Vermont Becomes First State to Ban Natural Gas Fracking

Vermont

Vermont … the launching pad of great progressive ideas like the abolition of slavery, civil rights, women’s suffrage, feminism, and gay marriage has become the first state to ban hydraulic fracking.

Note: There are a lot of people who underestimate the threat posed by Peak Oil. They assume we can tackle the problem by doing this or that. The fatal assumption is that we are at the top of our game. They are discounting the fact that we live in BRA. How much confidence can you have in a government that encourages black people to destroy its own major cities?

California, for example, could create middle class jobs like Texas by developing its offshore energy reserves. That doesn’t mean California will go that route. It doesn’t mean California won’t devastate its own agriculture industry to protect the delta smelt minnow.

Think about it: Obama wouldn’t even build the Keystone pipeline and Bush couldn’t drill in ANWR. Is it realistic to believe we are really going to dig up the Four Corners to get at the kerogen in the Green River Formation? Where are you going to get the water to process it? What happens to the waste?

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

27 Comments

  1. Good for Vermont.

    Now only if West Virginia and Pennsylvania would just step up and say “Fuck you Vermont, you won’t be hitting on our gas tap”.

    This is the same thing I have been saying about West Virginia electricity for years, “Fuck you DC. Fuck you Baltimore. Fuck you Philadelphia. Generate your own fucking power, don’t be legislating ours out of existence because you want to live in the dark with a bunch of darkies.”

  2. rjp: Amen! Let Vermont subsist on milk and icecream. Liberal, left wing idiots need to immediately feel the pain of their stupid decisions.

  3. THAT IS THE BEST IDEA I HAVE HEARD IN A LONG TIME… LET THE LOSER PROGRESSIVES GENERATE THEIR OWN POWER, OR, EVEN BETTER, PAY A STEEP PREMIUM FOR IT, LIKE, SAY, FOUR TIMES MARKET RATE SO THAT THE GENERATING STATES CAN OFFER REDUCED COSTS TO THE TRULY NEEDY, NOT THE USUAL PARASITES BUT THE TRULY NEEDY.

  4. Parrott Prediction #836: Energy will be neither the root nor proximate cause of the precipitous downturn.

    There are a variety of alternative energy sources nearly as cheap and ubiquitous as oil which will approximate oil in price once the increasing price of oil makes them popular enough to exploit the economies of scale that oil currently benefits from. We have centuries worth of energy in a variety of forms to exploit before we actually reach a point where a lack of raw energy could possibly be the bottleneck. And even if the worst predictions proved true, there’s a lot economies could do to restructure to be dramatically more energy efficient while maintaining first world living standards.

    The whole “BRA” predicament will be entirely beside the point. Multinational corporations operate on a plateau pretty much removed from whatever’s going on in the communities resting atop the resources. These corporations know how to profitably and efficiently extract oil while armies of machete-wielding Congolese cannibals in wedding dresses are storming at them, for pete’s sake. All BRA’s social chaos will entail is that the contractors and engineers orchestrating the affair may well be Asians instead of Texans.

    In my opinion, the next phase shift will come as China and other creditors exert soft pressure on the American government to implement austerity measures. This is probably already happening to some extent, but will become increasingly acute until our elites cave. While the changes will also adversely impact White working families, they will also take the wind out of a lot of the diversity initiatives. As Section 8 and similar initiatives deflate, there will be a contraction of Blacks back into inner city projects and Mexicans back into Mexico.

    As government jobs atrophy, telecommuting picks up its pace, and gas prices increase, liberal “SWPL” Whites will begin migrating en masse into small towns. While this will initially feel like a zombie apocalypse of effete hipsters for rural White conservatives, the long-term trend will be a positive one for small towns: the brain drain will be reversed and removal from the decadent culture will gradually reverse the brainwashing they’ve suffered.

    Every single cultural, economic, and political factor which reinforces loyalty to Washington will decline and a decentralization of power will follow. It may or may not take the form of explicit secession and the racial crises could be worked out in a variety of ways, likely in different ways in different regions.

  5. Here’s where we are now:

    1.) Peak Oil happened in 2006. Gas prices sunk the economy in 2008. It happened again in 2011. The economy has already probably been knocked into recession again by gas prices.

    2.) A few years ago, the fashionable nonsense was that ethanol was going to replace gasoline. What actually happened is that ethanol led to higher food prices while gas prices continued to rise.

