Anti-fracking Politics

‘Anti-fracking Politics’, by Drew Milne, Cambridge Left Unity.

            Fracking, as hydraulic fracturing is widely known, is not new. Shale gas extraction has been going on for some time, but technological development has intensified in recent years, notably in the USA. US fracking companies have been secretive about the toxic chemicals used in fracking, and with serious accidents and spills, there is evidence of increased risks of cancer in areas close to fracking wells, not to mention the atmospheric dangers of methane emissions associated with fracking. France, otherwise happy to play nuclear roulette, and Germany have both banned fracking, but the UK government is keen to promote UK fracking: why?

Publically, the government suggests that fracked gas can offset the UK’s reliance on foreign energy sources, as North Sea fuel resources dwindle, and can provide an alternative source of energy, as and until environmentally friendly forms of energy are developed. But even fracking enthusiasts acknowledge that fracking is unlikely to generate cheap fuel, while the argument for jobs is implausible: it would be more responsible to create jobs by building affordable housing. Industrial fracking on the UK’s small island threatens permanent damage to fragile water resources. The economic case is weak, scarcely thought credible, at best risky, even by speculative capital investors. Profit risk assessment helps explain why the government have been offering tax incentives and bribes to kickstart UK fracking. George Osborne’s father-in-law, the Conservative peer Lord Howell is a lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry, president of the Energy Industries Council, the leading trade association for UK companies that supply goods and services to the energy industries worldwide, and a senior energy politican at the Foreign Office. He and his sponsors stand to do well out of the lucrative tax break handed to them by his son-in-law. John Browne, former BP chairman, now “Lord Browne”, is the chairman of Cuadrilla, which is exploring shale gas in Lancashire and West Sussex. Browne is also managing director and partner of Riverstone LLC, the venture capital firm backing Cuadrilla. The UK government are embroiled in such corrupt friendships. Vested interests in energy research, although sceptical of the economic case, are also excited by the prospect of using the UK as a testing and development ground for lucrative research into fracking technologies.

It is nevertheless possible that the tide of argument against fracking has turned, with Cuadrilla, the major UK energy company operating fracking licenses, withdrawing plans in which it has already made substantial investments.

‘Cuadrilla, the fracking company responsible for a series of earth tremors around Blackpool in 2011, has withdrawn applications for permits to frack in Lancashire after problems surfaced relating to the disposal of radioactive waste. Hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – releases gas or oil from shale by blasting a mixture of sand, chemicals and water into the rock. The process produces huge amounts of waste water that contains, among other things, low-level naturally-occurring radiation. Industry regulator, the Environment Agency, has said that it will not grant a radioactive substances permit until it is sure that the water would be disposed of safely. When Cuadrilla fracked near Blackpool it found traces of naturally occurring uranium and thorium, as well as levels of radium that were 90 times higher than naturally occurs in drinking water. Previously, regulations classed the waste water as industrial effluent, allowing Cuadrilla to pour two million gallons into the Manchester Ship Canal after being processed at the Davyhulme treatment works at Trafford. However, “flowback water” has been re-classified as radioactive waste following European regulations which came into force in October 2011. This means the operator now needs a permit to safely dispose of the waste.’ [The Independent (27 Jan, 2014.)]

The legal dimension is significant, since the UK government appears indifferent to such risks. These European regulations are enforced by the UK Environment Agency, currently in the spotlight for its handling of flooding. The risks of fracking were known before the regulations changed, but the Environment Agency did not stop Caudrilla dumping two million gallons of radioactive water into Manchester Ship Canal. The most plausible methods for processing all this radioactive waste water involve extracting the radioactive matter and converting it into much smaller quantities of solid material to be buried in landfill sites. Large quantities of dangerous toxic and radioactive materials have already been shipped around the UK as a result of explorations into fracking. The fracking industry sometimes suggests that the radioactivity involved is a low level risk, involving what is called, rather bizarrely, NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material). Such radiation deep under ground nevertheless becomes a serious problem for humans when it enters the body, and the most obvious way it can do this is through water. Commercial fracking risks contaminating the underlying water table and the whole water supply, turning the UK into a radioactive processing system, involving the transport of enormous quantities of radioactive waste up and down UK roads.

Scientific apologists for fracking are well aware that this is a risky technology that will not produce cheap energy, but might be very dangerous for the future of the UK’s water and waste processing. If science advisors were independent of capitalist lobbying, it is unlikely that they would be enthusiastic about fracking. The legal dimension, guided by European legal frameworks, means that the problem of radioactive waste may make fracking unviable, at least until the UK government rips up the European regulative framework. Recent studies have also argued that frackers should be taxed to pay for their environmental damage: ‘Shale frackers operating in Britain should be paying £6bn a year in taxes by the middle of the 2020s to compensate for the damage wreaked on the environment, according to a study from Cambridge University.’ [The Guardian, 26 Jan, 2014.]  It is possible that environmental regulation will reveal that the true costs of fracking are too high for the frackers, but it would be stupid to rely on regulators. The Public Accounts committee have acknowledged, for example, that it is costing around £67 billion to clean up the Sellafield nuclear waste site with no sign of when the cost will stop rising. The costs of clearing up nuclear waste, much like clearing up banking disasters, is borne by taxpayers rather than by capitalist interests. Recognising that you cannot put a price on the destruction of our environment, it is also clear that capitalist interests need to be fought tooth and nail if the known environmental costs are to be factored in and taxed as costs, rather than passed on to the tax-paying population.

As regards UK parliamentary politics, beyond corrupt Tory government enthusiasm for fracking, the Lib-dems are predictably nervous but indecisive about their complicity with what threatens to become a deeply unpopular environmental disaster. The Labour Party appears incapable of taking a lead on this, as on so many other things. Various Green groups are explicitly opposed to fracking, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the Green Party, but existing anti-fracking networks are fragmentary, grass-roots organisations, focussed largely on protests against fracking in Barton Moss, Lancashire and Balcombe in Sussex. There are anti-fracking militants up and down the UK, but they lack a political party capable of articulating the arguments and posing a serious threat to the capitalist interests at the heart of this eco-cidal technology. Left Unity offers a political alternative, and must do what it can to organise resistance to fracking, making it clear that this is not single issue politics, but the politics of resisting the corrupt and irrational destruction of our environment by profiteering capitalists.

There are nevertheless some difficult questions that emerge. Fracking is no solution to the long term problems of climate change and the fact that we are reaching the end of fossil fuel extraction as an energy source. There are problems with wind power, solar energy, and tidal power, but the environmental case for doing something about climate change makes reduction of our reliance on fossil fuels urgent. We need to reverse the way in which nuclear weapons get five times as much public research funding in the UK as renewable energy.  Recently, a flash mob protested amid the flood waters, raising a banner that said: ‘Can we talk about climate change now’. It is clear that the long term consequences of climate change are now washing up even on the doorsteps of middle class, middle England. The time is right for eco-socialist arguments led by Left Unity. Imagine where the Government are proposing new licenses for fracking exploration: you guessed it, right on the flood plains of Somerset. If we don’t stop the frackers in government fast, large parts of mainland UK run a serious risk of becoming a radioactive marsh.