As Greenpeace revealed a few years ago when it published leaked internal documents from Exxon, the energy industry has for decades spent vast sums to convince the public that extracting and burning fossil fuels is safe, that global warming is a myth and that we have no alternatives to the status quo.

Industry propaganda has pervaded radio, television, print, and the Web, and their messaging is always “Trust us; we’re doing things right.” This public relations assault has polluted our air, water, media, regulatory agencies, and politics. Now they’re compromising universities and organizations that, at one time, actually fought to protect the environment.

At a recent symposium at Swarthmore College on the topic of hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — The Delaware Riverkeeper Network, The Nature Conservancy, and Consol Energy participated in a debate about this controversial energy extraction process. It seemed that only Consol Energy would be arguing the “pro,” so it was quite a surprise when Nels Johnson from the Pennsylvania chapter of The Nature Conservancy came down clearly in support of a process that even internal industry documents admit can’t be done safely.

With its policy that it should be part of our energy landscape for the foreseeable future, The Nature Conservancy joins the Environmental Defense Fund in supporting this recklessness. Instead of exposing the lies of polluters and fighting for renewable energy, TNC and EDF are now taking the position that fracking only needs “to be done right.” The extent to which they’ve lost their way is evidenced even more clearly on their Web sites where they proudly display the names of their corporate partners: BP, Shell, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, and other corporate polluters.

TNC and EDF seem to be the latest victims of an industry determined to dominate the energy debate. It’s not a secret that regulatory agencies are frequently headed or even completely captured by former leaders and lobbyists from the energy industry. For example, in 2010, a slick of corruption coated the Minerals Management Service, the agency charged with oversight of the oil industry. Most of its top staff are former industry insiders or lobbyists when BP devastated the Gulf.

If the MMS had actually done its job, the BP disaster would have been averted, but instead it allowed industry to flout regulations and ignore safety measures. And it’s not just federal agencies that have been corrupted. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has done a pitiful job protecting our environment from energy corporations. Indeed, its recently departed administrator, Chris Abruzzo, said that he believed “global climate change to be a myth,” a not-unexpected statement considering Gov. Tom Corbett’s receipt of more than a million campaign dollars from frackers.

The industry has also co-opted universities by lavishing great sums of money on them, ensuring it gets the kinds of “scientific conclusions” it pays for. What kinds of science can the public hope to get from the “Chevron Science Center” at the University of Pittsburgh? Is it imaginable that any science critical of fracking could issue from that university?

Should the public place any trust in a study conducted by Penn State but funded by the Marcellus Shale Coalition? Universities are inordinately expensive enterprises, so it’s not surprising that they would take corporate money to endow department chairs, fund studies, or build science centers. It also isn’t surprising that universities don’t bite the hands that feed them.

There are groups like Greenpeace, NRDC, Sierra Club, and many others working to expose the danger fracking presents to our groundwater, streams, and political institutions. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few voices in the wilderness like Democracy Now, Propublica, and Rolling Stone, the media has been complicit in hiding the dangers of fracking. Even PBS airs energy corporation ads now. It also accepts millions in donations from gas tycoons like John Arnold, making it unlikely the industry will be scrutinized very closely.

While natural gas burns cleaner than coal, fugitive methane emissions escaping from wellheads, compressor stations, pipelines, trucks, and every other stage of the delivery process make natural gas no better and possibly worse than coal. It’s just too expensive for industry to capture every last cubic foot of escaping methane, a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. It is much cheaper to capture agencies, legislatures, universities, the media, and now conservation NGOs than to pay to upgrade expensive infrastructure.

The simple truth is that fracking can’t be done safely, so the money we invest now in renewable energy technologies is money we won’t have to spend later to clean up the legacy of poison the industry will be leaving behind -- if it’s even possible to remediate toxic groundwater. There’s a reason why the practice was exempted from provisions of the Clean Water Act. The industry has long known that, given enough time, all wells fail, so it’s just a matter of time before the toxins pumped into the ground under high pressure find their way into groundwater.

Energy corporations might now control or heavily influence regulatory agencies, universities, the media, and conservation organizations like The Nature Conservancy and The Environmental Defense Fund but — like the poison in a high-pressure gas well — the truth about fracking is leaking out.

Ken Hemphill

Concord Township

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