Fully 60 percent of Californians want hydraulic fracturing to continue to be used to develop our homegrown energy, outnumbering those who support a ban by two-to-one.

Two very different events on May 30 — one in northern California and one in southern California — suggest that the public policy debate over our state’s energy future has moved decisively from the fringes of environmental radicalism. It was a very bad day for Josh Fox and his extremist allies like Food and Water Watch and the Center for Biological Diversity.

It will be interesting to see what kind of conspiracy theories the activists come up with now to explain Gov. Brown’s full-throated endorsement of state regulators to oversee oil and gas development, and the use of hydraulic fracturing, in a way that provides our state with the energy it needs and the environmental protection that Californians demand.

Among Democrats and Republicans, more people support the responsible development of the Monterey Shale than oppose it. Among Latinos, supporters outnumber opponents by two-to-one.

Activists claim that fracturing is unsafe. However, scientists, state regulators, senior members of the Obama administration and many other authoritative sources have said for years that the technology is fundamentally safe.