Fracking is EDF's Friend

Past articles from this series: 

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Fracking But Should Be Afraid to Ask--An Overview

Fracking:  Water Issues--Colorado-centric, But Applicable to All

Who the Frack's Really in Charge? (regulation)

Water-Free Fracking--Why Not? (LPG fracking)

Frack-Flavored Gas (trials of Garfield County, Colorado)

What the Frack Do We Know? (more on water)

Have Another Hit of Fracked Air

Frackonomics (it's the economy, y'all)

[1] Dan Grossman is regional director of the Environmental Defense Fund at the Rocky Mountain regional office in Boulder, Colorado.  He joined the EDF in 2006 after having served 10 years in the Colorado General Assembly.  EDF strives to protect land, water, and wildlife in the West.  Dan's work focuses on agricultural policy, water rights, endangered species, and habitat conservation. 

[2] According to SourceWatch, a paragraph in "In These Times" described thus the Environmental Defense Fund:  

Created in 1967 by a small band of lawyers seeking to ban DDT, Environmental Defense Fund evolved into George Bush's favorite environmental group. The group is the premier advocate of market-oriented solutions to environmental problems. EDF was a cheerleader for NAFTA, and gets excited about pollution credits, emissions trading systems and user fees for recreational use of public lands. It hosts the Barbra Streisand Chair of Environmental Studies, the perch of scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who advocates buying up development rights in the Third World as a solution to global climate change. EDF convinced McDonalds in 1991 to reform its solid-waste disposal practices and to move from Styrofoam to paper packaging (but remained mum on quality of food, ecologically destructive ranching practices and abusive treatment of animals and workers.)[sic] In cooperation with major timber companies, the group developed a "paper-use task force," whose recommendations discreetly ignored sustainable alternatives to paper such as industrial hemp and kenaf. Inc. magazine praised president Fred Krupp for his ability to "speak capitalism."  

[3] EDF pushed for better monitoring of aquifers, Grossman told us.  But it was not to be. 

[4] Air pollutants can be climate-forcing (methane and carbon dioxide) or toxic.  Toxic air pollutants are qualified by the Environmental Protection Agency as hazardous (such volatile organic compounds as benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, mixed xylenes, n-hexane, carbonyl sulfide, ethylene glycol, and 2,2,4-trimethylpentane) and criteria (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, fine particulate matter, and ground-level ozone).  Both kinds of toxic pollutants are just that, toxic to humans and other life, but criteria air pollutants are left to localities to toe while hazardous air pollutants are tackled by the industries emitting them.