Fracking Helps Poor More than Government Program

"No one is doing more to increase income inequality in America than the affluent environmentalists who oppose natural gas drilling" [i.e., fracking]. — Fracking and the Poor, Wall Street Journal

Fracking has so dramatically lowered the price of natural gas that it "shaved about $10 billion a year from the utility bills of poor families."

To put it another way, fracking is a much more effective antipoverty program than is Liheap [federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program]. In 2012, Liheap provided roughly $3.5 billion to about nine million low-income households to subsidize their home-heating costs. New drilling technologies saved poor households almost three times more. Low gas prices benefit nearly all poor households, while Liheap helps fewer than one in four.

You'd think that good liberal egalitarians would welcome these financial savings to poor households. Yet most green groups, in particular the Sierra Club, continue to oppose fracking and are using lawsuits and political lobbying to stop it. Rich Hollywood types like Matt Damon propagandize against it. No one is doing more to increase income inequality in America than the affluent environmentalists who oppose natural gas drilling.