Fracking drills

Over 30 years ago I was chained to a drilling rig, Joan of Arc style: a martyr for a cause. The 400mm masonry drill bit attached to said rig was being used to test the bedrock some distance below for its suitability for supporting a nuclear power station. The site in question was a safe distance away from any large population, the principle criteria for a Nuke station site. Today people are chaining themselves to drilling equipment testing for shale gas and the potential for fracking.

In those thirty years, a period which followed the implicit warning provided by OPEC in the early 70s about oil supply, we have yet to move on significantly from nuclear or fossil fuel. Instead more desperate ways to scrape off the remaining meagre morsels from the carcass are being employed instead of the more appropriate increased investment in many renewable energy sources of wind, hydro, thermal, tidal and sun. Is it possibly the case that oil companies want to wring out as much profit from crude while they sit on the technology that we could be using now instead of tearing up the country? But there are those who say wind farms will blight the country – they are as bad as the people trying to rip up the earth. They no doubt drive and fly and use unnecessary electrical appliances as everyone else does. The reason we have so many electrical goods is because electricity producers needed demand for their product (many house hold electrical products where manufactured by the power generators).

The last thirty years show how poor we are at long termism unless we can find a short cut – nuclear power. One thing is for sure, as things stand now, when crude oil does get scarce the world will get bigger again as flying will no longer be viable.