Some good points. I’d rather there was no need at all for anyone in the world to cause any pollution or planetary damage of any type.
But back in the real world, we all pollute. We all consume. We’ve tons of products in our homes that have generated harm and pollution. We all buy products which are unnecessary but we forgive ourselves that, or more likely don’t even give it a passing thought, and carry on buying myriad ‘stuff’ which has needed tons of energy and resources to create. We don’t give any thought to the communities blighted by the manufacture of these products. But that’s ok - we’re not talking about that - let’s just talk about fracking and forgive us these contradictions.
We’re not yet in a position to have fuel security purely from wind and solar. We’re a long way off that. Yes of course we need to expedite this and do more, but it could be decades away. And there’s the issue of energy needs when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Fracking was off the table for the UK because it wasn’t essential. But the world has changed. Energy security has never been so at risk. Just look at the events of this week where the gas pipes were damaged. If we had self sufficiency of energy it would be a huge boon economically (rather than the huge boom of pipes being sabotaged). In the circumstances it would be remiss of us to fail to explore fracking further. Europe, including the UK, are currently shipping in LPG in vast quantiles from the USA. Of course that itself means gas will still be burned and there’s the environmental impact of shipping it plus the cost pressures as LPG is in high demand across the world.
Many of us will turn on our gas boiler or gas fire and gas cooker and think perhaps it’s magic as to where the gas comes from. Well guys, the gas flow will cease sooner than you think, and much sooner than we could get other alternatives, and other alternative domestic appliances implemented widely across the UK.
The cost to our economy and way of life is potentially a very high one if we don’t explore fracking. We will continue to have high energy costs and high inflation. We need to act.
When it comes down to local fracking specifically, there of course needs careful exploration of this. Local impacts must be manageable. That includes a host of things, including tremors. The size of the tremors from fracking are small on the Richter scale. You can take the alarmist position and say ‘yeah but how do you know we won’t get huge earthquakes’, and of course that’s difficult to answer categorically. We can’t ever rule out anything. But based on what’s been seen in other countries and in the UK so far, the tremors are relatively very small. There was a chap on tv explaining that they measure maybe 1.2 to 1.5 generally, and to put it into perspective there is a pipe being installed in the UK somewhere and the explosions used to excavate it measure about 2.5.
So we’re not talking about significantly sized earthquakes. But we need to keep an eye on that, region but region, if and when exploration recommences.
I’m not a fan of the ‘not in my back yard’ mentality. The gas is where the gas is. So it’s going to be near someone and something.
If we were to all adopt the not in my back yard position we wouldn’t currently have electric pylons and internet masts. Nor would we have local prisons or places for asylum seekers to reside whilst awaiting processing. Unfortunately it’s not a perfect world and so not everyone will always be happy.
HS2 will affect some UK residents adversely. But if we tried to find a route where no-one was impacted it wouldn’t be built. Nor would an airport have been built or other infrastructure such as bridges.
Imagine the folk living in a lovely peaceful dwelling by the side of a river or Estuary. Life is idyllic. But then there’s a decision to build a bridge across the river and it suddenly means they’re going to either have to see their house demolished or they’re going to be living near a building site and once the bridge is open there’s gonna be all these selfish commuters and business vehicles saving time on their daily journeys.
But perhaps they could see the bigger picture. Perhaps they thought about the needs of the country. Perhaps they were compensated. But let’s be clear, we wouldn’t be the country we are if we’d stood in the way of developments.
Fracking is controversial for various reasons. I wouldn’t want it on mythop road or anywhere on the fylde coast. But as I say, things have changed.
Do I want energy securing for the next few decades whilst we build more nuclear power stations etc? Damn right. Cos my kids are gonna be the ones needing energy security. Oh hang on - we won’t get a nuclear power station approved cos there’s gonna be the angry objectors. Hmm.