04-05-2013, 01:24 PM
I'm the president of a small watershed group and we really don't deal with climate change or fracking, but I understand where these tensions lay. We have refused to take a side on fracking (although the closest Marcellus Shale is about 100 miles west of us) because it detracts us from our mission of conserving our urban watershed.
I am generally wary of humans trying to engineer themselves out of the environmental messes they created because the efforts are expensive and often ineffective. Just look how the National Flood Insurance Program subsidized people who chose to live in a flood zone. It would have been cheaper to use tax money to buy out those homes and let Mother Nature take her course, but then again, all of the politically-connected would have lost their beautiful oceanfront vistas.
I am generally wary of humans trying to engineer themselves out of the environmental messes they created because the efforts are expensive and often ineffective. Just look how the National Flood Insurance Program subsidized people who chose to live in a flood zone. It would have been cheaper to use tax money to buy out those homes and let Mother Nature take her course, but then again, all of the politically-connected would have lost their beautiful oceanfront vistas.