The first round of the fight against fracking has been won by the protesters. The spiteful invective poured out by the Sunday editions of the Telegraph, Mail and Express are testament to this. Clearly they are worried as the (wrong) energy source that they were told to back has proved far more unpopular than any turbine or solar panel.
The historical analogy with these events I would make is with the anti Gentically Modified Food(GM) protests of the late 1990's. Then we had a smarmy know all Prime Minister in hoc to the right-wing press, a gaff-prone multinational on the make and a spineless official opposition who couldn't decide if they were for or against a dodgy technology, sound familiar?
It's what happened next that should interest us. As we now know GM foods have thankfully never taken off in Britain. Thanks to the Soil Association, Friends of the Earth and our own dear selves at Greenpeace, the combination of strong arguments and direct actions( and it has to be said a monumentally ineffective PR campaign by Monsanto) the battle was won. But the idea of GM's haven't gone away and every now and then there is an insidious call from various sections of the corporate media to stop 'stifling the debate on GM' and tell us 'How GM's can feed the world' ( it should be noted that the feed the world stuff came along after GMs proved unpopular to give them a false ethical gloss). If we can keep up the pressure this could well be the future of fracking: unpopular and unused with only it's diehard advocates using the 'if only' argument every few years. If this could be the ongoing scenario it gives us time to build up our renewable energy infrastructure to the point where anything but eco friendly energy simply becomes politically unacceptable.
The Green movement needs to beware as well . For as we have learned from our victories so our opponents have learned from their defeats. Expect the drilling companies to find communities that are poverty stricken and then offer them a multitude of inducements to take up fracking, expect further rubbishing of the protesters to take place along with the setting-up of pro-fracking astro turf campaigns such as 'friends of fracking' and 'citizens for shale gas' Expect this and more as there is big money to be made in shale gas extraction. But for now let us savour victory and having the upper hand and contemplate the long and on-going struggle to come.
Nigel Baker
For how to stop fracking go to:https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/speakout/stop-fracking?source=wb&subsource=frwb02
Comments