The recent gas shale news in the United States has increased the available supply for oil in the country and the world. While this may be welcome news to some, environmentalists and other responsible citizens alike see this as the further stranglehold on oil dependence into the next milennia or so.
This may be an issue when it comes to electrics, as oil becomes cheaper in the long run.
There are massive reserves of shale oil around the world but it is more expensive to extract. Fracking is also another very interesting avenue for the oil industry.
Fracking is the new face of natural gas. Unfortunately it is travesty to the environment where it occurs. It uses millions of gallons of water to frack one well. All that water is contaminated with toxins, only half of the water used comes back up so the rest is down there seeping into the ground water we all drink. There are many cases of waterways decimated, animals dying, and wells destroyed. There are more than a few cases of people being able to light their water on fire as it comes out of the tap. There is also no government regulation on fracking so the industry can do what they please. They are exempt from the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund law, and about a dozen other environmental and Democratic regulations and they do not have to disclose the chemicals used. Watch the movie Gasland: A film by Josh Fox to see some of whats really going on.
The other big problem I have with EV’s is that until we find a clean safe way to produce the electric used to power our EV’s it is not anymore environmentally friendly than burning oil. Coal is a huge producer of electricity in the US and it is in no way “clean” electricity.