We’re sitting around in a
London Coffee Shop and talking about these new-fangled factories and steam
engines. James Watt has just patented a practical steam engine that delivers
continuous power.
Problem is, that’ll mean we
need coal. Lots and lots of it, if all these iron founders and steel masters
and factory owners have their way. But there’s clear evidence that coal mines
can produce localised earthquakes (or at least, tremors). There’ll be pit heads
despoiling the countryside, and slag heaps, and open-cast mining, and railways
built across the country to deliver the coal and the factory products. There’ll
be air pollution and smog and “pea-soupers”. There’ll be miners condemned to a
working life underground in difficult conditions. Mining through or near
aquifers could contaminate the water supply, never mind the run-off from the
slag heaps.
So of course we decide that we
simply can’t face the environmental consequences of coal mining, and we’ll stick
to water wheels, and wind-mills, and horse power, thank you very
much.
Imagine the consequences.
Britain today would be a poor, agrarian society, rife with hunger and poverty
and disease. Every man with an acre and a cow (if he’s lucky). Of course many
of the problems we anticipated in our Coffee Shop did indeed come to pass, and
we should be grateful that now in the 21st Century we have a better
understanding of our environment, and that we have proper controls over
industrial activity that potentially leads to pollution (even if the regulation
is sometimes over-the-top).
And what if we had ignored the
possibility of North Sea Oil? We could have predicted that there would be oil
rig catastrophes, lives lost, pollution incidents -- as indeed there have been.
But does anyone today seriously think that we should have ignored the North
Sea? Of course not. It played a dramatic role in economic development in the
UK, and we should all be poorer today without it.
All these arguments are
deployed today against fracking. Earth tremors. Contamination of aquifers.
Well-heads despoiling the countryside (though a lot less intrusive than wind
turbines). But in this case we have decades of experience of fracking in the
USA (and to an extent in Germany). We know that the risks are small, we know
how to manage them, and we know that they have been greatly exaggerated (though
for different reasons) by both Green NGOs and by existing gas interests like
Gazprom.
It would be downright
irresponsible to turn our backs on fracking, just as it would have been in 1781
to turn our backs on coal and steam and the Industrial Revolution. Or to turn
our backs in the 1960s on North Sea oil and gas. We must not allow ourselves to
be intimidated by Grim Fairy Tales from Greenpeace.
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