Fracking: Hoodwinking Americans (and the rest of us!)

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Selling Hydraulic Fracking: The Myth Of Energy Independence Used To Hoodwink The American People

[ http://www.globalresearch.ca/selling-hy ... le/5379709 ]

By Dylan Murphy and Jo Murphy Global Research, April 29, 2014

”Cheap energy [from oil and gas fracking] is making sure that America now has a manufacturing renaissance,” Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Mayor and President Obama’s former chief of staff told CNBC. Emanuel added. “The biggest revolution equal to the Internet is the energy independence in the United States.”

In the last year the corporate media has been full of triumphant articles declaring that America is on the way to becoming energy independent thanks to oil and gas fracking. The hyperbole goes further declaring that fracking will lead to America overtaking Saudia Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer and so become an oil and gas superpower. This will spur an economic renaissance that will create large numbers of jobs while driving down electricity prices for consumers and industry. It gets even better. The crisis in Ukraine means that America can step in to save Europe from energy dependence on big bad Russia by exporting ”clean” natural gas to Europe.

The objective behind these extravagant claims is to help sell the poisonous oil and gas fracking industry to an increasingly sceptical population that is pushing back against fracking in many areas.

In a recent address to people in Europe Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Ithaca College and science advisor to Americans Against Fracking, observed that America’s population have been hoodwinked into believing the fracking industry’s extravagant claims.

This hoodwinking has been achieved by an unholy alliance between the oil and gas industry and their puppets in Congress and a pliant mass media, which is an uncritical cheer leader for the industry.

Energy independence claims are also behind the push to sell U.S. fracking oil and gas abroad which would give a huge boost to the profits of the rapacious oil and gas companies.

Now let’s pull back the curtain and look at the reality behind the extravagant claims made for hydraulic fracking.

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