Anyone involved with campaigning around the issue of Climate Change will have come across Christopher Booker. For over ten years he has been one of the most vocal climate change deniers-he also believes that evolution doesn't exist, passive smoking of tobacco does not cause lung cancer and white asbestos is harmless. In his column in the Sunday Telegraph he berates the government regarding the EU, the Climate Change Act (2008) and windfarms. As far as turbines are concerned, he vehemently opposes them and wrote a foreword to Dr John Etherinton's 2009 book The Windfarm Scam.
Now, in all fairness to Mr Booker, he has also been one of the few windy nimbies to offer an alternative to windfarms. Over the last three years, he has often referred to a Shale Gas Revolution whereby, just as in the US and Australia vast quantities of shale gas have been extracted (with a variety of dangerous consquences). So when fracking came to the UK in earnest this year, it was to be 'let battle commence' and then suddenly it wasn't... For the over four weeks now as the protests in Balcombe and elsewhere dominate the news and as fracking shoots up the political agenda Christopher Booker, one of its most evangelical supporters, has yet to mention anything about its current topicality. How odd! And yet a closer look unearths a few clues as to why. First and foremost, thanks to organisations like Frack Off and Frack Free Wales, The Vale Says No along with Greenpeace and F.O.E. the public has had access to far more information on shale gas extraction than its proponents would like, and as a result it's become rather unpopular.
There's also the location issue. Christopher Booker lives in Somerset, an area where there is considerable interest in gas extraction from a company called UK Methane Ltd. Could it be that for all his bluster, that when it comes to fracking on his doorstep he's not so keen? Or maybe he's as fervent as ever but his neighbours aren't? Whatever the reason, the fact that one of fracking's leading advocates is struck silent, when it would be assumed the extraction companies need him most, speaks volumes about the viability of fracking and its environmental impact.
Nigel Baker
For more about fracking:
https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/speakout/stop-fracking?source=wb&subsource=frwb01
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