Without Question

Fron ExxonMobil's Perspectives blog:

For those who are following the debate in this country on shale gas development, as I am, today’s column by David Brooks in the New York Times is a must read.
In balanced terms, Brooks summarizes the future energy and economic potential of America’s enormous shale gas endowment – and the current debate surrounding its safe and responsible production.   The benefits of shale gas development in terms of economic growth, job creation and energy security are without question, as he points out.

It is true they are without question. No one actually has a different opinion. It is more of a obsessive-compulsive disorder, like when people obsess about clean air and water.

There are always benefits in anything, except that deal that Faust made with the devil. I might say it is without question that there are benefits. The question remains whether the benefits outweigh the deficits. Same thing with the Keystone pipeline: show me projections of what happens when the leaks we know will occur leak oil into the Ogalalla aquifer upon whose waters the agriculture of the Midwest depends.
--