Policy Debates on Hydraulic Fracturing PDF Download

Author: Christopher M. Weible
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137595744
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This edited volume compares seven countries in North America and Europe on the highly topical issue of oil and gas development that uses hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.” The comparative analysis is based on the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) and guided by two questions: First, in each country, what are current coalitions and the related policy output? Second, based on the current situation, what are the chances for future policy change? This book is the first to use a social science approach to analyze hydraulic fracturing debates and the first application of the ACF that is deliberately comparative. The contributions in this book advance our understanding about the formation of coalitions and development of public policy in the context of different forms of government and economically recoverable natural resources.

Author: Daniel Raimi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545711
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Over roughly the past decade, oil and gas production in the United States has surged dramatically—thanks largely to technological advances such as high-volume hydraulic fracturing, more commonly known as “fracking.” This rapid increase has generated widespread debate, with proponents touting economic and energy-security benefits and opponents highlighting the environmental and social risks of increased oil and gas production. Despite the heated debate, neither side has a monopoly on the facts. In this book, Daniel Raimi gives a balanced and accessible view of oil and gas development, clearly and thoroughly explaining the key issues surrounding the shale revolution. The Fracking Debate directly addresses the most common questions and concerns associated with fracking: What is fracking? Does fracking pollute the water supply? Will fracking make the United States energy independent? Does fracking cause earthquakes? How is fracking regulated? Is fracking good for the economy? Coupling a deep understanding of the scholarly research with lessons from his travels to every major U.S. oil- and gas-producing region, Raimi highlights stories of the people and communities affected by the shale revolution, for better and for worse. The Fracking Debate provides the evidence and context that have so frequently been missing from the national discussion of the future of oil and gas production, offering readers the tools to make sense of this critical issue.

Author: Jonathan M. Fisk
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315318636
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The disputes around fracking, and oil and gas policy, follow a long tradition of complicated intergovernmental relationships. Proponents argue that fracking supports new and well-paying jobs, revitalizes state and local economies, and that it can help replace reliance on other fossil fuels. Skeptics and opponents contend that oil and gas production via fracking contaminates air and water resources, causes earthquakes, and can ruin the character of many communities. Examining the intergovernmental politics of the first oil and natural gas boom of the 21st century, The Fracking Debate, Second edition offers a holistic understanding of the politics that characterize oil and natural gas operations, including why local governments are challenging their state’s preemptive authority, in order to initiate a larger conversation about improving intergovernmental relationships. Author Jonathan Fisk presents a novel argument about the ways in which local, state, regional, and national approaches to governance of shale gas development can work together to reduce conflict and forward the interests of the communities exposed to development, asking important questions such as: What state structures govern state-local relations? What state institutions impact and shape oil and gas production? What is the policymaking context in the state? What are the costs and benefits of hydraulic fracturing at the national, state, and local levels? How are risks and rewards distributed within states? What local policies have challenged the state, and why would local communities challenge the state? The result is a book that demonstrates that when stakeholders acknowledge their interdependencies and one another’s expertise, they create, design, and implement more responsive, strategic, and targeted public policies. The Fracking Debate, Second edition will be required reading for courses on oil and gas policy in the United States, environmental politics, and domestic energy politics, as well as a vital reference for practitioners and policymakers working in these fields.

