When Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper testified before a congressional committee in February that he drank "fracking fluid" without experiencing any harm, I thought immediately about some of the products out there that really do cause harm.
Ironically, one of them comes from one of America's most vocal critics of the natural gas industry: Fort Collins-based New Belgium Brewing.
CEO Kim Jordan and her husband, Jeff Lebesch, have helped turn New Belgium into the seventh-largest brewer in the nation. Late last year, the company sponsored "Frack-Free-Colorado" protests, hosted "anti-frack" public gatherings, and contributed to community-based, anti-fracking campaigns.
One can appreciate their concern over the toxic effect and potential damage that over-exposure to certain liquids can cause to the human body.
Moderate-to-high levels of exposure to one of those liquids, for example, can lead to loss of memory, distorted vision, hypertension, stomach ulcers, paralysis of the nerves, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer of the respiratory and digestive system, liver disease and drunk driving.
Yes, I am referring to alcohol, the very fluid that New Belgium sells.
What could be New Belgium's motive for opposing hydraulic fracturing? Could it be that they are using it to their own corporate advantage?
Insight into their thinking can be found in a marketing case study analysis done by New Belgium's marketing strategist, the Cultural Strategy Group: "We ... looked for clues in our target's mass culture preferences to see if we could find the salves they were relying upon to mend their Bourgeois-Bohemian ache."
So New Belgium magnified their founder's environmental beliefs: Be hip, be green, and posture like crazy about love for the environment.
In the early days, as their market share was skyrocketing, New Belgium claimed to have "the first all-wind-powered brewery in the world," running on "100% renewable power."
Then, in a 2007 column in The Denver Post, Al Lewis wrote about company whistle-blower Eric Sutherland and New Belgium's green posturing. Lewis quoted Sutherland: "How did a company that makes a non-nutritious, highly processed agricultural product packaged in a disposable glass bottle become an icon of sustainability?"
Lewis reported that New Belgium doesn't just use electricity; it "burns natural gas — which is not produced in a wind turbine. The trucks that distribute the beer do not run on wind. The glass bottles — from an outside supplier — require more energy to make than the beer itself, much of it coming from fossil fuels. And most of these bottles likely end up in a landfill anyway."
Thanks to Sutherland, New Belgium had to "stop bragging that all of its energy comes from renewable resources," wrote Lewis.
New Belgium's hypocrisy is not surprising. Alcohol, not hydraulic fracture fluid, is one of the most lethal products in the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control, on an annual basis in the U.S., there are 80,000 deaths (2,000 underage), 10,000 traffic deaths, 1.2 million emergency room visits, and 50,000 cases of poisoning, all related to the abuse of alcohol.
The comparative deaths attributable to hydraulic fracturing? Zero. Nevertheless, the oil and gas industry is under siege, the target of campaigns based on half-truths and innuendo. For at least a dozen years the oil and gas industry has committed a sin of omission by not challenging the unsupportable claims of renewable energy advocates who have claimed "the moral high ground" on energy.
How should we respond? First, we applaud people like Hickenlooper who have the courage to stand on the side of reality. And as for Fat Tire and the myths surrounding it, well, in my household it has become impossible to swallow.
John Harpole is founder and president of Mercator Energy, a natural gas services, brokerage and research company.