The EPA will announce the first federal rules against fracking. Curiously, the rules have nothing to do with the Clean Water Act, but seek to reduce the air pollution around fracking sites, also a serious concern, though much of the attention around the corrosive side effects of fracking has revolved around water contamination.

Evolutionarily it makes most sense to be most concerned about problems that are immediate and nearby as opposed to problems that are far away in time or space. This is a dynamic that people in the environmental movement need to deal with when trying to win public support.

I’m saving my “What to Look for in 2012″ listicle for tomorrow, but one of the issues that may not make the list, but which is terribly important, is the battle in the states over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. 2011 was the year when this issue finally bubbled up to the surface (pardon the pun) and into the consciousness of the public. The critically acclaimed Gasland came out in 2010, but anti-facking forces benefited this year from some scientific revelations. Independent studies for the first time identified fracking as a cause of methane contamination and water pollution, and late in the year, the EPA agreed in a case in Wyoming.

Studies show that the rules on smog and boiler regulation would prevent thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of asthma attacks. This delay is a death warrant for Americans – and it’s a deficit-buster, too, because cutting down on toxic pollution would save tens of billions of dollars in public health costs.

In a bit of inconvenient truth-telling, the Bush Administration proposed to deal with this through a cap-and-trade system, the very same kind of system that conservatives everywhere now decry as the stirrings of a socialist takeover. But the DC Circuit Court ruled that cap-and-trade system too lenient and not in line with the text of the Clean Air Act, which demands emission cuts of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. So now EPA developed new rules that should have massive economic and public health benefits.

For those of you who have not yet heard, there is problem here in the US Northeast not too different from the ANWR problem in Alaska. There is a formation of shale underground called the Marcellus Shale. This shale contains a tremendous amount of natural gas….

What does the Office of Management and Budget have to do with our health and our environment? Well, the OMB effectively has the last word on the regulations Federal agencies write to implement Federal Law. For decades, OMB’s been where proposed Federal rules to keep poison out of our lives meet lethal doses of deregulation.

When people hear “plug-in vehicle”, they think Chevy Volt or a Plug-in Prius, cars far coming to the market. We have an opportunity to spark a renaissance in public school transit, with manufacturing that can begin today (here in America), that will reduce the diesel used to get kids to school, reduce health risks from fossil-fuel pollution, and save money … What are we waiting for?

“Those who seek to demonize coal or eliminate its use are, quite honestly, disconnected from reality.” – Dominion Resources CEO Thomas F Farrell, II. I’d ask “what planet do you live on, Tom”, but really the question is: “What planet do you want my and your children to live in?”