Be it resolved that hydraulic fracturing be banned from the USA

Though my opponent forfeited the last round, he did post some arguments to the comments. In the spirit of good debate, I'll post those arguments here and respond to them before launching into my rebuttals of the economic points. "Fracking does not actually decrease the water wuality much. Making the wells burn is an exaggeration. Wells have been leaking even before fracking. You can't blame fracking for every problem in extracting oil." Yes, quality wasn't great to begin with, and fracking isn't the only source of blame. But this point ignores my [1] and [2], and no, it's not an exaggeration. If you need a more dramatic presentation of it, there's plenty of video online of people lighting their tap water on fire. I've posted one. This also ignores the point I made about how we don't know what chemicals they're using because they're proprietary, look to my [3] and [4]. We also don't know the sites of ground water in order to avoid them, look to my [5], nor could we avoid them if we did, look to my [6] and [7]. "Quote:"First, any economic benefit is transient at best". Fracking is worth billions, and this is only "transient"? This large amount of energy has slowly reduced the growth of gas prices. Our economy is really helped." I'll get to those shortly. "Quote:"And second, the environmental and health harms are always going to outweigh due to the long-term impacts they create. Even billions of dollars are not worth a devastating earthquake and people poisoned by their own drinking water." Most of the environmental affects are greatly exxagerated. All problems of energy are being attributed to fracking. Other methods are worse, fracking is safer and has not contaminated many wells. In the few exceptions, it is because bad maintenance and quality. THere are not enough regulations and few accidents, but this does not mean that the process of hydrualic fracturing is detrimental. If you misidentify the problem, you misidentify the dolutions." Con provides no support for these assertions, nor are they responsive to my points. Yes, other methods are bad. That doesn't mean we should compound them with more bad methods. I've provided substantial reasons why this is harmful that go above and beyond current methods. Con ignores my points about earthquakes (my [6]), and more importantly, my points about how the regulations he's proposing can't fix any of the problems (my [7], [8], [9], [12] and [13]). ""many companies are simply abandoning renewable energy alternatives" Just because some people stop using renewable resources does not mean that fracking is to blame." No, low cost fossil fuels are to blame. And fracking provides that. Look to my [10] and [11]. "Also (adding on) is the burden of proof not on the affirmative? Affirmative is trying to ban a process already thought as accepted, and should therefore try to prove that it is more detrimental than beneficial. I may be wrong, but just asking" This is, in no way, responsive to my point on the Precautionary Principle. I've provided the better reasoning for who carries the burden in this debate. But I also think that I've fulfilled this burden by presenting definitive problems that cannot be fixed by regulation. Alright, with that, I'll provide some argumentation regarding economics. While I would first state that the Precautionary Principle denies that this is the most important outcome, as actual health harms and environmental damage should always outweigh, I'll also argue that the benefits are transient, and actually create more problems than they solve. Fracking has been shown to be a low sum game. Whether you're fracking for oil or gas, fracking only allows access to very small amounts of oil or gas trapped in the rock. Withdrawal of either fossil fuel will normally peak after just a few years, and then begin a rapid decline. Each new source, therefore, requires more fracking over a larger area, and often the movement of operations. This is true even of the Bakken shale in North Dakota that my opponent touts as a fantastic source.[14] So, why should we care? Well, for one, that increases the costs of fracking since you can't just make a well and sit there over a long period of time. But more importantly, it creates periods of huge economic booms followed by similarly huge economic busts. All we need to do here is look at Pennsylvania's Bradford County, a place where fracking companies saw quite a bit of theoretical benefit. They paid residents to frack under and near their homes, had new motels built and staffed in order to accommodate the massive influx of workers, and many of the businesses in town either expanded or, at the very least, acquired far more resources in order to field more customers. Then they left. Whether this was due to the difficulties involved in acquiring natural gas, the plunging cost of natural gas worldwide, or the need to plumb new sites hardly matters " the town was hit hard. Residents who depended upon the money from fracking companies won't receive it, motel owners will have to close down, and other businesses will suffer the effects of lost resources. The best you can say is that they have increased tourism, but even that should flag with time.[15] But hey, at least they got a short term boost, right? Not really. Not only does it do long term damage that can't be fixed, disfiguring the landscape, as it has done in North Dakota,[16] but the damage is happening now in Texas towns. The water required for fracking is tremendous, and they tend to get it from the area itself. That leaves the ground dry, and many of the operations that require water parched. Agriculture suffers, as do cattle ranchers and the people at large, who now have to pay more to get their water.[17] Just like the boomtowns that resulted from oil extraction, these are leaving towns behind that are shells of their former selves. States that are enabled by their natural gas resources are still low in their Human Development Index ratings, which means the people there aren't seeing the benefits, even in the short term.[18] They remain among the poorest in the country. And that's during the boom. The bust, however, is inevitable, as I stated above. And that's not to mention that there's even more dramatic environmental harms as a result of this abandonment of wells. Methane leaks are a huge issue from abandoned wells in Pennsylvania, creating dangers of explosion.[19] That methane is contaminating drinking water across the country, along with millions of gallons of wastewater.[20, 21] Recycling that wastewater would be good regulation, but far from perfect, as many of these methods leave behind salt, sludge, radioactive material, and carcinogens, not to mention that disposal is still a question following reuse.[22] The health risks have been elucidated both for humans and animals near drilling sites, and they're pervasive, affecting nearly every tissue.[23] The lack of disclosure and access that I mentioned earlier, however, prevent full testing, so these may simply be the tip of the iceberg. I'll hand the debate back to Con. 14. http://www.climatecentral.org... 15. http://articles.philly.com... 16. http://www2.ljworld.com... 17. http://www.theguardian.com... 18. http://motherboard.vice.com... 19. http://stateimpact.npr.org... 20. http://www.pnas.org... 21. http://www.nytimes.com... 22. http://www.nytimes.com... 23. http://www.psehealthyenergy.org...