Ronald Bailey on the Promised Land of Fracking

Matt Damon's new film Promised Land is stoking the controversy over fracking, the shorthand for natural gas production using hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey argues that the movie sets up a false dichotomy between rural purity and virtuous poverty on the one hand and industrial degradation and rapacious greed on the other. Fracking poses some risks, Bailey writes, but the evidence suggests they can be effectively managed in such a way that the environmental and economic benefits greatly outweigh the costs.