A battleground, again

We won’t be Ground Zero this time, but Wisconsin is again becoming a national battleground.

The new battle is over “fracking,” or hydraulic fracturing, the drilling technique that makes it possible to envision low-cost natural gas supplies that could last more than a century and feed economic growth like nothing in recent memory.

In the eyes of the environmental community, that’s bad.

Wisconsin doesn’t’t have natural gas to go fracking for, but we do have something that helps make fracking work: round-grained silica sand that drillers use in the process of cracking open rock formations to get at the gas.

We have heard credibly-sourced stories of Western Wisconsin landowners sweating out how to finance their retirement one day, and the next day selling the sand-mining rights to their property for a modest fortune.

That too is bad, according to the environmental community. They say sand-mining means air pollution and frightful health hazards they’re pretty sure must be lurking out there somewhere.

We’We’ve been mining sand in Western Wisconsin for years. Yet the environmental community couldn’t’t buy a headline until it became apparent that Wisconsin’s sand is a key to an energy future with no need for reliance on half-baked science fair projects that work one day in four, kill birds and scar the landscape.

Make no mistake, the greens favor energy alternatives only so long as you have no alternative but to buy the junk they’re selling.

Last winter Wisconsin became the nation’s battleground because Left-wing union bosses saw elected Republicans breaking up their racket. Now we’re becoming a battleground because Left-wing greens see the demon private enterprise breaking up their racket.

Is there a pattern here?