This week’s topic: A new study suggests that people living near fracking operations have a higher cancer risk than others. Your take?

The feud over gas and oil extraction in rapidly developing areas continues unabated. Last Tuesday’s headline “Study: Cancer risk higher near oil, gas operations” dominates the front page of the Camera. Even though the article duly reported that our local emission levels are safe and that the increase in risk of cancer only adds one-tenth of one percent to our lifetime risk, just mentioning an increase in chances of getting cancer freaks people out.

Looking at issues while being needlessly scared eliminates objectivity and leads to decisions based on emotional values. We have all engaged in this process in our personal lives and suffered the consequences. We are now witnessing our local governments doing the same. Despite this study’s author stating that the study “confirms our 2017 findings of low risk” at least one of our county commissioners is, nevertheless, calling for “immediate action” to protect us from what should be good news that the setback requirements for oil and gas operations seem to be working. Boulder City Council also appears to have ditched its objectivity by considering an ordinance (the assault weapons ban) based on the emotional appeal of “we have to do something” to end mass shootings, when there is no objective data showing that such an ordinance would accomplish anything. But our local governments do not have the luxury to make fear-based policies. We must insist that emotions be set aside and decisions be made on data and common sense.

Andrew Spiegel, amirror4189@gmail.com

Consider: A few miles down U.S. 36, north Denver’s Globeville and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods are considered some of the most polluted in the country. Part of that is old toxins in the soil, but it’s also due to the air pollution that comes from being at the interchange of I-25 and I-70 while housing multiple major industrial facilities. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, particulate air pollution is, in fact, “the most important environmental carcinogen.” Yet people keep moving there — home prices were up nearly 70 percent between 2013 and 2015 — because it is one of the remaining affordable neighborhoods in the city.

As population and technology expand, sometimes our consumptive habits smack us on the way back around. One unfortunate reality of the oil and gas industry is that until we stop using its outputs, increasing setbacks or even blocking wells in Boulder County may simply offload the impact elsewhere. We are lucky to have resources and elected officials to fight for our quality of life, but building regulatory silos over our valley is a very short-term solution. Our lifestyle still relies on the spoils of fracking, even if we manage to export its most visible impacts.

Environmental pollutants are bigger than fracking, we will need something stronger than a study that didn’t even garner rousing support from the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to combat them, and our efforts must extend beyond our local — fortunate — community.

Mara Abbott, abbottmarak@gmail.com

I consider myself an unlucky person. I’ve never won anything — ever — nonetheless, I still go through the cycle of holding a tiny bit of hope when gripping raffle tickets and releasing quiet sighs of disappointment when my number isn’t called.

The one time my number was called was when my surgeon dialed me to inform me the lump he excised and biopsied was aggressive, invasive cancer. I was too young and neither my mom nor my eight maternal aunts and their dozens daughters proved any family history. That reinforced my sense of unluckiness.

However, data provided by the American Cancer Society says I’m not all that unlucky for having gotten cancer — women have a 38 percent chance of developing invasive cancer in their lifetimes and a 19 percent chance of dying from it. Surely, environmental factors are in play but which ones? The new study indicates Coloradans living near a site experience an increased chance of 0.1 percent. That doesn’t seem like a big number to me.

Meanwhile, dependence on the fruits of fracking is growing. Driving Leafs and Teslas seems to comfort environmentalists so long as they don’t have to see the fracking sites. Do they know what’s powering their batteries? I’ve noticed a similar disconnect with people who are ardent supporters of municipalization as they drive their premium-gas-guzzling luxury cars.

The data (so far) doesn’t seem to prove this as a health issue. Our usage patterns don’t seem to show we have internalized it as an environmental one.

Michelle Estrella, michelleboulderDC@gmail.com, https://twitter.com/estrellaboulder

Christians have their burning bush, environmentalists have their flaming faucets, and both have their prophets. One of the “Leave It In the Ground” crowd’s favorites is Dr. Lisa McKenzie, upon whose oft-discredited research some of this recent outrage is based. Such sober voices as Dr. Larry Wolk, Colorado Health Department’s chief medical officer, expressed doubts about her approach and findings. I’m skeptical of both religious pontification and climate alarmist hand-waving.

EAB contributor Chuck Wibby found out the expensive way that, at least in Colorado, holding government officials to their mandated responsibilities and publicly stated commitments is not enforced by the courts. So the thought of Boulder County commissioners mounting any kind of realistic challenge to long-standing state mineral rights laws can be dismissed out of hand.

Whether it is the extraction of fossil fuels, use of automobiles, plastic bags and straws, the perennial demonization of dams or not gift-wrapping our garbage, we’re constantly scolded for killing Mother Earth with our wanton high living — like heating our homes in the winter and driving to work.

Making decisions in a panic is a bad idea. The environmental movement in its many manifestations strives to keep us all in a constant state of panic, while dictating the decisions we should make to live the “smart,” “right,” life. The Enlightenment gave us science over religion but you have to admit, the environmentalists’ mantra sounds pretty dogmatic. After all, they’re both afterlife protection rackets.

Don Wrege, donsopinion@gmail.com

In one of the more riotous moments of my youth, I along with my family watched my big sister, Kathleen, a contestant in our town’s annual beauty pageant, gallop around the stage in a Dale Evans cowgirl outfit singing/shouting, “The Farmer and the Cowman Should be Friends” from the musical “Oklahoma.” She lost the competition but created a lasting memory for me and likely most of the audience who witnessed the performance that night.

That song was about the settling of the West, and the inevitable encroachment by a new group on the territory of an already existing group. It is a familiar tale. We see it today nationally in our increasingly xenophobic immigration policies; and here in Colorado, in the arrival of fracking sites in growing, populous Boulder County.

Colorado’s fortunes have long been tied to these minerals. Our state is currently one of the top energy producers in the country. And the U.S. is one of the biggest per capita consumers of energy in the world. The state has a legitimate interest in protecting this important part of our economy.

The Democratic gubernatorial candidates all recognize this and, in a televised debate this week, were unanimously opposed to giving local governments the authority to outright ban oil and gas development in their jurisdictions.

But Colorado is lurching toward some solutions, however imperfect, to make co-existence more palatable. The setbacks are one example and they seem to be working.

Fern O’Brien, fobrien@fobrienlaw.com

The Camera’s editorial advisory board members are: Mara Abbott, Shawn Coleman, Michelle Estrella, Jane Hummer, Betsey Martens, Fern O’Brien, Andrew Spiegel, John Tweedy, Chuck Wibby and Don Wrege. (Judy Amabile, Ed Byrne and Steve Fisher are emeritus members.)