This segment originally aired Jan. 17, 2016, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.
The economic recovery that President Obama oversaw came with some costs to the environment, most notably in the increase in oil and gas extraction on American land.
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Obama signed international climate deals, protected an unprecedented amount of federal land, nixed pipelines, and promoted renewable energy. But through it all, the fracking industry has been booming.
Employment in oil and gas extraction has increased 35 percent since 2009, and U.S. shale gas production nearly quadrupled between 2009 and 2015.
Fracking has been blamed for serial earthquakes in Oklahoma, and polluted groundwater from Wyoming to Pennsylvania, but it’s also played a big role in bringing the U.S. to near energy independence, a priority that both parties have been pushing for decades.