    3.) After a solid decade of rising energy prices, America responded by failing to drill in ANWR, refusing to build the Keystone pipeline, refusing to drill off the West Coast, Gulf Coast, and East Coast, and finally by waging a jihad against the coal industry with Cap-and-Trade.

    4.) Now Vermont has become the first liberal state to ban fracking.

    5.) The latest pipe dream is that the Green River Formation in the Four Corners will be exploited. Not only did we refuse to drill in ANWR, but Obama actually banned offshore drilling on Alaska and the Gulf Coast, so how in the world are we going to exploit the kerogen in Colorado?

    6.) Meanwhile, actual oil exporters like Mexico have seen their production peak and go into decline in recent years.

    7.) Even if it were possible to exploit shale oil and shale gas, the environmentalists would derail those projects with all kinds of lawsuits and EPA red tape.

    8.) America is too culturally and politically dysfunctional to take even the smallest token steps to mitigate the economic damage caused by rising energy prices.

    What’s the bottom line? A stagnant and declining economy, higher energy prices, higher food prices, higher prices for imported manufactured goods, cuts in government services, deteriorating infrastructure, chronic unemployment, collapse in confidence in the future, a less mobile population stuck with declining property values, etc.

    All those things have already come true.

  6. I hope that his spreads to all of the cold country states. Let those fag-lovers try to stay warm by sharing sleeping bags.

    If they chug enough maple syrup and spoon really tight, they might make it through January and February.

  7. The End of Excess brought about by Peak Oil is good for the whites.

    Whites are self-sufficient and survivalist and understand simple justice; it would be a boon for our race.

  8. Speaking as a one-time Vermont resident (family still has property there)…

    Leave it to Vermonters to pass something completely meaningless: Vermont’s “shale” deposits were turned into slate millions of years ago. They have no shale to frack. Oil and gas drilling done years back in Vermont were all dry holes.

    What Vermont does have that drives the Greens bonkers is Vermont Yankee. Vermont gets the vast majority of its energy (rivaling France) from nuclear. Vermont now want to shut down Vermont Yankee, replacing it with wind and solar. Vermonters will be sitting in the dark most of the year if this happens… or they will have to buy their power from Canada.

    On a different note, I work in an energy related field. Part of my job is to research energy trends. The energy situation from a technical perspective is pretty damn bright. On the political end.. not so much. In the short term, I won’t be surprised by next year if we see West Texas Intermediate back down to $60 a bbl (* caveat…. this assumes no war with Iran).

    If I get time tomorrow (and if Mr. Wallace doesn’t mind a long-winded post) I will expand on why peak oil may not be the threat that many expect.

  9. Gas prices sunk the economy in 2008. It happened again in 2011.

    Pffft First of all, gas prices were at most a pin which pricked a quivering bubble. Second of all, the prices weren’t rises due to genuine supply issues.

    A few years ago, the fashionable nonsense was that ethanol was going to replace gasoline.

    The presence of multiple silly, flaky, and bogus strategies for dealing with the problem of rising gas prices doesn’t necessarily mean there are no serious strategies for dealing with them. As others have noted, the serious alternatives won’t be seriously developed by serious people until those serious people project an impending end of the cheap oil bonanza.

    The American government can make silly mistakes all day long. At the end of the day, energy is too important to leave in the hands of FedGov and it’s not really in their hands. If and when the oil industry gives a shit about fracking Vermont, Vermont’s state legislators will have a change of heart and fracking will commence on schedule.

    I’m not saying that America’s not going to fall apart. I’m all about gloom and doom. I just don’t see the causation or even the correlation with energy resources.

  10. “The presence of multiple silly, flaky, and bogus strategies for dealing with the problem of rising gas prices doesn’t necessarily mean there are no serious strategies for dealing with them.”

    The flaky shit gets promoted on purpose, I suspect it’s because they KNOW it will fail.

  11. “As others have noted, the serious alternatives won’t be seriously developed by serious people until those serious people project an impending end of the cheap oil bonanza.”

    Matt Simmons (founder of Simmons International, investment banking firming specializing in catering to the energy industry) wasn’t a serious person? He certainly did project an impending end of the cheap oil bonanza.

