For Fracking:

China has recently committed to reducing carbon emissions and

peaking by 2030 at the APEC conferences, how are they supposed to
reach these targets without looking at alternative, clean resources.
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For an equivalent amount of heat, burning natural gas produces

about 30 per cent less carbon dioxide than burning petroleum
and about 45 per cent less than burning coal.
- Burning natural gas is cleaner than oil or gasoline, and it emits
half as much carbon dioxide, less than one-third the nitrogen
oxides, and 1 percent as much sulfur oxides as coal combustion.

Against Fracking:
Sinopec Primary energy source, growing pie problem
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But not all shale gas makes it to the fuel tank or power plant. The
methane that escapes during the drilling process, and later as
the fuel is shipped via pipelines, is a significant greenhouse gas.
At least one scientist, Robert Howarth at Cornell University, has
calculated that methane losses could be as high as 8 percent.

Nationwide, there are only about 3500 service stations (out of

120,000) that offer natural gasbased automotive fuel, and it
would cost billions of dollars and take years to develop sufficient
infrastructure to make that fuel competitive with gasoline or
diesel

On China, In the wake of the accident, an official from the

Ministry of Environmental Protection said, "The areas where shale
gas is abundant in China are already ecologically fragile,
crowded, and have sensitive groundwater. The impact cannot yet
be estimated."

Fracking is a suspect in polluted drinking water in Arkansas,

Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and
Wyoming, where residents have reported changes in water
quality or quantity following fracturing operations.

Unlike what happened in the United States, the Energy Information

Administration's future projections of China's energy demand suggest that
in 2040, coal will continue to dominate while natural gas, even
with a golden era, will fuel only 8 percent of demand. "The
whole pie is growing so rapidly that you still see a very carbon-intensive
mix," says Rachel Cleetus, a senior economist at the Union of Concerned
Scientists.

On China:
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Focus turned to shale gas in 2009, when President Obama and

then-President Hu Jintao announced an agreementto develop
China's immense resources. The partnership set the stage for
companies in both countries to forge deals worth tens of billions
of dollars.
Scientists wrote in the medical journal The Lancet that ambient
particulate matter, generated mostly by cars and the
country's 3,000 coal-fired power plants, killed 1.2 million Chinese
people in 2010.

By current estimates from the U.S. Energy Information

Administration, China's shale-gas resources are the largest in the
world, 1.7 times those in the United States.

shale-gas production has been up to 40 percent cheaperand

geopolitically more desirablethan importing gas in China.

In China's early wells, wastewater is often dumped directly into streams

and rivers. If frackingmost of which takes place in China's breadbasket
contaminates water or soil, Tian argues, it could jeopardize the nation's
food supply. In a seismically active area like Sichuan, leaks are a major
concern: Even a small earthquakewhich, emerging evidence suggests,
wastewater injection could triggermight compromise a well's anti-leak
system, causing more pollution. In the past year alone, more than 30
earthquakes were recorded in the Sichuan area.

In the US:
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