This town in the Finger Lakes region is not the kind of place where one would expect a grass-roots uprising. Even its promotional brochure makes it sound sleepy, listing the main attractions as “a few large dairy farms, some crop farms and several horse ranches.”

A voluminous file of public comments shows how high the stakes are for President Barack Obama's Interior Department as it prepares to decide the fate of proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal lands.

Mr. Obama, who has said he supports greater production of natural gas along with environmental protections, is navigating between industry groups that oppose any federal regulation of fracking and some environmental groups that want to ban the practice.

Celebrities are now upset about fracking, the injection of chemicals into the ground to crack rocks to release oil and gas. With everyone saying they want alternatives to foreign oil, I'd think celebrities would love fracking.

Natural gas may have reshaped the domestic energy market in 2012, lowering energy prices and marginalizing the coal industry, but America's shale boom hasn't undermined renewables.

In fact, while analysts were paying attention to fracking this year, a record number of solar panels were being slapped on roofs — enough to produce 3.2 gigawatts of electricity.

That sounds like a lot, but solar is still providing just .05 percent