On October 19 demonstrators gathered in 26 countries around the world for ‘The Global Frackdown’: a worldwide protest to condemn the practice of oil and gas drilling by hydraulic fracturing, a process more commonly known as fracking. Fracking is currently responsible for a global boom in the energy sector that is driving gas and utility prices down across the board and providing a rare bright spot in a world economy that is currently undergoing a drawn-out recession.

Fracking shoots a high pressure mixture of water, sand, and a minute amount of chemicals into the ground to crack shale rock formations that hold oil and gas. Multitudes of misguided environmentalists claim fracking is disrupting the environment and poisoning groundwater; therefore, their protest rallies have become even more common and larger since the onset of widespread industrial fracking for oil and gas in the early 2000’s.

While some countries and states have listened to the self titled ‘fracktivists’ and banned the practice of fracking outright, those who have embraced it reaped the benefits of strong economies and are taking part in a worldwide oil and gas boom––a boom that is proving to be extremely beneficial to workers and companies and, contrary to popular belief, minimally detrimental to their environments.

The state of North Dakota, in particular, has experienced the biggest reward of all. With the discovery of fracking in the early 2000’s the Bakken shale field, which was previously considered inaccessible, became available for drilling. Since then, average wage in North Dakota has risen to the 20th highest in the country, over 2,000 millionaires have been created, and state unemployment has plunged to 3%, well below the national average of 7.2%.

The benefits from fracking have reached beyond those directly involved in the oil boom as well. Local McDonalds restaurants in North Dakota have started offering wages far above the legally mandated minimum of $7.25, in the range of $10 to $15, with a signing bonus of $300. Other businesses, and the energy companies themselves, are raising average wages and drawing workers from every part of America. In one year, an oil field worker in the Bakken Range in North Dakota could bring in as much as $100,000, a salary unheard of in most manual labor jobs.

Environmentalists often cite fracking as one of the biggest environmental dangers of our time, akin to man-made climate change. They purport that fracking contaminates ground water near wells with harmful chemicals and natural gas. Despite assurances to the contrary by legitimate government sources such as the Department of Energy and the EPA,  these activists are blinded by the propaganda created by celebrity anti-fracking leaders such as Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, and legions of other Hollywood actors who claim to know for a fact that fracking poisons the environment in indescribable horrible ways. A closer look will reveal that the most prominent members of the celebrity anti-fracking movement are all conspicuously lacking degrees in geology, ecology, or any of the environmental sciences that they claim mastery of, yet are all heavily invested in the green energy sector that stands to lose the most from the easy, clean, resources obtained from fracking.

In the most cited example of contamination, tap water is lit on fire, supposedly from natural gas contamination. It sounds terribly frightening and dangerous and makes one want to stop fracking immediately, regardless of the cost. Videos showcasing these explosive faucets are relatively common on the internet, but in reality, studies have proved flammable tap water would only be a result of a poorly drilled water well that reaches into a underground pockets of gas. The flammable gas the tap water is from naturally occurring underground methane pockets, not natural gas or oil, which are the express goals of fracked wells.

Fracking water is 95% water, 4.5% sand or ceramic powder, and .5% chemicals used to alter the water to fracture the shale. The chemicals in the .5% of fracking fluid that protesters claim are dangerous are all approved by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. The EPA, partly because of the huge number of protesters, enforce the strictest regulations legally possible. If harmful chemicals somehow made their way past the EPA’s regulations and found their way into the water table, water filters in public water facilities and properly drilled private wells would eliminate the miniscule chemical danger. Lisa Jackson, an EPA administrator, admitted during a congressional hearing that there have been no cases proving that the fracking process has affected groundwater.

In a modern world swept up with going green and making sure our environmental footprint on the world is as small as possible, it seems logical to believe that environmentalists would be quick to embrace the idea of a cleaner, more obtainable energy source while simultaneously providing the biggest economical boost the the American economy since the internet boom of the late 90’s. But, in reality, they’d much rather ignore the myriad economic benefits of fracking and invest billions of dollars into the unattainable dream of a world powered by solar, wind, and biofuels—a dream that has no place in a world with fracking.