Dirty energy isn’t just dirty because of the carbon dioxide pollution it releases into our atmosphere. It’s polluted the global geopolitical landscape – and increasingly North American domestic politics – for decades. Enough is enough.
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Dirty energy isn’t just dirty because of the carbon dioxide pollution it releases into our atmosphere. It’s polluted the global geopolitical landscape – and increasingly North American domestic politics – for decades. Enough is enough.
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In view of the report commissioned by the UK government (from the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering) into the safety of hydraulic fracturing, I am feeling slightly vindicated…
Although the report dismisses all claims that fracking is inherently dangerous (citing all examples of adverse environmental impact as evidence of poor practice or poor implementation), it does recommend that monitoring of all groundwater for methane gas be commenced immediately on a nationwide basis – in order to provide baseline data for future reference. And so it would seem that the UK is all set for a fracking bonanza. Or may be not…
The reason I feel vindicated is that the Report Committee Chairman is on record as having added this important caveat:
“As we made clear at the start, this review is not an exhaustive analysis of all the issues associated with shale gas and we have highlighted a number of issues that we believe merit further consideration, including the climate risks associated with the extraction and subsequent use of shale gas…”. (my emphasis)
I would like to hope that this will make the UK government stop and think about whether planning to burn all the Earth’s fossil fuels is a sensible thing to do but, sadly, I suspect they won’t” – because the fossil fuel industry has convinced them that it is OK to treat the symptoms of our addiction rather than the cause.
However, my earlier letter to the Editor of Geoscientist (who gave it the title “Fracking up the wrong tree”) has now been amended to reflect this ‘moral victory’…
Martin – you may be interested in listening to the March CCL call – the guest speaker was Bob Howarth from Cornell University talking about fracking, and the much higher climate impact that natural gas has. The graphics from his 20 minute talk are available here: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/files/images/HowarthHandout.pdf
and you can listen to the call here: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/calls/CCL-March-2012.mp3
Keep up the great work, Christine.