How Can The French Achieve This? Court Rules No Fracking in France

France Cements Fracking Ban is the headline from the Guardian. Because of pressure from environmental groups, the French passed legislation banning fracking in 2011. Today’s headline is in reference to France’s Constitutional Court, their version of a Supreme Court, which ruled that the ban is constitutional; after this court ruling the fracking ban is, without a doubt, the law of the land in France.

How is it that the French can ban fracking, while here there seems to be no question that such a ban would be an impossibility? France seems to do a lot of things right. While that country has one of the best heath care systems in the world, we here in America have a paralyzed government because our Affordable Care Act, a system that, while it is an improvement, is not as good as what French residents enjoy. France didn’t go and invade Iraq with us. They are probably better off for it, too.

More and more, due to increasing evidence (here and here) I’ve grown suspicious of hydrolic fracturing's effects on the environment, people’s health, and even our public policy and politics (here, here, here, here, and here),  and perhaps it should be banned here in the U.S. France has powerful oil companies that can lobby the French Parliamentarians, yet that power was unable to influence this fracking ban. What is different about France that their system of government can, in my opinion, serve the public good? How do they do it?