Now that’s the Fracking Question!
Drilling deep holes into mama earth and poking around in her innards with all the tender care of a backstreet abortionist seems like a recipe for disaster, but how ‘fracking’ bad is shale gas energy?
'Fracking!' The very word sounds guttural and seems to carry the faint odour of degraded perversion. In fact, the very mention of 'Frack' is enough to get certain politicians and corporate cretins all red-faced and excited as they froth at the mouth like JR Ewing on ‘mama’s finest homegrown crack’ at the thought of all that gloriously sensual untapped profit that lies buried like pirate's treasure deep beneath the fields and woodland of this green and pleasant land.
Equally, fracking is seen as hell incarnate by the hordes of placard waving, welly boot wearers who like the idea of living like a big footed hobbit in the cosy and environmentally friendly realms of Middle Earth but who would moan like buggery if due to a global energy shortage they didn't have enough petrol to drive their car to Waitrose, or enough electricity to charge their smartphones and take to twitter to smugly pontificate about how they are single-handedly saving the earth,
The reality of fracking is it may have revolutionised the energy industry in the USA but it does pose a fair few environmental concerns and could hinder the worldwide campaign to invest in renewable sources of energy in place of blind reliance on the finite supply of fossil fuels. In terms of climate change and the energy crisis, critics argue shale gas energy is very much a case of short-term gain, long-term pain.
Yet since they have adopted fracking in a big way,carbon emissions in the USA are at their lowest since 1994 causing UK shale enthusiasts to dance for joy and cry 'Hallelujah' at the prospect of what has been described glowing terms as a "cheap low carbon bonanza" which will act as a massive boost for the economy and employment, without burdening the bill payer with all the extra taxes and subsidies generated by 'green' energy sources such as wind farms and solar panels.
And you may well ask what would be so wrong with the UK generating and owning all the electricity it needs to shine in the dark skies of globalisation and enjoying a reduction, no matter how insignificant, in our energy bills? Well nothing, but at what cost?
Fracking in the UK has already resulted in two small earthquakes in the Blackpool area in 2011 and there is also the concern that groundwater surrounding the fracking sites may be contaminated by a leak of the potentially carcinogenic chemicals used in the fracking process.
Now while the USA may boast that fracking has given them gas security for the next 100 years and has afforded them the opportunity to generate electricity at half the CO2 emission of coal, what good will it do them if their drinking water is toxic and the whole of Hollywood has been swallowed up by an earthquake?
Of course, it's not like there's never been a major oil leak or a nuclear power station disaster, but do we really want to make a bad situation worse by throwing the unknown quantity that is fracking into the mix? Wouldn't that be really 'fracking' stupid?
The question remains - If fracking's dark satanic mills are allowed to pepper the British countryside like a rouge and particularly vile case of teenage acne, will the lights stay on or will they be turned of for good. Who knows? The answer, as they say, is blowing in the wind.
