The village of Cooperstown NY, known for the sports heroes in its Baseball Hall of Fame, has given the world a new hero, Louis Allstadt, champion of anti-fracking. 

At Allstadt’s unrelenting instigation, the town became the first in the country to divest from all fossil fuels, oil stocks as well as those in coal.

He stood against the oil industry with extraordinary credentials: he was once the head of all Mobil oil exploration in the Americas, and managed the company’s merger with Exxon. 

Now retired to his home base in this conservative community, Allstadt serves on the town council. 

When applications hit the area to permit fracking a shale formation that underlies the region, residents asked Allstadt what that would mean for Cooperstown. He had to investigate – fracking was new to him. What he found out set this quiet man on a crusade.

His analysis: There is no way to make fracking safe. It is "a great threat to humanity."

He gave hundreds of talks all over the state, disrupting his plans for a quiet retirement and overcoming his intense dislike of public speaking. He wrote to State authorities, challenging the sketchiness and obfuscations in the oil companies’ applications. Among the many objections he had to the applications, the companies were pushing for permits to frack near homes, and to bear no responsibility for any mishaps, which Allstadt knew were sure to happen.

Not surprisingly, the oil industry launched a campaign to denigrate him, denying his expertise and suggesting that he was nuts. 

His conservative neighbors were divided, many of them emphatically telling him to stand down: the town shouldn’t get involved in “politics.” The Council’s job was just to bring in as much money as possible on its investments, not to get involved in causes.

Through it all, Allstadt was unrelenting. Now, other municipalities are looking to Cooperstown as their model for banning fracking and for divesting from fossil fuels.