With the possible exception of some staunch gambling opponents, most people would bet on a 400-to-1 favorite.
Those odds represent the upside of continued US shale development, says a group of Yale economics grads who set out in 2011 to quantify how much the nation was gaining from shale. “The Arithmetic of Shale” concludes that the benefits of developing shale gas plays exceed costs to the community by 400-to-1.
In other words, the enormous positive effects of unconventional drilling dramatically outweigh any possible problems. And that includes even the worst-case environmental scenario the authors themselves posed (more about that to follow).