    Simmons’ 2004 book Twilight in the Desert laid out his case why the Sauds cannot produce the 19.5 million barrels per day by 2020 they’ve promised, because they’ve been overstating — flat lying — their reserves for the last 20 years. Despite constant production and essentially no new discoveries, Saudis claimed reserves have never decreased.
    Before Simmons was found drowned in his bathtub, he had founded Ocean Energy Institute to investigate ways to run the country on ocean energy. If Peak Oil is so silly, why would Mr. Simmons go to all that trouble?

  12. 1.) Gas prices in 2008 tipped the real economy into recession after the financial crisis had been going on for six months or more.

    2.) It happened again last year when rising gas prices hobbled a few months of economic growth that the media had been cheering about.

    3.) The Arab oil embargos of the 1970s and the 2008 recession both illustrate the effect that gas prices has on consumer spending and economic growth.

    4.) How much money has the fed gov pumped into renewable energy research like solar and wind now?

    5.) Where are the hydrogyn cars that have been promised for two decades?

    6.) What are the serious strategies for dealing with the plateau in conventional oil production?

    7.) If the oil industry is so powerful, why doesn’t it wave its hand and drill in ANWR and off the west coast of California?

    8.) You can’t separate fanciful stories of “what we should do” from the context of BRA and all the other factors out there like aging, changing demographics, partisan gridlock, chaos in financial markets, etc.

    It is a cumulative shit sandwich.

    Think about it: we could solve the immigration crisis by securing the border, deporting illegals, turning off the welfare magnets, punishing employers, etc.

    Even if there is a solution, it doesn’t mean there is a cultural and political context for a solution. For all we know, the environmentalist lobby and partisan gridlock might be enough to sabotage all efforts to confront or even just ameliorate the crisis.

    There might not be enough capital to fund some breakthrough because the banks have collapsed or because China has stopped financing our debt or because of any number of known unknowns.

  13. “I just don’t see the causation or even the correlation with energy resources.”

    Gas prices an insignificant cause of the housing bubble pop? NAY. It was integral.

    Here’s how the gas price-spike of 2008 caused the housing bubble to pop:

    Whites want nice houses in the Sand States in new developments far away from the mestizos, or at least the poor ones (which is, pretty much, all of them). That means a commute down the freeway.

    Bush, on orders of his puppet masters, sent the message, let’s make NINJA loans (no income / no job / no assets loans AKA no-documentation loans AKA stated income loans AKA Liar’s Loans) to poor mestizo gardeners so they can buy into those neighborhoods, too. (Hey, it’s antiWhite, it gets me anti-racist bonus points, AND it keeps the housing churn going for realtors and home builders that donated to my campaign. It’s all good!)
    Whites sell to get away and buy even further out.
    You end up, after numerous iterations, with Whites driving 80 miles round trip in their SUVs down the freeway to work and back home every day. At a dollar a gal gas and the SUV getting 10 mpg, commuting costs for gas are $8 / day or $40 a week. And the home they just bought, the payment is excruciatingly heavy.

    So long as gas stays cheap and *nothing* goes wrong, maybe, maybe they can pull it off. But with $4 or $5 / gal., now it costs $200 a week just to commute to work. With budgets overstretched already, the homeowner just can’t do it. Doesn’t have the extra money to pay the much higher gas price to make his commute, but can’t not go to work — MUST dump the house. But with $4 or $5 gal gas, NOBODY wants to buy his home in the hinterlands. He is seriously screwed.
    So the houses start going into foreclosure, the banks start going tits up from the nonperforming loans and the Feds ride in to print money to bail out the banks.
    The economy begins to recover — until the next oil price spike and the cycle repeats.

  14. My position on Peak Oil is that it will be worse than the conventional wisdom because like every other manageable problem it is happening in the context of BRA which exacerbates every other problem.

    How easy would it be to reign in African-Americans if only there was the will to do it? They are not reigned in because the political class sees their bad behavior as social justice.

    In much the same way, the greens in California want to rid themselves of conservative middle class whites, and super enviro legislation is a means to drive them out of state.

  15. 5.) Where are the hydrogen cars that have been promised for two decades? – These are basically coal cars, hydrogen doesn’t magic itself out of the ether.

    6.) What are the serious strategies for dealing with the plateau in conventional oil production? – Coal Gassification is it, that is if we don’t intend to deal with the reason everyone commutes. Neither of these is politically viable at the moment so there is no serious strategy.

  16. 1.) Gas prices in 2008 tipped the real economy into recession after the financial crisis had been going on for six months or more.

