Following the first years of furor over fracking for natural gas in this area, it seemed for a while that the conflagration had died down. In November of 2011, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) voted against approving fracking regulations, and since then there has been a moratorium on fracking in the Delaware River Basin while that body ponders how to proceed. In 2013, the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division affirmed the right of state towns to ban fracking via zoning. In the same year, New York declared a moratorium on fracking throughout the state while health impacts were studied. And in 2015, the resulting study was completed, recommending a ban that was duly implemented.

But even though these developments put the natural gas drilling issue in our area on the back burner for a while, a rising drumbeat of natural-gas-related controversies is giving us notice that the issue is returning through the back door.

First, there has been the explosion in pipeline construction and applications: e.g. the Tennessee Gas Pipeline traversing Wayne and Pike counties in Pennsylvania (with one upgrade completed and another still in the application phase); Columbia Pipeline’s East Side Expansion project, affecting Pike; and the recently proposed Linden Pipeline in Wayne County. Then, there are the compressor stations: compressors already constructed in Hancock and Minisink, NY, and expanded in Milford, PA. At least two homeowners have been chased from their properties by the compressor stations: one, in Hancock, was compensated for his loss; the other, abandoning a house near Minisink, was not. And more construction is proposed: an upgrade to the Hancock plant that expands capacity there by 200%; a new compressor proposed in Highland; rumors of a compressor plant on the Linden line.

We in this part of the world are scarcely alone. There are hundreds of communities all over the country and thousands all over the world that have suffered the impact of natural gas exploration, development and use, whether or not they host fracking. Scientists have recognized a correlation between a sharp increase in seismic activity and fracking wastewater injection wells in Oklahoma and seven other states. In the Midwest, moonscapes reminiscent of mountaintop removal are being created by frac-sand mining. (Frac sand is used as a proppant to hold open the fractures created by hydrofracking, and contains fine silica dust associated with serious health problems). At Porter Ranch in LA, thousands were evacuated due to a storage facility leak that vented 100,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere. And everywhere, the proliferation of the extensive system needed to distribute natural gas via pipelines and compressor stations is fragmenting habitat, felling trees, annexing private property via eminent domain and endangering human and animal health. That’s even before counting the global climate-change impact of methane emissions.

By the time you take into account this collateral footprint, natural gas may have the most geographically far-reaching impact of any energy source. It’s not just in our backyard anymore; it’s in everybody’s backyard.

And maybe, in a way, that’s a good thing. Because as long as a resource from which everyone benefits is only in a few backyards, complainers can be considered a bunch of crybabies who aren’t willing to make a sacrifice for the whole. But with such a huge swath of humanity affected, it’s time to start realizing we don’t want it in anybody’s backyard. And that “we” is getting to be a very big group of people.

We can’t stop using natural gas overnight. But we can phase it down, as long as we also move full bore to expand sustainable alternatives. And if you’re phasing down, you don’t expand capacity for fossil fuel systems, like the Wawayanda natural gas-powered electric plant being used to explain Millenium’s “need” for additional compressors. You don’t build LNG export facilities. You don’t convert to LNG-powered fleets. Instead, you push to develop alternative energy sources, like solar, which has already become cheaper than fossil fuels in some places. Convert the vehicle fleet not to LNG, but electric—given that electricity can be produced by renewable fuels rather than fossil fuels. And so on.

It’s time for government and industry to sit down together and work out a timetable for phasing out fossil fuel production and phasing in alternative sources. The explosion of pipeline and compressor station applications, and the push toward exporting, are steps in the opposite direction.

This is an election year, when politicians are more than usually sensitive to the voice of the grassroots. It’s time to press candidates on their positions on natural gas. So far, Bernie Sanders seems to be the only presidential candidate who opposes fracking, and he’s a long shot. But public clamor makes a difference: look at the way several major candidates have switched from favoring the grossly unpopular Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to opposing it. If all of us whose backyards are being decimated by the fossil fuel industry’s desperate last gasp speak loudly enough, candidates at all levels will have to sit up and pay heed.