Jesse Frederik, a smart Dutch journalist, has arguedthat locals greatly exaggerated the harmfulness of the earthquakes.

I really appreciate the author making their bias this obvious.

What a load of bullshit.

This doesn't make sense. If they simply plug them with cement, it's fairly easy to just drill out the cement plug and do some clean up runs before testing the well and putting it back into operation. If they've actually filled the entire string with cement you simply go down the same hole, kick off above the cement and drill a new one next to the previous. I'm not advocating for it, but you're not destroying the field by doing this, just making startup more cumbersome. Seems like spending money on image politics to me

"Dutch are dumb for putting people before profit" says journalist who will never have to live in the effected area...

This reads like a lobbyist wrote it.

These wells are already inactive; destroying them doesn’t do anything for safety or the environment. The government is demolishing the wells to prevent a future government from reconsidering its decision to stop producing gas.

Call me a dummy, but wouldn't the cement stay beneath the gas, given it's way denser, even accounting for the high pressure? Filling it with cement sounds like it'd keep the remaining gas accessible.

Also, the earthquakes are only part of the problem, the ground can sink and destroy infrastructure without a proper earthquake. The city of Maceió, in Brazil, has recently had to deal with that kind of problem due to rock salt mining

Not to mention that the whole "huge numbers of winners and small numbers of concentrated losers" speaks for itself on whose side this article is on: the money. The "winners" are the companies and the rich, the "small losers" are everyone else. I'm surprised it didn't even call them "just a bunch of poor idiots who should know better than to stay in the way of profit". Exhibit A:

Destroying the wells does not change the likelihood of additional earthquakes. It does not change the world’s emissions pathway either, given that production had stopped.

This is the whole "Oh well, climate change has already fucked everything, so we might as well continue on 'til the end!" bullshit

Because we're fucking idiots