Public Needs To Be Aware Of The Environmental Consequences Of Voting For Pro-Fracking Parties
With so many issues being debated in the run up to the general election it appears as though the pending decision to authorise the use of ‘Fracking’ across the UK and Wales has been pushed to the back of the political agenda, or possibly even worse – it has been deliberately buried by the major parties.
Warranting barely even a mention during any of the televised debates or indeed seemingly getting no air time at all during this election run-up, this important and ecologically disastrous political answer to diminishing fossil fuel reserves needs to be brought back into the political spotlight and urgently says Wales Green Party Leader, Pippa Bartolotti.
“We only have a moratorium on fracking in Wales, and that could be lifted at any time. 64% of the UK is under licence for shale gas drilling, and experts say it would take 2,400 wells to replace the gas we currently extract from the North Sea. The countryside would be well and truly fracked.”
This state of affairs will leave a beautiful island with deep scars all across its countryside, and with the knock on effects of water poisoning and land pollution to it doesn’t bode well for the environmental future of this country at all.
In Wales we can already see the long lasting effects of ‘smash & grab’ attitudes to energy extraction methods in the Valleys where the landscape has been stripped of all its tree and fauna, leading to upland farming issues with soil erosion and subsequent low-land flooding causing much misery and expansive destruction to homes and livelihoods.
Areas such as Merthyr Tydffil & Ebbw Vale are still recovering from the collapse of the mining and quarrying industries of the past and are amongst the poorest in the whole of Europe.
Many millions in restoration costs of open cast will end up being met by the taxpayer.
“This idea that social inequality and the environment are not linked is a total fallacy, perpetrated by successive governments in Westminster who are only interested in lining their own pockets and those of their corporate friends” warned Bartolotti.
“Selling people on the idea of jobs in industries that capitalize on finite energy resources has been proven to be a long term disaster as the deprived communities of South Wales has proven.
It might provide jobs in the short term, but the money never stays in those communities and the health and livelihoods of our children and grandchildren will be adversely affected.”
There is another way though and the Wales Green Party is committed to this approach as Bartolotti outlines:
“The fight to leave all fossil fuels in the ground has to be stepped up. The outdated business models of the fossil fuel companies should stay in the past where they belong. Greens propose the pollution free alternative of secure clean energy from renewables, which will bring us thousands of jobs. Wales has more than twice the renewable energy it can use. We need to harness this energy and start exporting it as soon as possible. Finally Wales can have a viable and lasting income stream.”