Author: Madeline Ilene Gottlieb
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781658414043
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Policy matters because it affects everyone; because it affects everyone, we care about how policy is made. As policy scholars, we know a lot about the processes that influence policy outcomes, but there is a lot we have yet to learn about how people express their policy preferences, how people get access to policy debates, and how people work together to achieve their policy goals. These three ideas form the foundations of the three chapters of my dissertation. Because the way that policy is made can systematically advantage or disadvantage certain groups of people, this body of knowledge seeks to answer my driving question, which is, how does the way that we make policy both facilitate and impede environmental justice? Meaning, how do we ensure that all citizens are informed about and involved in decision-making, and provided equal protection from environmental hazards? If the people who are directly impacted by an activity are not being represented in relevant decision-making, or if the avenues to participation are systematically closed to specific groups of people (or if those people are not being effectively recruited into policy debates), then the policies that are passed will not represent their interests or viewpoints, which will perpetuate inequities in the distribution of environmental harm. This work, therefore, is a crucial step towards understanding how the way we make policy, facilitates and impedes environmental justice. The first chapter focuses on the strategic use of narrative to influence policy outcomes. Narratives are highly consequential in policy processes because they shape public perception of policy issues. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) seeks to predict the extent to which narratives are strategically used to influence policy outcomes. Its core hypotheses center around a winning vs. losing dichotomy, in which winning and losing narratives employ distinct sets of strategies. Due to the newness of the theory, there are few empirical tests of its components, and their results are inconclusive. I posit that the winning-losing paradigm does not accurately predict narrative strategy use. To test this hypothesis, I examine a policy dilemma where contextually similar jurisdictions adopted multiple different policy solutions over a common time period. From 2008 to 2012, more than 260 New York municipalities passed policies related to hydraulic fracturing (fracking). I analyze editorial content from two local newspapers in central New York whose distribution covers municipalities that adopted anti- and pro-fracking policies. My findings reveal that narrators consistently use narrative strategies that correspond to the side of the issue they support, regardless of whether they are winning or losing the policy debate. This suggests the NPF's winning-losing dichotomy may not be not well suited to predicting narrative strategy use or policy outcomes. The second chapter examines the role of advocacy organizations in mobilizing people to participate in policy processes. Marginalized individuals are less likely to participate or have their interests represented in political processes than historically privileged individuals. Interest groups are considered the best means to address this gap, but there is little research on the role of interest groups in mobilizing people to directly participate in political processes, particularly in marginalized communities. This chapter tests hypotheses about organizational strategies used to mobilize individuals for political participation, based on a survey of interest groups that have promoted participation around unconventional oil and gas policies in California and Colorado. The results show that interest groups working in vulnerable communities do more direct advocacy (i.e., connecting residents to representatives) and use more personal communication methods (i.e., door-to-door canvassing) than interest groups working in historically privileged communities. However, organizational strategies in general are not well predicted by the target community's composition, suggesting that decisions around mobilization strategies are driven by other factors. The third chapter explores the role of collaboration in helping advocacy organizations to achieve their goals vis-à-vis passing preferred policies, increasing political participation (particularly among disadvantaged individuals), and enhancing organizational capacity. Collaborations help organizations achieve what they could not do on their own by leveraging resources to improve outcomes. However, a growing body of work suggests that collaborating may not be worth the tradeoff in lost autonomy. Drawing on the factors that predict collaborative success, I predict that collaborations will be perceived to be more helpful if an organization communicates more with their collaborators, has more heterogeneous collaborators, has a smaller budget, and has more staff and a larger percentage of female staff working on oil and gas. I tested these hypotheses using a survey of advocacy organizations in California and Colorado that worked to influence oil and gas policies. The results show that staff size is a significant predictor of how helpful collaboration is for achieving all three goals (passing preferred policies, enhancing organizational capacity and increasing political participation); number of collaborators is positively associated with enhancing organizational capacity and increasing political participation; and contact frequency is positively correlated with enhancing organizational capacity. Together, these findings indicate that organizational capacity and breadth of collaboration can be important determinants of whether or not collaborating is a worthwhile endeavor, but that more work is needed to elucidate the circumstances under which collaboration is beneficial.

Author: Sabina E. Deitrick
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501761013
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
When Fracking Comes to Town traces the response of local communities to the shale gas revolution. Rather than cast communities as powerless to respond to oil and gas companies and their landmen, it shows that communities have adapted their local rules and regulations to meet the novel challenges accompanying unconventional gas extraction through fracking. The multidisciplinary perspectives of this volume's essays tie together insights from planners, legal scholars, political scientists, and economists. What emerges is a more nuanced perspective of shale gas development and its impacts on municipalities and residents. Unlike many political debates that cast fracking in black-and-white terms, this book's contributors embrace the complexity of local responses to fracking. States adapted legal institutions to meet the new challenges posed by this energy extraction process while under-resourced municipal officials and local planning offices found creative ways to alleviate pressure on local infrastructure and reduce harmful effects of fracking on the environment. The essays in When Fracking Comes to Town tell a story of community resilience with the rise and decline of shale gas production. Contributors: Ennio Piano, Ann M. Eisenberg, Pamela A. Mischen, Joseph T. Palka, Jr., Adelyn Hall, Carla Chifos, Teresa Córdova, Rebecca Matsco, Anna C. Osland, Carolyn G. Loh, Gavin Roberts, Sandeep Kumar Rangaraju, Frederick Tannery, Larry McCarthy, Erik R. Pages, Mark C. White, Martin Romitti, Nicholas G. McClure, Ion Simonides, Jeremy G. Weber, Max Harleman, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Author: Clayton Creed Tumlison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This dissertation examines the ways in which cultural value predispositions impact decision-making associated with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) among both local policy elites and the general public in Arkansas and Oregon. First, I examine the mediating role of (dis)trust in information provided by three groups associated with the fracking debate - the energy industry, environmental groups, and the government - in shaping benefit-risk perceptions associated with fracking, and compare this process between a sample of local policy elites and the general public in Arkansas and Oregon. Findings indicate that perceptions of trustworthiness are shaped by cultural value predispositions which, in turn, shape perceptions of benefits and risks associated with fracking. Further, this process is similar, yet distinct, between local policy elites and the general public, with trust - particularly distrust - playing a larger role in shaping benefit-risk perceptions for local policy elites as compared to the general public. I then further examine the origins of trust in sources of information, focusing on local policy elites. For this, I introduce the concept of perceived value congruence - the extent to which an individual believes their values are congruent with the values of those in their community - to examine how the perceived fit of values between an individual and those of their community impacts the relationship between cultural value predispositions and trust in two distinct contexts, Arkansas and Oregon. Broadly, findings indicate that both perceived value congruence and the context an individual is nested in affect the relationship between cultural value predispositions and trust in information provided by different sources. Finally, culturally nuanced narratives and knowledge (in)congruence - the degree to which an individual accurately assesses their knowledge levels of a given issue - are examined as moderators of the relationship between cultural value predispositions and fracking policy preferences. Results indicate that narratives impact the relationships between cultural value predispositions and policy preferences, but do not directly impact policy preferences. Further, cultural value predispositions impact fracking policy preferences differently for those overestimating their policy-relevant knowledge versus those underestimating their policy-relevant knowledge.

