Fracking: A Protest Goes Political

The ongoing events in the West Sussex village of Balcombe mark the escalation of what started as an ordinary demonstration of one community’s opposition to the actions of one private company, into a much larger protest by seasoned environmental campaigners against the latest in a long line of controversial new methods of energy production.

Cuadrilla’s ‘crime’ is to begin exploratory drilling in an area thought to be the site of a potentially useful quantity of so-called shale gas – believed by many to be the holy grail in the search for a reliable and abundant source of cleaner energy.

At first, resistance came in a wholly predictable form – residents of nearby villages desperate to prevent the perceived industrialisation of their local countryside; the sort of people that any organisation must win over – or at least put up with – when undertaking this sort of operation.

But over the past few days this localised dispute has been hijacked by political interest groups keen to impose their own agenda and thus raise the profile of the situation; appallingly, this mission has been led by the irresponsible actions of an elected Member of Parliament, Caroline Lucas – whose arrest will merely serve to undermine any attempt by her party to prove that they are fit for such a role, and that they are anything other than a single-issue pressure group.

Ms Lucas claims that her actions and those of her fellow protestors are justified because they have the support of ‘most’ of the local community, and because as soon as they depart the scene, the drilling will resume. This second point is a strategic gift to their opponents – no matter whose offices they waste their time ‘occupying’ – while the first is simply nonsensical.

Even if the opinion analysis were true, it would not give a vocal minority the right to ignore police orders to wilfully obstruct others’ daily lives; in reality, it’s likely that many within the mob that descended on Balcombe over the weekend will have fully intended to enter into this sort of confrontation – and the news companies that followed them there have obliged their attention-seeking motives.

But the fundamental error of judgement being made by the environmentalists is their failure to understand the implicit position they are taking on the issue of sustainable energy. Describing shale gas as a fossil fuel and thus placing it in the same bracket as coal and oil is misleading, at best.

It may not rank alongside wind and solar power for environmental friendliness, but fracking is a much cleaner form of resource extraction than burning other fossil fuels. The same group currently causing havoc around Balcombe last hit the headlines when they did the same thing at a gas-fired power station in Nottinghamshire last year; 21 people pleaded guilty in court.

With the same people likely to react in similar fashion to investments in wind farms, what exactly do they see as Britain’s energy future? Almost every week, the Daily Mail and others deliver fresh warnings about ‘looming’ blackouts and ‘soaring’ utility bills (both trends, of course, unlikely to affect those able to spend their days sitting on a road rather than at a desk) - so what exactly is their solution?

Ms Lucas talked today about the role of the extraction of fossil fuels on climate change – suggesting that we should leave two thirds of known fossil fuel reserves “in the ground” in order to save the planet from the arbitrary 2-degrees warming that is already inevitable anyway and has long since been discredited as a legitimate political aim.

But has she – a left-wing politician – stopped to think about what this would mean for those on whom resource scarcity would have the most impact; whose lives and livelihoods depend on an affordable, reliable supply of energy?

It is true that the future of energy in Britain and beyond is an extremely important issue that requires active debate; it is unfortunate that so often it is characterised by such futile gestures by such short-sighted individuals.