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Every Monday, in Climate on the Ballot, we pass along a topic to help you integrate climate into your newsroom’s campaign reporting. Share this newsletter with your colleagues on the politics beat. Vea la versión en español de “El clima en la boleta.”
This Week: Fracking
Despite the fact that climate is emphatically on the ballot this November, there hasn’t been a whole lot of discussion of the climate emergency in this election cycle or during last week’s debate, apart from one issue: fracking.
During her 2019 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris said she supported a ban on fracking. When she joined the ticket as Biden’s running mate, she says she reversed her position. In the debate last week, when asked about it, the vice president reiterated that she “will not ban fracking.” The back and forth was part of a generally woeful discussion about climate, given the scale of the problem and former president Donald Trump’s status as a climate change denier.
The states with the highest level of fracking are Texas and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is widely seen as a state that Harris must win, and the Trump campaign thinks the issue may gain him support there, given his general “drill, baby, drill” stance. But the state of play may be shifting. According to pollsters, support for fracking in Pennsylvania has been declining in recent years. A poll from Climate Power, a strategic communications organization, finds that 51% of Pennsylvania’s energy jobs are in clean energy and that 78% of state residents want more clean energy.
In many ways, the political conversation around fracking is really about the future of oil and gas production in the US. Under both the Trump and Biden administrations, oil and gas production “skyrocketed,” largely due to an increase in fracking, which now accounts for about two-thirds of US oil production.
When it comes to fracking’s contribution to the climate crisis, the science is abundantly clear: The practice both accelerates climate change and poses numerous health risks for those who live in the vicinity of the 1.3 million oil and gas wells (how many of those are fracked wells is unknown) across the country.
Voters would benefit from an explanation of the climate impacts (fracked gas is worse than coal) and fracking’s public health dangers (air pollution, water contamination, and cancers) in political coverage.
Reporting Ideas
- Communicate the stakes of fracking to your readers. Calling it “controversial” doesn’t tell readers anything about the dangers of fracking.
- Explain the connection between fracking, methane, and climate change. Originally heralded as a “bridge fuel,” fracked gas was pushed by the fossil fuel industry starting in the 1980s as a temporary replacement for coal on the road to a cleaner energy future, Bill McKibben reports in The New Yorker. But over time, research has revealed that the methane emissions from fracked gas production and transport change that equation. A study released this month finds that US LNG exports have “a 33% greater greenhouse gas footprint than coal.” To explain the fracking-climate connection, consider adding a line like this to political stories about the issue:
- “Fracking accelerates climate change, largely due to its emissions of methane, an extremely potent greenhouse gas.”
- Recommended Source: Robert Warren Howarth, ecologist & Earth system scientist at Cornell University
- Highlight the myriad health hazards associated with living near fracking wells. The most recent research from public health scientists finds that fracking “is linked to an array of health harms, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma and birth defects.” Talk to voters who live near fracking wells and talk to experts about the risks.
- Recommended Source: Dr. Sandra Steingraber, senior scientist with the Science and Environmental Health Network
- Analyze the economic benefits and the climate costs of fracking. Trump is promising voters that he will rapidly bring down energy costs for American consumers by increasing oil and gas production, but most economists say his plan won’t work. Meanwhile, fossil fuel–dependent communities will need help as the US transitions to a clean energy economy. Talk to experts about initiatives and policies that could enable a just transition for these communities.
- Report on fracking in your state. The truth is that a president cannot ban fracking. The majority of oil and gas production takes place on private lands in 36 states, so banning it would take an act of Congress, which is unlikely. Regulation of fracking, and most oil and gas production, happens at the state and local level. Where do local officials and candidates stand on fracking?
Take Inspiration
- Ahead of the Harris-Trump debate, Politico’s Ben Lefebvre posted this comprehensive primer detailing how the “the campaign chatter about a ‘ban’ on fracking is masking a much bigger divide about climate and energy policy.”
- Media Matters reported earlier this month that Fox is helping Republicans spin fracking as a major election issue. “By keeping the focus on Harris’ position,” Allison Fisher writes, “Fox is distracting from important context about the controversial technique and its relevance to voters.”
- In Heatmap News, Paul Waldman wonders why Harris doesn’t take the fracking issue as an opportunity to “to explain to people what the future of energy is actually going to look like, and why it’s so encouraging?”
- In this crackling op-ed from The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch, he argues that “everything you know from TV about Pennsylvania and fracking is wrong.” Most folks in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and their suburbs (where, he notes, most Pennsylvania voters reside), don’t talk much about fracking — and when they do, they oppose it.
- Fracking’s threat to local water supplies in particular was dramatized in Josh Fox’s 2010 documentary, “Gasland,” which infamously showed a homeowner holding a match to the water coming out of their kitchen sink and the water bursting into flame.
Spotlight Piece
In The Atlantic, reporter Zoë Schlanger asserts that “the next president will be a climate-disaster president,” pointing out that with extreme weather events escalating with increasing regularity and damaging impact, we’re far past the time of asking candidates “What will you do to fight climate change?” Rather journalists should be asking, “How will you help Americans handle its effects?”
Before We Go…
Climate on the Ballot Summit. From September 17–19, join CCNow and top political and climate journalists from NPR, NBC News, CBS News, The New York Times, Capital B News, The Miami Herald, The Arizona Republic, and more, for a virtual summit, in which we’ll dig into the challenges and opportunities of elevating the climate angle in journalists’ political reporting during this unprecedented election year. Learn more and register here.
CCNow Sharing Library. CCNow news outlet partners are welcome to publish stories shared in the CCNow Sharing Library by fellow partners, for free. Check out our curated “Elections Coverage” view. Interested in CCNow partnership? Learn more and apply to join.
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