Echoing President Barack Obama’s recent statements, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar hosted a forum in D.C. this week to discuss the important role natural gas stands to play in America’s energy future. At the exact same time the meeting’s participants were detailing the economic and environmental advantages of cultivating this vast resource, the New York State Assembly was voting to ban the drilling process to extract gas until at least May 2011. These two events illustrate a growing political divide in what should otherwise be a straightforward issue.

Much of this wedge is being driven by activists who oppose all fossil fuels and lobbyists for other energy sources eager to make natural gas less competitive. The situation suggests that this fight is about politics and money rather than consumer safety, as natural gas opponents claim. In fact, the EPA declared the hydraulic fracturing drilling process safe as recently as 2004.

You see, this is not a debate about whether to use hydraulic fracturing instead of an alternative process. No viable alternative exists.

Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” as it’s more commonly known, is the process necessary to liberate gas deposits from pockets of shale rock formations thousands of feet below the earth’s surface.

Despite millions of well treatments throughout the world for more than 60 years and despite the extensive body of evidence and an impressive track record supporting fracking, some lawmakers and regulators are being swayed by overblown propaganda when making multibillion-dollar infrastructure decisions about powering our economy. It must be made abundantly clear that natural gas from the type of reservoirs we have in the United States cannot be produced economically without these well stimulation activities: no fracking, no gas production. There should be no doubt about that.

In the Northeast, the massive Marcellus Shale offers enough natural gas to fuel the U.S. for over a decade. Pennsylvania has previously embraced the industry and allowed drilling, and the relationship has proved mutually beneficial. Reports estimate that development of gas in the state led to the creation of 44,000 jobs, and paid $339 million in state and local taxes in 2009 alone. Across the entire country, this industry pumps over $300 billion into the economy. And the benefits go far beyond those directly observable by production.

The energy source was even a hot topic at last year’s U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen where environmentalists touted its low emissions relative to other traditional fuels. One year later, President Obama is now advocating an expanded role for the “terrific natural gas resources in this country” as part of his efforts to address climate change. And major green groups like the Environmental Defense Fund have begun collaborating with industry leaders to educate the public about the various benefits of this fuel. Though all of these strange bedfellows mark a rare confluence of support, some regulatory entities are reopening the books on hydraulic fracturing and regional lawmakers in New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Colorado are gunning for it.

This proves the theory that an organized minority, no matter how small, time and again has the advantage over an unorganized majority. Concerns over hydraulic fracturing stem from a handful of isolated incidents of water contamination due to individuals’ failure to employ the best practices, not to a fault of the fracking process itself; yet, reading email blasts from the Natural Resources Defense Council you would think that every one of the over a million U.S. wells which used hydraulic fracturing is inherently dangerous. In reality, the biggest threat to consumer welfare is the toxic amount of misinformation.