Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josefresco | Hacker News Reader

Every article I read about this topic focuses on 3 things; strippers, housing shortages and ..strippers (I'm only half joking). I get the idea of writing an article that will attract clicks and views but I'd like to read more articles that focus on why we're drilling for gas here and what it means for the country in the long term.

Boom towns are full of all kinds of awful, I would imagine many similar articles were written about the gold rush and other mass movements of workers but that situation is only temporary and in the grand scheme of things not very important.

Does America want to be an energy producer? If not are we willing to do business with countries that do, that might also have problems with Americans? Also, ss this the kind of energy America wants to produce?

To me it boils down to national security (or terrorism if you must) and prices. Having the security of energy in your backyard comes with tradeoffs. I'm not sure what the right answer is, but could we all stop focusing on the strip clubs and instead look at the bigger picture?

Alternately, we are more secure as a nation state because oil is a global market. Then, as countries become more reliant on each other for crude, revenue, and finished petroleum products they are less likely to upset the balance. Additionally, in 2012, we imported ~40% of our oil (lowest it's been in a long time), and our biggest import country, by far, is Canada. Here's an EIA link: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6

Terrorism can be a problem of course, but I would be more concerned about the grid than our access to oil.

"countries become more reliant on each other for crude"

If the country that is selling you oil/energy is doing bad things this reliant nature of our relationship also ties our hands when it comes to calling them on their shit. See the Ukraine or pretty much any geo-political matter.

Isolationism isn't the only solution, but inter-dependance has it's own drawbacks.

Try this:

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21596553-benefit...

There was a coal boom on the high plains about 1980. Rock Springs, Wyoming, had been nothing much to notice a few years earlier and suddenly was a boom town. Some very odd stuff happened about then. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Cantrell

Fascinating story, but I don't see how the town's larger economic forces drove the actions of either Rosa or Cantrelli. Mind elaborating?

It seems to me that it in part was the effect of the boom: the hot local economy drawing a lot of unattached young men with money, the local government expanding too rapidly for controls.

[edit: added "in part"]

Very good comment. It also boils down to geopolitical economic power. If the US starts exporting LNG to Europe, that completely changes the power dynamic regarding Russia in general and Ukraine / Crimea in particular. Gazprom has always strived for a monopoly on European energy supplies, and the politicians in Brussels would rather not be dependent on one (somewhat abusive) supplier.

They (US & EU politicos) will talk big about climate change in public of course, but their strategy and calculations in private can go a very different direction.

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