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When we started to plan this special issue, shale gas extraction and hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) as a technology and its related social conflicts seemed to be—except in very few countries, such as the United States—an environmental issue in a state of “fading away,” while still being of historical interest. However, things changed after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Beyond creating immense human suffering and massive destruction of Ukraine's infrastructures, the invasion has affected, and is affecting, distant countries, their peoples, and economies around the world, in various ways. One major issue at stake is the effect on energy markets and energy mixes in European countries, where strong dependencies on Russian fuels exist. Energy prices have skyrocketed, and several European governments (especially, Germany) had to reconsider their past politics of energy supply and transition. The war, so to speak, has unexpectedly opened a new window of opportunity for re-evaluating shale gas as a player in the energy transition (Teuffer 2022). This is mainly due to economic questions regarding energy prices, and political questions regarding energy autonomy and mixes.

The article presents a comparative study of shale gas media debates in Germany and Poland. Drawing from the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD), it addresses discursive conflicts over the use of hydraulic fracturing and its environmental impacts in both countries. The authors relate their analysis to the theoretical debate that emerged in the 1990s in French sociology concerning the question of “green justifications” that form a specific way of how social actors intervene, dispute, and build compromises in public discussions to protect non-human entities. Referring to these discussions, this article identifies several ecological justification clusters and the associated social actors that are ‘compromised’ or enclosed in existing orders of worth.