She was blamed by many for breaking up The Beatles, and what John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono and his son Sean Lennon are trying to do to hydraulic fracturing (fracking) won’t endear her to oil and gas producers either.

“Mass awareness and peaceful democratic action” can expose and stop “the harmful and contaminating practice” of using hydraulic fracturing to stimulate oil and natural gas wells, a new coalition — Artists Against Fracking — established by Ono and Lennon maintains.

The group said it has more than 180 members, including former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Lady Gaga, Anne Hathaway, and Alec Baldwin, among other Hollywood notables.

In the entertainment industry, anti-fracking activism has become a cause akin to what anti-nuclear activism was during the 1970s and early 1980s. Protests, of course, are one avenue to increased public exposure, fame and fortune. John Lennon and Ono were visible supports to stop the war in Vietnam, and Jackson Browne and other recording artists rallied against nuclear power. Today’s anti-fracking activism — and the industry backlash to it — is playing out on movie screens as each side of the debate has made films advocating its views (see Shale Daily, Aug. 28).

New Yorkers Ono and Lennon said they were moved to form their group by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s apparently favorable view of fracking in the Empire State (see Shale Daily, Aug. 28). “Protecting our drinking water is fundamental to life. And people worldwide know that as a species, we are near a tipping point — it could go either way,” said Lennon. “We all have a responsibility to preserve the planet’s life-support systems for future generations.”

The group has an online petition for Cuomo that visitors to www.artistsagainstfracking.com can sign.