Clean Energy's New Dirty Word

How did fracking become the energy industry’s new f-word?

Oil companies have practiced hydraulic fracturing for decades, but it was the press surrounding Oscar-nominated documentary Gasland back in February that first exposed many Americans to the now-controversial natural gas-drilling process.

Just a few months later — thanks to a surge of investigative news reports, academic research papers and what CNNMoney’s Steve Hargreaves calls “a series of public relations missteps” — the fracking issue is hard to avoid.