Manhattanite Obsessed with His Expresso Observes the Lives of Pennsylvania's Rural Residents and Can't Quite Grasp It All

Guest post by Jim Willis of Marcellus Drilling News.

This is fascinating. A leftist researcher rented an apartment and lived in Williamsport for eight months in 2013. He interviewed over 100 residents of Greater Williamsport (Lycoming County), PA, to learn their views on fracking. He followed up with the participants and made return visits to the region for the next eight years until 2021. The researcher was looking for any wedge issues that he (and the left) could use to convince PA’s salt-of-the-earth, very conservative landowners/voters to turn against the shale industry. Did he find anything he could use? The results of his research were published yesterday as a study in the journal Nature Climate Action.

An abstract of the study begins this way:

Research shows that conservatives support fossil fuel extraction and distrust regulation. Yet scholarship overlooks where environmentalist and conservative interests may align—a question I explore through studying a rural, white, and conservative Pennsylvania community where many leased their land for shale gas drilling (fracking). Landowners endorsed fracking and discredited state regulators and environmentalists.*

The leftist interviewed people who lived in rural areas, who were white and conservative. He interviewed people that the left (like Hillary Clinton) called “…bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” The researcher was there to analyze these strange, conservative, rural white creatures like a scientist observes animals in a zoo.

What Manhattanites think rural life is like?

So, did he find an issue he could use to divide landowners from drillers? He thinks so:

Eventually, however, many became troubled by how their land sovereignty and community “home rule” were eroded by petroleum companies and state zoning preemption laws. Though few rejected fracking outright, most believed their town should be allowed to manage the industry’s footprint. Although climate advocates increasingly view local sovereignty as enabling NIMBYism that stymies climate action, communities often experience state-led energy siting policies as a procedural injustice. Regarding fracking, community empowerment would abet climate action by enabling municipal checks on industrial expansion. Environmentalists could forge alliances with rural, conservative towns by supporting greater local democratic decision-making over fracking.*

We would argue that municipalities already have leeway to control drilling (to some degree) through the use of zoning regulations. Look, there’s always a balancing act. Local municipalities cannot and should not have the right to ban shale drilling outright. However, shale drillers cannot and should not have carte blanche to drill anywhere and everywhere and at any time they want. It seems to us that PA has found a way to balance both interests and do it effectively.

Are there instances where drillers have gone too far or overstepped? Sure, there are. But so, too, are there instances when local municipalities (egged on by Big Money from Big Green) have gone too far in limiting drilling activity.

Although the researcher had ulterior motives with his research (“find a wedge issue the left can use”), the research itself is very interesting, which is why we bring you the study (below).

We appreciate the efforts of the other side in attempting to understand those who support shale drilling. Unfortunately, this is all too rare. In today’s toxic political climate, the left is attempting to make speech they don’t agree with outlawed. Do you disagree with so-called accepted climate science? You’re a “denier,” and increasingly your opinions are outlawed (MDN is routinely blocked on Facebook and can no longer used paid advertisements on Facebook). Do you dare to call a politician on the left insane or a wacko for their extreme views? You’re now engaging in “hate speech” and must be banned. In some cases, the left is attempting to criminalize the oil and gas industry and the companies that work in them. It’s really quite remarkable what has happened in just the past few years under the Biden-Harris administration.

At any rate, here is a study where a leftist visited a conservative area that supports fracking and what he found.

Editor’s Note: I’m a bit more critical of this study than Jim. The author is a committed fractivist and Jim wrote about him here, and on his own site, of course. Here is what I observed about Colin Jerolmack then:

There is nothing quite so annoying as a Manhattanite oozing condescension for anyone west of the Hudson. It’s quite fascinating, also, how Jerolmack inherently grasped this at some level based on his conversations with the refreshingly honest Tom Crawley. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to abandon his political correctness, to avoid slanting the story or to quit using terms such as “losers” to describe residents. He only viewed Tom Crawley as a subject to be studied in a “What’s the Matter with Kansas” sort of analysis of why others did not share his self-evidently superior values. It reeks, just like this video Jerolmack made of himself about what else but his expresso machine and what he considers “just mean.”

How much more Manhattanite can you get?

Let me also note, in regard to his current report from Williamsport, that he essentially makes an argument for supporting the absolutely extremist CELDF, which has been preaching what can only be described as communism and which has been overturned and/or sanctioned by court after court, yet he makes no mention of that feature.

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