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Notes -
I was going to go with my usual "this complaint is bullshit and proves that you have no idea how oil wells work" response -- but of course this being the Motte I am morally compelled to RTFA!
And I'm so glad I did -- they've constructed a marvelous motte:
So the bailey on this complaint is usually something like "fracking formations several thousands of meters underground which are capped by impermeable layers (a big part of the reason they contain hydrocarbons!) somehow bleeds up into groundwater aquifers that are more like hundreds of feet -- I'll grant that there probably sometime in history exists a case where a casing/cement failure resulted in direct groundwater contamination from a fracking operation, but it's very much in the best interests of the drilling crew to avoid this so it's certainly very rare; by no means a "cost of doing business" for the process.
There never was much of a motte, but now (!) a researcher finds some badly built settling ponds leaching into the groundwater! The bad (?) news is that this is by no means inherent to the process either, and probably a major EPA violation -- modern operations line their pits with EPDM, on pain of prosecution.
So yeah -- contaminating groundwater is bad! The thing is, lots of industries have instances where people occasionally get sloppy and contaminate soil/groundwater! Oil & Gas is pretty good on the whole -- they make so much money they can afford to do stuff like lay down plastic over the entire drilling lease before moving any equipment on there! And test the soil once they are done, trucking any that's been contaminated away for treatment! This is completely routine in the industry! They still make shitloads of money, even on relatively expensive shale gas projects!
So the point is, that "seeing it fuck up drinking water and wells in the region, and ... sacrificing a bunch of perfectly usable farmland forever (or spending immense amounts of money and resources on cleanup/mitigation efforts) in exchange for some low EROEI fossil fuels" is totally not true -- if you think that, it's because you have been exposed to a toxic information environment.
The crucial question vis a vis the discussion at hand is this: would knowing what I've just told you (hypothetically; assume that I am someone who has worked on the ground in this industry and that you trust, instead of an anonymous rando on a forum full of weirdos) change your mind about shale gas being a bad idea -- or does your true objection lie elsewhere?
I think you may have chosen the wrong hypothetical - if you were someone who worked in that specific industry, I'd expect that even if you were utterly convinced of the truth of my position you'd continue to advocate for shale because you have a direct financial incentive to do so. But if I instead just assume that you're an expert with no conflicts of interest, then you would have to make a much more compelling case than that - I'd expect a full on report detailing all the potential environmental concerns, how they're addressed, in-depth EROEI calculations, long-term evaluations, profitability, etc. My true objection does lie elsewhere in the sense that this one specific instance of environmental damage isn't the sole motivating factor behind my position, but I am absolutely amenable to changing my mind if you can effectively demonstrate that shale is sustainably profitable when all the externalities are taken into account and the accounting takes the current distortion of the financial system into consideration. I'm more than happy to refrain from arguing you on this one specific point and acknowledge almost everything you said as correct (I will reserve judgement on the "making shitloads of money" part), but that isn't actually enough to assuage the totality of my concerns.
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