
By Paul Brown
Public opposition to pumping water and chemicals into the ground to extract gas from shale—the technique known as fracking—is growing even in the countries whose governments are most in favor.
Anti-fracking protests in London.
Although only four countries—France, Bulgaria, Germany and Scotland—have an outright fracking ban at the moment, many districts in countries that allow fracking in some areas ban it in others.
This is true in the U.S. and in Canada, where potential wells will not be developed because local authorities have refused permission.
The carrot for governments generally has been the promise from the fossil fuel companies of large quantities of cheaply-extracted gas that will last for decades and cut their reliance on imports.
Fracking Boom
This has certainly been true in the U.S. and Canada, where a large-scale fracking boom has altered the balance of world energy resources and cut the price of gas so much that both coal and nuclear have struggled to remain competitive in electricity production.
In theory, China has even larger reserves of shale gas and is anxious to phase out coal plants, actively exploring a cleaner home-grown gas industry of its own.
But allegations that fracking contaminates water supplies and creates small earthquakes have led to a backlash in local communities across the world.
In Algeria, for example, where water is extremely precious, it led to large-scale protests. And in Europe, a much more crowded continent where homes and villages are always close to the proposed drilling sites, there has been a lot of local opposition.
The issue has also become much more controversial because of the increasing awareness of climate change.
Exploiting new fossil fuel reserves is seen as being against the spirit of last year's Paris Agreement on climate change, when all the governments of the world signed up to prevent dangerous global warming.
Methane emissions rising from fracking, new study shows https://t.co/xWU3gGYBaR via @EcoWatch https://t.co/hOBh4R7MNs— Climate Nexus (@Climate Nexus)1473865513.0
Starting a new fracking industry seems incompatible with the declared aim of governments in keeping global temperature rise below 2°C.
The UK government, while signing up to the Paris Agreement, is enthusiastically backing fracking to provide a home-grown source of gas for 50 years, and has overturned local authority objections to allow exploratory wells to be drilled in Lancashire, northwest England.
However, the ban remains in place in Scotland because of public opposition and a large renewables industry.
But it seems unlikely that fracking will have an easy ride even in England. A report by the University of Nottingham on public attitudes to the new industry has shown that support has sunk to an all-time low in the UK.
It has dropped from 58 percent in favor in July 2013 to just more than 37 percent in October 2016—the first time that a majority of people has been against fracking. The surveys have been running annually since 2012.
The reasons for opposition are all environmental, because of local effects and also the unacceptability of more fossil fuels as an energy source.
While local environment concerns dominated early opposition, the wider implications of climate change and the issue of exploiting new fossil fuel reserves is becoming more important.
Downturn in Support
The survey asks whether shale gas should be part of the UK energy mix. Since this question was first posed in July 2013, shale gas continues to lag behind in popularity, compared with other energy sources. And according to this latest survey, it remains the energy source the public are least likely to want in the UK's 2025 energy mix.
Professor Sarah O'Hara, of the School of Geography at Nottingham and co-director of the survey, said:
"The sharp downturn in support for the extraction and use of shale gas in the UK over the last 12 months is hugely significant, as is the fact that for the first time since we began running the survey in March 2012 more people are against shale gas extraction than in favor.
"It is clear that people are not only concerned about possible impact on their immediate environment, something that dominated early debates around shale gas, but importantly are beginning to think more broadly about the implications for greenhouse gas emissions and future climate change."
Mathew Humphrey, professor of political theory at Nottingham's School of Politics and International Relations and survey co-director, said: "The results of the survey show that the government will increasingly have its work cut out selling fracking to the UK public."
Mark Ruffalo: President Obama, You Still Have Time to Ban Fracking https://t.co/TIjRoF0TPe @greenwatchdogNY @FrackAction— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)1476394813.0
New fossils uncovered in Argentina may belong to one of the largest animals to have walked on Earth.
- Groundbreaking Fossil Shows Prehistoric 15-Foot Reptile Tried to ... ›
- Skull of Smallest Known Dinosaur Found in 99-Million-Year Old Amber ›
- Giant 'Toothed' Birds Flew Over Antarctica 40 Million Years Ago ... ›
- World's Second-Largest Egg Found in Antarctica Probably Hatched ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
A federal court on Tuesday struck down the Trump administration's rollback of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
- Pruitt Guts the Clean Power Plan: How Weak Will the New EPA ... ›
- It's Official: Trump Administration to Repeal Clean Power Plan ... ›
- 'Deadly' Clean Power Plan Replacement ›
Trending
By Jonathan Runstadler and Kaitlin Sawatzki
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have found coronavirus infections in pet cats and dogs and in multiple zoo animals, including big cats and gorillas. These infections have even happened when staff were using personal protective equipment.
Gorillas have been affected by human viruses in the past and are susceptible to the coronavirus. Thomas Fuhrmann via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
- Gorillas in San Diego Test Positive for Coronavirus - EcoWatch ›
- Wildlife Rehabilitators Are Overwhelmed During the Pandemic. In ... ›
- Coronavirus Pandemic Linked to Destruction of Wildlife and World's ... ›
- Utah Mink Becomes First Wild Animal to Test Positive for Coronavirus ›
By Peter Giger
The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
The period of the 45th presidency will go down as dark days for the United States — not just for the violent insurgency and impeachment that capped off Donald Trump's four years in office, but for every regressive action that came before.
- Biden Announces $2 Trillion Climate and Green Recovery Plan ... ›
- How Biden and Kerry Can Rebuild America's Climate Leadership ... ›
- Biden's EPA Pick Michael Regan Urged to Address Environmental ... ›
- How Joe Biden's Climate Plan Compares to the Green New Deal ... ›