Author: Franklin Thomas Backus School of Law
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Environmental law
Languages : en
Pages : 477

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Author: Frank R. Spellman
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 104012299X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
There is a strong need for further innovation and the development of viable renewable energy sources. Recent technological advances now allow natural gas supplies—previously believed inaccessible or nonexistent—to be discovered, mined, and processed for both industrial and consumer use. The technology, a controversial process called hydraulic fracturing, has greatly expanded natural gas production in the United States and elsewhere. As these practices have become more commonplace, concerns about the related environmental and public health impacts have also increased—one of the most significant concerns regarding the fluids that are injected into rock formations to cause the fracturing which contain potentially hazardous chemical additives. Environmental Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing is a balanced and comprehensive guide to all aspects of hydraulic fracturing and covers all facets of the issue, including ongoing controversies about possible water pollution, drinking water contamination, and the potential for harmful chemical exposure. The author discusses both the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing, explaining the process in great detail. Arguably the first book of its kind, this is the go-to text on the use and impacts of hydraulic fracturing. Includes suggestions and recommendations on how to mitigate environmental damage caused by hydraulic fracturing. Weighs the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing. Describes the benefits of hydraulic fracturing and its importance for potential energy independence. Largely updated for this new, second edition.

Author: Shanti Gamper-Rabindran
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298301X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The US shale boom and efforts by other countries to exploit their shale resources could reshape energy and environmental landscapes across the world. But how might those landscapes change? Will countries with significant physical reserves try to exploit them? Will they protect or harm local communities and the global climate? Will the benefits be shared or retained by powerful interests? And how will these decisions be made? The Shale Dilemma brings together experts working at the forefront of shale gas issues on four continents to explain how countries reach their decisions on shale development. Using a common analytical framework, the authors identify both local factors and transnational patterns in the decision-making process. Eight case studies reveal the trade-offs each country makes as it decides whether to pursue, delay, or block development. Those outcomes in turn reflect the nature of a country's political process and the power of interest groups on both sides of the issue. The contributors also ask whether the economic arguments made by the shale industry and its government supporters have overshadowed the concerns of local communities for information on the effects of shale operations, and for tax policies and regulations to ensure broad-based economic development and environmental protection. As an informative and even-handed account, The Shale Dilemma recommends practical steps to help countries reach better, more transparent, and more far-sighted decisions.

Author: Michelle Bamberger
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807081418
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
A pharmacologist and a veterinarian pull back the curtain on the human and animal health effects of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” Across the country, fracking—the extraction of natural gas by hydraulic fracturing—is being touted as the nation’s answer to energy independence and a fix for a flagging economy. Drilling companies assure us that the process is safe, politicians push through drilling legislation without a serious public-health debate, and those who speak out are marginalized, their silence purchased by gas companies and their warnings about the dangers of fracking stifled. The Real Cost of Fracking pulls back the curtain on how this toxic process endangers the environment and harms people, pets, and livestock. Michelle Bamberger, a veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a pharmacologist, combine their expertise to show how contamination at drilling sites translates into ill health and heartbreak for families and their animals. By giving voice to the people at ground zero of the fracking debate, the authors vividly illustrate the consequences of fracking and issue an urgent warning to all of us: fracking poses a dire threat to the air we breathe, the water we drink, and even our food supply. Bamberger and Oswald reveal the harrowing experiences of small farmers who have lost their animals, their livelihoods, and their peace of mind, and of rural families whose property values have plummeted as their towns have been invaded by drillers. At the same time, these stories give us hope, as people band together to help one another and courageously fight to reclaim their communities. The debate over fracking speaks to a core dilemma of contemporary life: we require energy to live with modern conveniences, but what degree of environmental degradation, health risks, and threats to our food supply are we willing to accept to obtain that energy? As these stories demonstrate, the stakes couldn’t be higher, and this is an issue that none of us can afford to ignore.