    Prick of the balloon, straw on the camel’s back, “tipped”, etc…

    We both appear to agree that the gas price fluctuation was not what made the problem, merely what thwarted ongoing efforts to delay its consequences.

    2.) It happened again last year when rising gas prices hobbled a few months of economic growth that the media had been cheering about.

    3.) The Arab oil embargos of the 1970s and the 2008 recession both illustrate the effect that gas prices has on consumer spending and economic growth.

    I would like to see some graphs confirming the high correlation you’re asserting between oil prices and economic health. I know there’s at least some correlation, but I would like to see if it’s as clear as Oil Peakers insist. If you can deliver the especially strong correlations you’re suggesting, I’ll shift my perspective accordingly.

    4.) How much money has the fed gov pumped into renewable energy research like solar and wind now?

    5.) Where are the hydrogyn cars that have been promised for two decades?

    6.) What are the serious strategies for dealing with the plateau in conventional oil production?

    These points can be trotted out to support either argument and support neither argument. While FedGov is not one of them, there are adults in the room in different countries and contexts. If China’s army of geologists, scientists, and engineers are yawning about it, despite being the kind of people who think so far ahead that they have entire pre-fab ghost cities to accommodate anticipated demographic shifts, then I can’t help but suspect that the Peak Oil people are missing something.

    If the government offered billions for projects to prevent death in the case of the sky falling, numerous contractors would jostle for the money and come up with a bunch of silly SkyBlock technologies…all of which would be unworkable. Chicken Little would perhaps claim that the failure to develop mature and effective defenses against the sky falling is all the more proof that we’re doomed.

    7.) If the oil industry is so powerful, why doesn’t it wave its hand and drill in ANWR and off the west coast of California?

    Well, once again, that point swings both ways. Why would the oil industry want to bother with America’s politically and logistically problematic reserves when there are resources available in countries with cheap labor and sensible governments? The caribou get a pass because drilling in ANWR isn’t something the oil companies really need to do.

    8.) You can’t separate fanciful stories of “what we should do” from the context of BRA and all the other factors out there like aging, changing demographics, partisan gridlock, chaos in financial markets, etc.

    It is a cumulative shit sandwich.

    In the grand global scheme of things, the notion that there’s this discreet “American economy” with this very powerful and relevant “government” dictating its direction and future is a simplistic myth encouraged by the government, perpetuated by the media, and taken for granted by the people. I think the other things you mention are big deals. East Asia, Europe, Russia, and even Brazil aren’t just going to let FedGov take the whole world down with it.

    The exciting news is that the world has changed enough to where no matter how retarded FedGov gets, it’s no longer capable of screwing up the rest of the world with its dysfunction, no matter how retarded it gets.

    Even if there is a solution, it doesn’t mean there is a cultural and political context for a solution. For all we know, the environmentalist lobby and partisan gridlock might be enough to sabotage all efforts to confront or even just ameliorate the crisis.

    This isn’t the 1950’s, anymore. It doesn’t matter how dysfunctional our government gets. It’s beside the point. The oil problem is a global problem,

    Our government’s not going to go down Red Dawn or Turner Diaries style. It’s going to go down in an ignoble, sleazy, pathetic way. In fifty years, the different regions will be dealing with stuff on their own while some scumbag oligarch calls himself the President of the United States in the same impotent and embarrassing way that some elderly woman calls herself the queen of England. In my opinion, the American presidency already amounts to a Kentucky Colonel relative to the forebears who held the office.

    There might not be enough capital to fund some breakthrough because the banks have collapsed or because China has stopped financing our debt or because of any number of known unknowns.

    This is what happens when people think too much about economics. They forget the true source of wealth: human capital. If over a billion well-educated and well-organized people of good stock want something bad enough, they’ll get something. And if China doesn’t save the day, there are intelligent and organized elites in other regions who will step up to fill the vacuum. The world will get along fine without America. In fact, it will get along a little better than before. Better yet, Americans will get along better without it.

    The world will use deep sea current turbines, tidal turbines, aquatic biofuels, fracking, natural gas, coal, coal gasification, nuclear, and even (heaven forbid) consuming less energy can and will be part of the response if a response is even necessary within the next few decades. I loved both of my mopeds, and recommend them for people whose situation allows them. Had ni^H^Hyouths not stolen them, I would be loving it in this weather.

