I thought that, overall, Kamala Harris did well in the debate last evening. She needed to at least tie, and she did that, possibly better than that. That’s a good thing. But the main problem with what she said for me was these two sentences: “I will repeat and the American people know that Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact.”

I know why the Biden/Harris campaign has taken this position. It’s not because the US economy is dependent upon fracking for gas and oil to meet our energy needs. There are renewable alternatives, and a lot of the fracked gas and oil is intended for export overseas anyway to pad the bank accounts of fossil fuel industry executives and investors.

I think for the more centrist Democratic elected officials they have been supporters of fracking primarily to appeal to the construction and pipeline and related unions. They have not had the courage to speak the truth about the dangers and polluting negatives of oil and gas production and the threat to our planet that it represents.

This is one reason I supported Bernie, who is strong on the need to ban fracking, as well as the need for a very ambitious Green New Deal to give world leadership in the battle to prevent climate catastrophe and escalating societal unraveling due to not just increasingly worse extreme weather events but declining access to water and disruption of food production because of heat waves and drought.

But Bernie didn’t win, Biden did. And the next President is going to be either Trump or Biden. That’s why, despite this very real criticism I have of the Biden/Harris position on fracking and, frankly, waffling on what they think about the Green New Deal, I’m doing this fast because Trump is so-so-so much worse, off-the-charts worse.

On a personal note, I woke up this morning feeling a little bit better. I’m hoping that this is the beginning of what I’ve experienced in the past on most, not all, long fasts, that around the 5^th-6^th day, the body has adjusted to this new routine and I’m less weak, have more energy for a week or more. We’ll see how it goes the rest of the day and beyond.