Fracking is not the only answer. It is the cheapest answer. Traditional drilling still gets gas, but it costs more. On the flip side, fracked wells die off faster. When I worked in the natural gas industry, all the engineers told me that fracking was a great shorter-term plan, but it scared them because it would have all the younger wells drying up at about the same time as the older traditionally drilled wells, and they foresaw a bad convergence of both kinds of wells dying off at the same time coming in our future.

At the same time, it doesn't seem clear at all that methane is less harmful than CO2, so arguing that we're emitting less CO2 is only part of the story.