Cultural Analysis of "More Views on the Gas Rush and Hydraulic Fracking"

In this blog post, I will be focusing and analyzing "More Views on the Gas Rush and Hydraulic Fracking" in a cultural sense.

"Hydraulic Fracturing". 1/14/07 via Wikipedia. Public Domain License.

Cultural Key Words: fracking; health/safety; contamination; environment
These key words are essential to what the controversy is all about. Is fracking the cause for water contamination? Is fracking putting the health and safety of average citizens living in places such as New York or Pennsylvania at risk? How are people's daily lives affected? How is the environment affected? These questions are what people's concerns are when it comes to hydraulic fracking.

Readers could be more likely to care about this issue when these values are brought up because it extends beyond simple gas company projects. It makes the issue a lot more real when average people are affected; they didn't ask for companies to begin these projects. They just chose to live in a place where fracking is possible.

Basic Thesis: The author of this article, Andrew C. Revkin, believes himself that fracking should not be stopped in cities such as New York because the overall benefits of having affordable gas outweigh the risks associated with the process. He offers two points of view from different people on the fracking controversy.
One of them believes there should be government regulations on fracking because it has the risk of letting natural gas flow underground into water supplies and contaminate them, therefore the government can't just ignore what's going on.
The other shared stories of fatalities in rural Pennsylvania to get the point across that fracking is extremely dangerous if not done properly and safely, so the huge oil/natural gas companies behind all of this need to stop and think about the effect this process has on the environment.