this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024

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122

When and why did democrats begin supporting fracking? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 2 months ago by Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] memfree@lemmy.ml 89 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago

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

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 63 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 58 points 2 months ago (6 children)

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.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago (3 children)

How big is that mass, really? Here on lemmy, a few hundreds or maybe thousands, globally? In 2016, Bernie running against a weak candidate in the more progressive party got 43% of the vote.

It does no good to falsely believe we have some critical mass of progressives when the data shows we don't. Instead we need to continue grassroots work to keep expanding the progressive base, so someday your fantasy actually becomes true. It is not yet true though.

We gain nothing from denying reality.

[–] ironsoap@lemmy.one 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's an interesting example, I'll have to look it out and see if the context bears it out. I say that as although yes he might have only gotten 43%, the question is how many registered voters didn't vote and how many eligible but unregistered voters there were.

Vermont has a fairly high voter turnout, but looking at Vermont's Secretary of State 2016 had a voter turnout of 63% of Voting Age Population from census population. So that 185k of 505k thousands people who didn't vote.

Also if I have the right numbers from Vermont' SOS, that's 43% of the state total 63% who voted.

I've read other demographic breakdowns on those who don't vote which is worth looking into, but it's hard for me to see someone say that there isn't a mass when we have this huge population of American citizen who don't vote. Something between 35-45% of the US just doesn't. That's a huge swath of disenfranchised people.

[–] Carrolade@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

I agree, but I'm leery of any argument saying those are mostly progressives. Anecdotally, progressives are usually more activist than the rest of the population, not less.

[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

The “mass” is small and more importantly, located in safely blue states anyway. I’m extremely liberal and I accept that these presidential elections are never going to be about me. I still vote in them because I’m not a moron. But I put more of my energy into the Democratic primary, always trying to tug the D party left. And I focus on state county and city ballots where these ideas are much more in play.

That’s the adult move here. The teenager move is to vote 3rd party or not at all because the political world hasn’t rolled a red carpet out to your doorstep.

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[–] Kethal@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (9 children)

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. https://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 candidates 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 don't 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.

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[–] aubeynarf@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 2 months ago

That’s an interesting possibility - is there any data to support it?

Here in Georgia the fight is in the center, for sure.

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[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 42 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Fracking has granted the United States independence from OPEC, and turned the US into the largest exporter of oil. The US now has the pricing power on the world oil market. This has huge geopolitical implications.

Back in the 2000s it was completely different. All of the geopolitical wonks were pushing renewable energy as a means of OPEC independence. And now that independence has been granted, but we still have the oil.

Meanwhile, as others have stated on this thread, the immediate problems from fracking have been mostly fixed, including the earthquakes. Long term, I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen with all of that dirty wastewater going back into the ground.

So on balance, there's a good reason for the leadership in both parties to be on board with fracking: oil still rules the world, and fracking lets the United States rule the oil markets.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah, and I’m fine with that short term. But only if it’s very short term and only if we use it as a brief reprieve to build out renewable energy faster than otherwise. That seems unlikely

[–] carl_dungeon@lemmy.world 41 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Many don’t. I don’t. I’m not gonna vote trump over it though.

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[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

[–] rebelsimile@sh.itjust.works 24 points 2 months ago

Oh I thought the sign was going to say “we have to sacrifice everything we believe in for the incredibly narrow issues going on in a single state because of the Electoral College, that’s how democracy works you dumbfuck” but my eyes are getting bad

[–] wolfshadowheart@leminal.space 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

What's more disappointing is that she had been historically anti-fracking. Tossed all of that out though, I suppose.

On one hand, I get it. To ensure herself a smooth election, keep the funding from your enemy.

On the other hand, fuck man I just want a President with policy that won't destroy the planet.

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[–] Yeller_king@reddthat.com 25 points 2 months ago

Because nothing matters if we lose the election and we can't win the election without PA.

[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 17 points 2 months ago

Pennsylvania is a swing state and likes fracking politically. As Republicans support fracking, this could be the one issue that convinces some Pennsylvania voters to vote Republican over Democrat.

[–] FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 15 points 2 months ago

When they needed PA to win the election.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

She's still a politician. It's easy to put her on a pedestal because she's NOT Trump, but without him, how excited would you really be about Harris?

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's pretty cool how my family, who are in Kansas, said that they couldn't understand the risk I take, of earthquakes, living in the Bay Area, California. It's also pretty cool how they now have earthquakes because of fracking in Oklahoma. The world is awesome, lemme tell ya.

Sigh.

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[–] Westdragon@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

I'm not convinced democrats have been completely against fracking. I think it's location based as fracking does or can have extreme negative consequences on the surrounding environment, so doing it around a major city aquifer probably isn't the greatest idea. Fracking out in the middle of nowhere might be more positively embraced.

[–] FanciestPants@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Fracking technology has some potential upside in the climate discussion, https://time.com/6302342/fervo-fracking-technology-geothermal-energy/

A ban on fracking might not be the best solution if you want to move the technology towards something more beneficial to the fight against climate change.

[–] weker01@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago

Money

[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 months ago

The Democrats won't win an election while opposing fracking. O&G is far FAR too powerful to let that happen. If Harris stood firmly against fracking, then the opponent would win - be he (and it will be a he) Trump, Musk, or David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz.

No, I'm not exaggerating.

[–] iconic_admin@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Democrats don’t support fracking. They say things so they think will help them win elections.

[–] Letme@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Kamala literally voted in favor of opening new fracking leases, so kinda hard to claim this.

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[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 points 2 months ago

Liberals aren't on the side of anyone but billionaires, be they neoliberals, conservatives, or "post-liberals."

The sooner you accept that the more American politics will make sense.

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