title:  WATCH: River Set On Fire Thanks To Fracking
text: Thanks to the quest for natural gas power through fracking, an Australian river has become polluted enough that it can be set on fire. Dramatic video of what happened was captured by activists and published online:https://www.facebook.com/RTvids/videos/1201457439864507/A Queensland river near a fracking site exploded into flames after a coal seam gas (CSG) protester sparked a kitchen lighter above the water surface.Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham uploaded dramatic footage of the river ablaze to his website and social media accounts to highlight his party s concerns about fracking and the extraction of coal seam gas.The video shows the New South Wales Greens MP ignite the fire on the Condamine river and then jump up in shock, exclaiming:  Holy f***! Unbelievable   a river on fire! The video echoes other viral videos in the past that have shown that the gases released by fracking have sometimes leaked into the traditional water supply, and allowed similar experiments where water coming into homes has been set on fire as well.Fracking has also been linked to increased earthquake activity, and as a result it has been banned in several U.S. states, sometimes completely or pending further study of the technology.Some have called for a complete ban on the practice, while others have called for a slowdown in its use. Fracking has been credited with contributing to the lower price of oil and gas in the last few years, but like every other energy extraction technology used on a mass scale, it has an environmental downside.The only energy technologies without the serious problems of fracking or traditional oil drilling are green technologies like solar or wind power, but to date they are incapable of generating the kind of power output needed to fully displace the traditional sources of energy. The Obama administration has tried to incentivize the creation of  green tech,  but has been opposed by Republicans who take in the bulk of donations from the fossil fuel industry (who also fund an enormous amount of anti-green propaganda).Featured image via Facebook