Yes, for several reasons. What is fracking? The technical, or "correct" name for fracking is "hydraulic fracturing," and it's a method of obtaining gas. Here's a few reasons why it's bad.
To start with the process needs millions of gallons of water that could be put to better use. The water is transported to the fracking site and mixed with hundreds of chemicals, many of them poisonous. Then the mixture is sent down wells that have been made to reach down to shale rock formations until it creates enough pressure to fracture the rock, so that gas is released. The air can be polluted from methane, natural water supplies can be contaminated from the mixture used to create the fractures, and earthquakes can be caused from the fractured rock.
This is just a brief example of how bad this is. The other question is : why do we even need this way of obtaining energy? What about all the alternative methods for energy creation? That should probably be asked a lot more, because seeing as it's now 2013 and several alternative options look like they're worth pursuing, we seem to be stuck in some type of timewarp.
Why do we need to be so dependent on these insane methods? Oil, petrol and gas should be being phased out altogether, but instead we find that governments and corporations are just carrying on as normal. Well, why not try putting some real money into cleaner energies? Is it because the oil and gas barons have become so powerful that governments just get paid off to let things carry on as normal? How many patents and alternative options for energy have they bought up in order to keep things as they currently are? How much of the environment needs destroying until enough people take notice?
Going into alternative energies here will only draw away from the main point : fracking isn't good, and it can cause a lot of damage to the environment that leads to things like contaminated drinking water, contaminated air, and unstable ground that's prone to earthquakes. As a species, in the year 2013, if this is one of the best options we can come up with for a way of getting energy, maybe we should also start seriously thinking that Elvis is still alive and flying around the moon at night in a UFO. (yes, that sounds crazy, but that's the point, because the first part of the sentence does too.)
A great animation that explains the fracking process and the problems involved is here : What goes in and out of hydraulic fracturing
If you want to look further into this, here's some more links :
Another Bad Week for Fracking - Clean Technica
Hydraulic Fracturing FAQs - Gasland
Fracking debate draws Yoko, Lennon and Sarandon to rural battlegrounds - The Guardian
Fracking for shale gas gets green light in UK - The Guardian
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