swider NOPE. Just didn't become publicly vocal about it until I bought the land.
Biker Scum said you were anti fracking until you bought land?
Prove that it's doing the harm you claim. Anyone that claims that fracking pollutes ground water simple doesn't understand how many thousands of yards separate fracking operations and ground water. We don't need special interest fanatics from Washington to tell us how to conduct our business here in Colorado. If Boulder doesn't want to support our energy industry — shut them off, close their gas stations. Remove all money they receive from the gas and oil industry. Let them Walk the Walk. Let them experience the world they're so adamant is the only way to live. Let's see how that works for the Peoples Republic of Boulder.
Once all these anti's shut the gas off that is heating their homes and hot water and start installing solar panels and wind turbines, I will then have respect for their views. Until then, they are essentially hypocritical parasites. Here is why I can say that: https://www.facebook.com/frank.chernega.7
Families who lived in Colorado before Californication occurred in the 1980s accepted energy production as a way of life and realized its importance to the state's economy. Other than the occasional no-nukes protests down at Rocky Flats in the 1970s, I don't recall much public outcry concerning energy development. My guess is that most of the anti-energy crowd are from elsewhere. They probably don't like cowboys much either.
What heats your home?
I wish every uneducated crybaby that posts here about not liking oil production would stand behind their words and stop driving, eating, or wearing cloths because they are all produced by oil and gas and some are made from it. You don't know what you are talking about because you haven't educated yourself. All you do is read from the same uneducated materials your worthless leaders are writing. Go crawl in a hole because you are not helping out our society or nature.
I also never referred to non U.S. jobs since we have plenty here that contribute to death and destruction of our environment, animals and other human beings.
Everyone deserves to support their families. My request is that we do it in a way that does not cause more harm than good. Vote to hold off on all oil and gas development until we can prove it is not fouling out air, water and land. That is the ONLY sensible path forward.