Rebel Clowns Target Fracking in Scotland

27 July 2013 Yes­ter­day morn­ing a hoard of clowns descend­ed on the gov­ern­ment Direc­torate for Plan­ning and Envi­ron­men­tal Affairs to deliv­er a spe­cial anti-frack­ing mes­sage to the pow­ers that be.

At 8.30am yes­ter­day morn­ing, anti-frack­ing activists gath­ered for a clown­ing action at the Direc­torate for Plan­ning and Envi­ron­men­tal Affairs (DPEA) in Falkirk. Dressed in colour­ful clown cos­tumes a group of 17 activists mocked the dan­gers of frack­ing with ridicu­lous play. Clowns burst in to the car park with music, ban­ners and a frack­ing tow­er as bemused work­ers looked on. Games con­tin­ued to the to town cen­tre to raise aware­ness among the pub­lic.

A spokesper­son for the actions said “we are here today to high­light the absur­di­ty of going down yet anoth­er route of non-renew­able ener­gy that is a short term and dan­ger­ous solu­tion to a long term energy/carbon prob­lem with it’s own set of poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences.

“Despite mount­ing evi­dence of the dan­gers of frack­ing con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing local water sup­plies releas­ing high car­bon methane gas and risk of cat­a­stroph­ic explo­sions, the gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to giv­ing frack­ing mul­ti-nation­als the green light, plac­ing prof­it over local oppo­si­tion and the poten­tial for envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

“We are here to show those mak­ing the deci­sion about DART Energy’s appli­ca­tion to frack in the Falkirk and oth­er areas, that oppo­si­tion to these irre­spon­si­ble oper­a­tions is mount­ing. We are here in sup­port of local oppo­si­tion to the plans and ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al oppo­si­tion to frack­ing else­where.” (1)

The DPEA was tar­get­ed as clown inves­ti­ga­tions uncov­ered evi­dence that the deci­sion on what hap­pens next with the frack­ing plans in Scotland’s cen­tral belt will be tak­en there by gov­ern­ment civ­il servants(2). This fol­lows DART Energy’s appeal to the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment when Falkirk and Stir­ling coun­cils failed to make the deci­sion due to resis­tance from local com­mu­ni­ties, and a lack of cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion on health and envi­ron­men­tal concerns(3).

The action hap­pened amid grow­ing con­cerns over both the West­min­ster and Holy­rood gov­ern­ments’ cur­rent favour­ing of short sight­ed, lucra­tive non-renew­able ener­gy plans, despite their alleged com­mit­ments to cut­ting car­bon and pur­su­ing renew­able ener­gy resources. Last week George Osbourne announced tax breaks for frack­ing firms oper­at­ing with­in the UK (of 50% more than oth­er ener­gy companies(4). This break was cham­pi­oned by Lyn­ton Cros­by, the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty Chief Strate­gist and the man respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing shale gas frack­ing in Aus­tralia. Cros­by’s PR firm “Cros­by Tex­tor” also rep­re­sents the Aus­tralian Petro­le­um Explo­ration Asso­ci­a­tion, of which DART is a sub­sidiary.

This action was organ­ised by Reclaim the Fields and con­ti­nu­ity fac­tions of the Clan­des­tine Insur­gent Rebel Clown Army. Anti-frack­i­li­cious!

NOTES

1. http://frack-off.org.uk/

2. http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/pnas2011.pdf

3. http://www.dpea.scotland.gov.uk/CaseDetails.aspx?id=qA355856

4.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jul/19/david-cameron-fracking-lynton-crosby