The biggest challenge to fracking is no longer technological – it’s community resistance

The last decade has seen a renaissance in the technology used to extract shale oil and gas. But despite fracking’s positive economic impacts, some communities across the US are deeply opposed to it. Jonathan M. Fisk explores this resistance, writing that a small group of communities have responded to the fracking boom with a variety of blocks, bans and moratoriums, which can in turn spur the centralization of power by state leaders. Much of this opposition to fracking, he comments, stems from the costs local communities bear in the form of pollution and traffic, with the economic benefits tending to go the state.