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A win for the environment, Scotland bans fracking!
In a move that’s been celebrated by the public and campaigners alike, the Scottish government has banned fracking after finding overwhelming public opposition and little economic benefit for the industry.
Paul Wheelhouse, the Scottish energy minister, told MSPs that allowing fracking would undermine the government’s ambitions to deeply cut Scotland’s climate emissions and would lead to unjustifiable environmental damage.
The public consultation on fracking attracted more than 65,000 responses, with about 65% of those responses coming from areas of former coal mining communities, that had been targeted by the fracking industry. Of those communities, a staggering 99% of respondents opposed it.
Fracking is a technique to get natural gas and oil from shale rock. The process includes drilling down deep into shale rock and then injecting it with a mixture of water, sand and chemical at high pressure. This forces open existing cracks in the rock, allowing for gas or oil to be released and collected.
Fracking is being passed off by the oil and gas industry as a safe and clean energy but there are reasons that there is such strong opposition to it. There are serious concerns not just to the impact on the environment where the drilling has been linked to small earthquakes, but also to people’s health.
Find out more about the resistance movement and how to get involved at frack-off.org.uk.
