The Sacramento Bee has some great articles on the current fracking boom in the US. These include:

• Fracking-led energy boom is turning U.S. into ‘Saudi America’
• Energy boom brings new life to old businesses across U.S.
• ‘Saudi America’ fracking boom a dilemma for environmentalists – this is the only one that really mentions the environment in any meaningful way.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the SacBee, which they published with only small changes as “Fracking will soon lead to hardship” (since gone). Here is my original with hyperlinks added (note that their URL ended in “a-fracking-long-boom-is-impossible.html”, which uses my original subject):

A fracking “long boom” is impossible

I greatly enjoyed your collection of in-depth articles on the current US energy boom due to fracking.

However, I was disappointed that environmental concerns were sequestered in their own article; they are critical to understanding the phenomenon in full context.

The “Do the Math” campaign points out that we cannot, as a world, burn more than 20% of our proven fossil fuel reserves, or we will push the climate system into a radically different regime, one extremely harsh for our species.

We are already on track to burn up that allotment within 15 years or so. We must immediately, wrenchingly shift our energy system, or we will face severe hardship and death in my lifetime.

Either way, we won’t be mining natural gas at current rates for 100 years as Obama claims.

Martin MacKerel