We need everyone in our movement to share the facts about how fracking will contribute to a climate catastrophe. Instead of fracking and more fossil fuel infrastructure, it’s imperative that we boldly invest in renewable energy, which is available here and now. Let’s work together to stop climate change in its tracks and tell our world leaders #DontFrackOurClimate!
“Today, most drilling and fracking in the United States is for oil. Everyone would agree that using oil contributes to climate change. But while fracking for natural gas has been portrayed as better for the climate than coal or oil, science is now clear that dependence on natural gas is a much greater global warming contributor than previously thought. Increased natural gas use releases too much carbon pollution – including methane, a powerful greenhouse gas – and it risks pushing us past climate tipping points, which could trigger runaway global warming, and much worse climate instability than we currently see.
To avoid climate catastrophe by keeping the Earth below the critical 2 degrees Celsius tipping point, we need to keep 80% of fossil fuels – natural gas, oil and coal – underground. Spending billions on pipelines, compressor stations, export terminals and other gas infrastructure will only lock in future climate pollution, and cripple our chances to address the climate challenge.”
Food and Watch Watch Fracking Report: The Urgent Case for a Ban on Fracking
Learn more“Estimates of methane’s potency as an agent of global warming have increased significantly with each of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessments. Over a 20-year timeframe, the conservative scientific consensus is that methane from drilling and fracking traps 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide, pound for pound.”
Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing.
Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Learn more“United Nation’s Top Environmental Official, Achim Steiner, calls shale gas rush “a liability” in efforts to slow climate change.”
“As a longtime oil and gas engineer who helped develop shale fracking techniques for the Energy Department, I can assure you that this gas is not “clean.” Because of leaks of methane, the main component of natural gas, the gas extracted from shale deposits is not a “bridge” to a renewable energy future — it’s a gangplank to more warming and away from clean energy investments.”
Anthony Ingraffea, PhD, PE
Cornell University Professor of Engineering
New York Times op-ed: “Gangplank to a Warm Future”
“Because gas undercuts wind and sun just as much as it undercuts coal, there’s no net climate benefit in switching to it. For instance, the venerable International Energy Agency in 2011 concluded that a large-scale shift to gas would “muscle out” low-carbon fuels and still result in raising the globe’s temperatures 3.5 degrees Celsius—75 percent above the two-degree level that the world’s governments have identified as the disaster line.”
Bill McKibben
Co-founder of 350.org
Mother Jones: “Bad News for Obama: Fracking May Be Worse Then Burning Coal”
For more of the latest science on fracking and climate change, see resources compiled in the Compendium from Concerned Health Professionals of New York: concernedhealthny.org/compendium/