Green MEP Keith Taylor has reiterated his
opposition to the Conservative government's plans to bypass
local democracy to push 'climate-destructive' fracking on
communities across England that have rejected it.
The government is running two parallel
consultations which aim to make fracking operations Permitted
Development [1] and Nationally Significant Infrastructure
Projects [2]. The effect would be to remove local authorities,
which have consistently rejected fracking, from the
decision-making process and make planning permission for shale
gas exploration as easy to obtain as it is for erecting a
garden shed.
Mr Taylor has been running a month-long campaign to
encourage people to respond to the consultations. The senior
Green politician's 'Say No To Fast-Tracking Fracking' briefing
has been downloaded almost 5,000 times since September 18
[3].
Mr Taylor's final submissions to the consultations
come in the wake of a climate rally at the quake-hit
Preston New Road fracking site [4] in Lancashire on Saturday
[20 October] [5]. In his submissions [6], Mr Taylor
rejects the assertion that shale gas is a "safe, secure and
affordable supply of energy" and dismisses the economic
viability of the fracking industry in the UK.
The Green Party MEP also highlights how the
government's plans to open up a "new fossil fuel frontier" are
"grossly inconsistent" with the advice of climate scientists
who have come together to say we have just 12 years to avert
the very worst effects of the climate breakdown
[7].
The consultations claim the UK has gold standard
fracking and oil and gas drilling regulations, but Mr Taylor
rejects this claim too and has provided the government with a
dossier of breaches at drilling sites across England that have
attracted little or no sanction [8].
Responding to the consultations, Mr Taylor, a
member of the European Parliament's Environment and Public
Health Committee, said:
"When climate scientists across the world are
telling political leaders that the only way to avoid climate
catastrophe is to remake the human world within a generation,
it is unconscionable that the Tories are still pushing ahead
with plans to fast-track the dangerous exploitation of new
climate-destructive shale gas reserves. The plans to bypass
local democracy in the process just add anti-democratic insult
to injury."
"Fracking has never been compatible with our
binding climate commitments under the Paris agreement. This
month's IPCC report makes clear the brutal reality of the
impact of global warming exceeding 1.5c. Failure to keep below
that limit is assured if the Tories press ahead with
fracking."
"Ministers must wake up and take urgent action
to drop their support for the climate-destructive fossil fuel
industry. Fracking is a form of increasingly dangerous climate
denial."
Mr Taylor, who is still urging people to respond to
the consultations before they close on Thursday [25 October],
added:
"People overwhelmingly support renewables and
reject fracking. So much so that a government ideologically
committed to the latter has stopped asking them which they
prefer [9]. If the government won't listen to climate
scientists, it is my hope they might finally be forced to
listen to the thousands of responses to their insidious and
antidemocratic plans to fast-track fracking. England, our
planet, and our futures aren't for shale and we won't
stand for it."
