What we know as modern “hydraulic fracturing” has only existed for roughly 15 years. The horizontal length of wells can now exceed several kilometres, and average water usage is now 30 times greater than 15 years ago. Extraordinarily high pressures must be used to inject many millions of litres of water and tens of thousands of litres of toxic chemicals, along with tons of sand, to fracture the shale. This also creates many millions of litres of toxic wastewater for which there is no safe means of disposal beyond pumping them back underground under pressure – a process that has caused widespread earthquakes.