What’s more dangerous, puppies or fracking?

We can utilize fear and alarmist rhetoric to scare people away from almost anything.   Yet the reality is always found in the balance between risk and reward.   This is one of the best pieces I’ve ever seen showing this contrast.   Here’s one of the lead paragraphs:

“As I studied the arguments for and against hydraulic fracturing, or frac’ing for short (fracking if you are an opponent, so that you can use the old f and ck in a word), it struck me how much breathless fear is being used to sell us on the idea that frac’ing is somehow bad. If we only look at costs and discount b, we make benefits to zero, we tend to make bad decisions. When we look at all the “could POSSIBLY be” costs and none of the benefits, we make even worse decisions. All decisions are best made by balancing both costs and the benefits.”

Puppies do far more environmental damage and kill far more people every year than fracking.  Those are just demonstrable facts.  So why all the uproar about frac’ing?  It’s about philosophy…not facts.  Frac’ing makes the use of hydrocarbons for energy highly economical.  Even when balancing risk vs. reward, there is very little in the risk column, so advances in frac’ing technology have led to a drilling boom in this country.  That goes against the philosophy of those who desire to drive humans to other energy sources.   So they use fear to sell us on the idea that frac’ing is dangerous.

“Another reality is that our emotions are largely fed by fear. We tend to act more quickly and instinctively to fear or pain. A person holding his or her hand over a flame will move it away quickly to avoid pain, far faster than someone seeking to touch a fine leather or satin. People trying to sell us stuff know this. Not just people selling us goods and services, but ideals and values. In America, selling ideals and values is a pretty big business in itself…tens of billions of dollars per year. Although fear clearly sells, it rarely buys us something we really want to own. There is no real joy in the state of NOT burning your hand…you just avoid the pain.”