  17. “As government jobs atrophy, telecommuting picks up its pace, and gas prices increase, liberal “SWPL” Whites will begin migrating en masse into small towns. While this will initially feel like a zombie apocalypse of effete hipsters for rural White conservatives, the long-term trend will be a positive one for small towns: the brain drain will be reversed and removal from the decadent culture will gradually reverse the brainwashing they’ve suffered.”

    Oh, Lord I hope not. I want all the DWL to be DEAD White Liberals, trapped in the multicultural hell holes they have created for us all, as their just reward. The Mother Jones, “Wellstone is still alive,” Yuptown/DFL pro-abort/Excelsior Blvd. happy hour/Starbucks/Bryn Mawr/look down your nose Liberals- those should be ‘the first to go’ (Wicked Witch voice), dying at the hands of the North Side Niggers, with all the Somalis of Bossen Field thrown in for good measure, in a melee of racial violence and carnage, with skirmishes starting in Camden park, increasing in an ever-growing radius, until finally being taken down at Southdale’s parking lot, and the Xerxes Ave. Bridge being blown up…. the Crosstown Highway being a No Man’s Land, tying up traffic out (or into) of the city…. and the Galleria being White Conservative Edina HQ…. I can see it all…..now that Brookdale is Enemy Occupied Territory.

    Why would I say that? Because it is these sanctimonious pr*cks who have made my home state a veritable Minnestroika Soviet/Green intellectual myopia, that only allows a Dispensationalist nutjob like Michelle Bachman to rise up far enough to {?!} challenge {!?} their world-view, only to retreat (like all women- excepting Denise- do).

    And, in such a scenario, Brutus’ myopia would be the first to go- “Yes, our problems are NOT technical, they are political.” No, they are RELIGIOUS. That’s why “Lutheran Socialist Service” imported both Buddhist Hmong to MN in the 1970’s, and Muslim Somalis in the 1990’s. That’s why the Catholic Bishops’ declare ‘sanctuary parishes’ for illegal meximidgets. That’s why United Theological Seminary students should clean toilets over at ‘MLK Towers’ in Seven Corners, and why the ELCA should have their sissified pastors strung up on the trees, from Park and Portland, from Central Lutheran, all the way to Lake Nokomis! Destroy both the racial AND religious hegemony, and only the Deicides are happy. As if they dared hope for any happiness in this life……

    Oh yes, I also long (and pray) for the day Saint Jewish Park (St. Louis Park) is a giant gefilte fish nuclear hole, above and before all else.

    THAT would make for some needed ‘Lebensraum.’

    But, to send them into the small towns and ‘safety zones’ of rural MN? My God, that’s about as depressing a scenario as reading James Wesley, Rawles’ books about post-BRA ‘multicultural’ retreats, where big black bucks act like John Wayne, instead of Rodney King. Utter Bullshit.

  18. “And, in such a scenario, Brutus’ myopia would be the first to go- “Yes, our problems are NOT technical, they are political.” No, they are RELIGIOUS. That’s why “Lutheran Socialist Service” imported both Buddhist Hmong to MN in the 1970?s, and Muslim Somalis in the 1990?s. That’s why the Catholic Bishops’ declare ‘sanctuary parishes’ for illegal meximidgets. ”

    I agree, the churches sanction of marxist ideology has given moral cover to the whole evil cabal. Like C.S. Lewis said, they torture us with a clear conscience.

  19. “It doesn’t mean California won’t devastate its own agriculture industry to protect the delta smelt minnow.”

    Indeed, they’re on their way, same with water rights for ranchers on the Klamath river in N. Cal/S Or (all about saving salmon runs and killing power generation in the process). The greenies have gone the lawfare route for 25 or years now in the west. All because a majority of the land is owned by the feds or the states and many state lands are managed by the feds.

    Rural counties are going broke because of spotted owl nonsense or smelt etc. and the liberals in the cities blame the “tea party rednecks” for not raising taxes or diversifying their economies. How can they, the liberal gov. regulates everything. Bend, Oregon went from a sun/ski party town for rich CA hollywood types to broke with no other industry after the bubble. They get Facebook to build a datacenter of all things there last year. Just after it gets started, the liberal state gov comes in and demands more taxes from Facebook.

    I have no sympathy for any of the DWL anymore.

  20. I agree with you Fr. John, Christianity is the root of our problems. Are you seeking any kind of treatment now to get over your own Jewish Christinsanity addiction and onto the road to recovery?

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