In Nevada today, a coalition of fringe environmental groups is trying to scare the public into banning hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which is an essential technology for developing more than 90 percent of the nation’s oil and natural gas wells. This proven technology has the potential to unlock significant energy resources, create jobs and generate much-needed tax revenue in Nevada.

But leading the coalition to make sure this never happens is the Center for Biological Diversity, which claims to use “science, law and creative media to secure a future for all species.”

Without question, CBD’s operatives are experts in “creative media.” That much was clear from a recent CBD op-ed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which blamed the “scourge” of fracking for everything from cancer to violent crime to death. But CBD’s leaders don’t believe at all in science or the law. Just ask CBD Executive Director Kieran Suckling.

“The core talent of a successful environmental activist is not science and law,” Suckling told Colorado’s High Country News in 2009. “It’s campaigning instinct.” In the interview, Suckling actually bragged about his staff’s lack of scientific qualifications. “It was a key to our success,” Suckling said. “I’m more interested in hiring philosophers, linguists and poets.”

Read the rest of Energy In Depth’s op-ed in the Review-Journal here.