THE CARBON WAR

Winning dirty in an endless war 113
Environmental problems continue to build for the industry alongside
the woes arising from economics and overoptimism. The latest episode to
join the growing catalogue is the discovery by an environmental watchdog of
benzene, a cancer-causing chemical, in the liquids drillers pump underground
during fracking.
The public is picking up on the escalating drip of toxic news. A poll in
New York State has shown a remarkable eight in ten voters in favour of the
state’s current moratorium on fracking, an opinion that spans all political
divides. Shale is demonstrably beginning to feature as a negative issue for
American voters.
But how many UK parliamentarians, policymakers, journalists and
investors know about all this, I ask the solar executives. They are not reading
Bloomberg reports every day, much less the specialist websites where most of
information languishes. We need a concerted campaign to present them with
a digest of such material, all reliably sourced. Perhaps then they would be less
keen on default support for the alluring image of abundant cheap oil and gas
right under our feet in British shale, and more enthusiastic about the alternative
of a green industrial revolution.
Around the table, the disappointingly thin audience of solar-company
representatives looks and sounds keen enough this evening.
Why is it that I’ve never seen these horrible aerial images of fracking hot
spots in America before, one asks.
Why indeed.
But previously unseen horrible images or not, I wonder if their boards
will be up for even the low level of funding for lobbying that I ask for. Just to
make a start on the basics.
Online, 2 nd November 2014
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change completed its First
Assessment Report in 1990, almost a quarter of a century ago, I worked for
Greenpeace International as a climate campaigner. For the previous decade
I had been a university scientist, on the faculty of the Royal School of Mines at
Imperial College. As an earth scientist, my research had been on the geological
history of the oceans. That was what made me worried about climate change.
Based on my studies of oceanic sediments, I figured I knew about the natural
rhythms of the planet. I didn’t like what I was seeing in the first climate models