Frack Addict

Mother Earth really tries to keep things in balance but we, Mankind, as her tenants are an unruly, selfish lot who insist on regularly exploiting the terms of our tenancy agreement and to the very point of mutual destruction.

We would certainly have been evicted a few centuries ago if I really push the landlord-tenant analogy. Various plunderings have gone on in the past. Individual nations or a concerted effort by successive affluent and influential world powers have stolen the silver, washed and filtered or chipped and blasted out the gold nuggets, prised out the prized precious gemstones, extracted the fossil fuels, drained the oil, eroded the goodness from the soil, pillaged the fruit of the seas, barbecued the forests, bottled the fresh waters from the depths of filtering rock, punched holes in the ozone layer and altogether have caused a bit of annoyance and thereby provoking an increasing regularity in violent reactions from a reasonably co-operative and generous benefactor.

As resources become rapidly depleted there is an ever more frantic search for more rich seams of energy and wealth .No area of the world is now safe from what is innocently called preliminary and non invasive investigation .Thanks to satellite technology, ultrasound and sonar it is not necessary to puncture, excavate or blow up the ice caps, scour and degrade areas of great unspoiled natural beauty or poke about on the sea bed. This is however just the first step in a determination to go and get any pockets of oil, gas or valuable minerals and at any cost to the topology and environment.

It is common knowledge that there are actual and potentially vast amounts of resources to be had but mankind has used all of these up in the, by contrast, easily accessible locations and only the inhospitable or sacred areas of the planet are left. The cost to extract everything from the previously disregarded areas of the globe will be wholly disproportionate even with the possibility of premium prices to the end user. It would appear cheaper and technically more feasible to go to the moon and dig about on that barren landscape to find resources to burn.

It is now the situation, in the corporate quest for wealth, that old and what were thought to be economically unviable deposits of coal, oil, gas, metals are being re-visited and like a dry sponge found at the back of the cupboard given another mighty squeeze to extract a few drops more. Take the escalation of the price of tin on the world markets. This has led to a renewal of activity in the Cornish mines even allowing for a century or more of neglect, collapse and flood. Open cast mining is back on the agenda and causing a great dilemma with destruction of a landscape mitigated by the potential for employment  in some areas. That makes for a difficult moral choice amongst hard pressed communities who will never have recovered from the decline of their traditional industrial base.

There are ever increasing technically challenging procedures for the extraction of the last drop of goodness from the earth. One of these which has caused concern is Fracking. A morsel of business speak and a throw away piece of terminology, not too offensive and even quite benign, sounding a bit like Fraggle Rock, that loveable institution.

The practice of Fracking is already well established. Hydraulic Fracturing is as aggressive as it sounds and is used to persuade Mother Earth to relinquish her deposits of gas trapped in the beds of shale. It is a bit like using a water cannon to rob an old lady of her life savings but only after her home and possessions have been ransacked.

In the United States there has been an noted increase in seismic disturbances linked to the Fracking activities in certain areas. In the UK a number of locations have been considered for the practice including beneath the Pennines, mountainous areas of Wales and Scotland and even in the genteel Home Counties although it is fairly safe to predict the order in which any determined effort will take, farthest away from London first.

Out of sight, out of mind is a good business mantra and selling point but Fracking is one move too far. The use of water at high pressure is something most householders do regularly with their Karcher products on the pathways and decking surfaces but in the confined compressed subterranean parts of the planet it is infinitely more sinister. It is not just water as we would be led to understand but a cocktail of chemicals as well to drug up and dull down the sensitivities of Mother Earth so that her handbag of goodies can be pilfered.

There is a sufficient difference in opinion amongst engineers and seismologists over whether Fracking is safe or not to cause me plenty of concern as a co-tenant of planet earth. Any mention of the word 'risk' in a press release about anything is enough for me to err on the side of caution. Fracking is certainly a risky process.

However, people want plentiful and cheap energy to heat their rooms and cook their meals and may not actually be that interested in where that nice blue tinted burning flame on the pilot light or the hob comes from. That is until we are sat, head in hands, in our ruptured gardens watching our beloved homes crumble and fall in a massive and indignant earthquake from a previously patient and forgiving Landlord.

Notice to Quit was served a while ago.