Yeah, cool - California is too dangerous. Just bring it here to Virginia, and its jobs with it. We're not all a bunch of cowardly environmental alarmists hiding under the bed from the dust and such. If there's a hurricane, we'll rebuild it. If there's an earthquake, we'll rebuild it. If it leaks something, we'll clean it up. And we will relax, 'cuz we know in the end everything will be alright.

We can kill people with environomental contamination, or we can kill people by casting them into poverty because there are no jobs, said jobs being overseas, or in another state, or simply not existing anywhere. What's worse? I mean, people die, either way. People in poverty die about 6.5 years before they otherwise would. We have about 47 million in poverty, so that's a lot of "death" out there and a lot of the reason for the poverty is the environmental obstructions to industry.

The environmental extremists need to realize that they're not saving anyone, really.

Especially important when the objective is to mine billions of dollars of natural resources out of an asteroid...

And then it'll be too expensive or too heavy or too bulky or too whatever to use in electric cars, which is where we really need it.

And its really 20 years away, don'tcha know?

Yet another story about a 3X or 10X or whateverX improvement on Li-Ion batteries that will never, ever get out of the lab. or if it does, will be too delicate or too slow or too expensive or too whatever to use in electric cars.

If we ever do get the electric car, then we only have to start work on the 86 or so nuke power plants of the same size as the one at Palo Verde, Az, our largest, in order to completely replace petroleum and leave the oil in the ground. Of course, the sad thing there is going back to propellers, connected to electric motors, 'cuz there's no electric substituted for a jet engine.

But of course we can't build even 1 nuke because of the envirowackos, so until they get the H out of the way, we might as well continue drilling...

Wanna fix it? Pass the Fair Tax. The Fair Tax eliminates the income taxes and the IRS, both good things, but also institutes a sales tax on new retail items and services for sale. It has a mechanism called the "prebate" that pays each citizen enough money to pay the Fair Tax on the basic living expenses of someone making money at the poverty level. Every citizen from your favorite street person all the way up to Bill Gates gets this prebate.

Significantly, non-citizens, such as these foreigners working here, DO NOT get the prebate. That means that they will not get the monthly payment from the gov't to defray the cost of the Fair Tax for spending up to the poverty level. That means that if they want to send our dollars back to the old country, they're going to have to do it without help from us. That will make them demand more $$$ from employers here, and make the playing field a bit more level. No more taking American jobs just because you're sole claim to fame is being willing to work for peanuts.

Such policies have raised 250,000,000 people out of poverty in India and 400,000,000 people out of poverty in China. Yes, they do work. They're just not working here because they've been taxed and regulated out of the country.

Liberalism is the ideology of envy, resentment, hatred, and self hate - which you demonstrate by your "asshat company's pursuit of profits" phrase. In reality, that pursuit of profits is repeated on a personal level for every one of us. But with the company operating nearby, many local people's pursuit of profits, to get or keep themselves out of poverty, works better than if the company is NOT nearby.

They're likely to start fracking in this area. I say bring it on. If there's a minor earthquake and something cracks or moves, or maybe one of my trophies falls off a shelf and breaks, well, that's what I have insurance for...

The "ground water contamination" is, if you look at the article, from METHANE, where some water wells have had methane for decades. Its not a big deal, you can drink water with methane in it, and you only need a simple construction to vent off the dissolved gas so that it doesn't accumulate in the house and blow something up.

Methane in drinking water occurs naturally, and as a result of coal mining operations, and sometimes any sort of drilling, with or without fracking. The whole thing is yet another "Lets tear America down" pack of lies, and the sooner we buck up and quit being scared of the boogey men that are peddling this nonsense, the better off we'll all be.

You got it - these people that attack any economic activity at all are enemies of the country. Hang 'em from the lamp posts, I say. They will all have us crawling around with sub-poverty income if we let them make us afraid of absolutely everything that involves turning a wrench or drilling a hole...

The politics of jealousy once again, as someone is upset that a CEO somewhere is getting >1M in salary, but fail to realize that the "industry profits" go to making more and more industry, which employs more and more people, sometimes in some fairly good jobs if there's competition locally to make labor scarce. Go to the Bakken and get a job in the oil fields, and make 6 figures while making an oil drilling rig go or driving a truck. "Industry profits', and only industry profits can bring back prosperity to America. The gov't can't do it, other than getting the H out of the way of industry so that THEY can do it. The gov't doesn't create wealth, industry does that. There's only 3 ways of creating wealth - wealth being something tangible that you didn't have before - and they are mining, manufacturing, and agriculture. Drilling is mining. We should be trying to get MORE of these 3 things into the USA, not less. And if there's a price to pay, then get on with it and build your buildings to withstand the "minor" earthquakes that sometimes occur, and buy insurance.

Fracking causes "minor" earthquakes, quarrying produces local ground shaking, and you're getting jobs and economic prosperity back in return. Suck it up, cupcake, or otherwise they'll start putting up a bunch of regulations that will stop the whole thing, and then we can all go to the poor house together 'cuz there won't be ANYTHING in the country that someone can't yowl about and get stopped.

Poverty causes death, plain and simple. Kill another industry, and you're killing people, plain and simple. Right now, 1/6th of the USA struggles with hunger. Some don't survive it, 'cuz if they don't starve to death, then they get sick, can't afford doctors, and die that way. Good grief, this is supposed to be the "Land of Plenty" but we've driven jobs out of the country with income taxes that make industry unprofitable and now we want to regulate the rest of the industry that can't be shipped to China into inactivity as well.

Starve, then. I've got mine - retired with a lifetime $$$ stream, but you're making the USA a worse place to live if you go around making everything more expensive or impossible to do inside our borders.

I have a hobby that requires travel around the USA, and I've finally sworn off airplane travel due to gov't abuses such as x-raying passengers and groping passengers. They can all go take a flying F, I'm driving... That puts miles on the car. The rest of the year will see trips from Virginia to Indianapolis, La Crosse, Chattanooga, and a 3-week trip visiting Los Angeles, then Kansas, then Tucson. Lots of driving. Love driving long distances, too. Won the 1987 1-Lap of America, 9,000 miles in 10 days. That was awesome.

"I get around" - The Beach Boys

Its a big country. We end up driving 100's of 1000's of miles in a relatively short time. I've owned my 2012 Subaru WRX for about 27 months. Its got 87,000 miles on it. It burns premium, and premium is pricey at around $3.75 / gallon. Yeah, that's not much compared to Europe, but Europe is smaller than the USA and their compactness also allows for cheaper public transport so they don't have to drive so much. Passenger railways can actually make money there, whereas they mostly lose money here unless you're talking about the Northeast Corridor and some of California. Rocketing across the great plains where population density is extremely low means no riders wish to get on or off there, so a train making that trip will probably not be able to get enough money in fares to operate.

CO2 isn't a pollutant. It is a made-up scarecrow by the left who want to use the issue to acquire political power.