[Dr. Scott W. Tinker] Fracking has opened up huge new supplies of natural gas in the U.S. The most apparent benefits for economic. Studies show that unconventional oil and gas have created more than 1 million jobs, and now add over 100 billion dollars to the U.S. economy each year. These numbers are expected to more than double in the next 20 years. The impacts of bringing an industrial process into rural areas are very real. These include increased truck traffic, noise from drilling and fracking, and environmental challenges we'll discuss in another lab. But the local economic benefits are very significant. Less expected, is that high supplies of natural gas have caused the price to fall from nine dollars to as low as three dollars in the U.S., and are expected to remain low for quite some time. High supply and low price have many industries switching from other forms of energy to natural gas. We're seeing this more and more in transportation, with buses, delivery fleets, taxis, and soon 18 wheelers, running on natural gas. Since the emissions of burning natural gas we know are just CO2 and water vapor, this has reduced pollution in cities compared to burning diesel or gasoline. Of even greater impact, electricity generation in the U.S. is switching away from coal. We're running existing natural gas plants more since the fuel is cheaper, and new power plants being built are almost exclusively natural gas. We'll talk more about coal later, but one of its downsides is high emissions. SOx, NOx, ash, and mercury. Natural gas produces almost none of these and it greatly reduces local air pollution. Natural gas produces about half the CO2 of coal as well. In fact, since 2005 CO2 emissions have fallen over ten percent in the U.S., down to 1992 levels. It's the greatest drop of any major economy in the world and it's mostly due to replacing coal with natural gas, along with increased renewables and decreased electricity demand by moving manufacturing overseas. This has contributed to rising CO2 emissions particularly from China and India, as they're burning more coal to develop their economies. But there are shale gas resources all over the world and fracking may release new supplies in these areas too, which could prompt the move away from coal which could reduce CO2 levels globally. Of course, like everything in life, no benefits come without challenges, and there have been environmental concerns with fracking. We'll talk about those next.