Fracking On Trial: call out

THE TRIAL

The tri­al for the first frack­ing rig occu­pa­tion in Lan­cashire last Novem­ber kicks off next week. Start­ing Tues­day 10th July and sched­uled to last till Fri­day 13th July… so four full days at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court.

THE TRIAL

The tri­al for the first frack­ing rig occu­pa­tion in Lan­cashire last Novem­ber kicks off next week. Start­ing Tues­day 10th July and sched­uled to last till Fri­day 13th July… so four full days at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court.

If you’re against frack­ing and want to see it stopped, it’d be great to have your sup­port, both inside and out­side the court room! If you can’t make it down you can still help out by spread­ing the word (see below for social media details), and sol­i­dar­i­ty actions are always wel­come.

Three pro­test­ers have been charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass and are plead­ing not guilty based on ‘neces­si­ty’; assert­ing stop­ping frack­ing is nec­es­sary in the con­text of run-away cli­mate change and the dam­age it will cause the envi­ron­ment and local com­mu­ni­ties. Defen­dants will also be chal­leng­ing the ‘law­ful­ness’ of the extrac­tive process.

The defen­dants will be backed up by a num­ber of wit­ness­es, both ‘experts’ and from the local com­mu­ni­ty, who will tes­ti­fy about the con­se­quences of cli­mate change and hydraulic frac­tur­ing, the dam­age it caus­es to water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, air pol­lu­tion, severe health risks, earth­quakes etc. The defence aim to total­ly rebuke indus­try claims that frack­ing is a harm­less ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly’ way to extract fos­sil fuel… and instead put the indus­try on tri­al.

THE ACTION

Pro­test­ers stormed the gas rig in Banks, Lan­cashire on 2nd Nov 2011, with one team climb­ing the der­rick (drill) and a sec­ond team scal­ing the pipe han­dling sys­tem, occu­py­ing the rig and stop­ping work at the site for a day, dec­o­rat­ing the slimy machin­ery with anti-frack­ing ban­ners while they were at it.

The occu­pa­tion of the rig was timed to coin­cide with an indus­try spon­sored “Shale Gas Envi­ron­men­tal Sum­mit” in Lon­don, a far­ci­cal event where indus­try and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tors meet to col­lab­o­rate on green­wash­ing PR to cov­er up the dam­age done by the fos­sil fuel indus­try.

The rig occu­pa­tion also coin­cid­ed with the release of a report by Cuadrilla admit­ting that the hydraulic frac­tur­ing of its first well had caused sev­er­al earth­quakes.

Since frack­ing came to the UK last year there have been mobil­i­sa­tions of local com­mu­ni­ty groups and envi­ron­men­tal activists across the coun­try ris­ing up against the indus­try. Includ­ing anoth­er occu­pa­tion of the site in Decem­ber 2011 [1] and a block­ade at PR Mar­riot Drilling in Chester­field, where the rig was being ser­viced, last month. [2]

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Halt­ing the extrac­tion of more fos­sil fuels is essen­tial at a time when the plan­et is warm­ing expo­nen­tial­ly. Com­pared to 100 years ago the cli­mate is 0.75 degrees warmer and now, in 2012, the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency warn we are on a tra­jec­to­ry to warm by 6 degrees Cel­sius in the next 100 years. [3]

For the younger gen­er­a­tion this means the world will become large­ly unin­hab­it­able in their life­time, cer­tain­ly for their kids, if emis­sions are not cut. The imme­di­ate peri­od, now, is regard­ed as a tip­ping point and despite a lot of rhetoric about ‘tack­ling cli­mate change’ from gov­ern­ments, finan­cial insti­tu­tions and indus­tries alike, in recent years we have seen the high­est emis­sions ever. [4]

Extract­ing resources on this scale to feed the indus­tri­al sys­tem is destroy­ing the envi­ron­ment that our lives depend on.

As con­ven­tion­al oil and gas pro­duc­tion peaks, gov­ern­ment and indus­tries con­tin­ue to steam roll ahead devel­op­ing destruc­tive prac­tices that will pro­vide prof­itable new mar­kets to line their pock­ets.

Frack­ing is part of a recent boom in more extreme meth­ods of extrac­tion, described as ‘uncon­ven­tion­al ener­gy sources’; Tar Sands, Moun­tain Top Removal, Deep Water Drilling, Coal Bed Methane, Under­ground Coal Gasi­fi­ca­tion and Nuclear expan­sion.

Extrac­tive indus­tries noto­ri­ous­ly deny dam­ag­ing the envi­ron­ment and neg­a­tive­ly effect­ing humans, ani­mals or the envi­ron­ment. How­ev­er there is a long his­to­ry of these indus­tries caus­ing wide-scale destruc­tion, and also long his­to­ry of cov­er ups.

Its time to put frack­ing on tri­al!

You can keep up to date with pro­ceed­ings on Twit­ter @frack_off or
#frackingon­tri­al, on Face­book http://www.facebook.com/frackoffuk or at
http://frackingontrial.org (avail­able soon).

NOTES

[1] [http://risingtide.org.uk/node/428]

[2] [http://frack-off.org.uk/fracking-protesters-lay-siege-to-cuadrilla-drill-rig]

[3] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/world-on-track-for-nearly-11-degree-temperature-rise-energy-expert-says/2011/11/28/gIQAi0lM6N_story.html]

[4] [http://www.iea.org/index_info.asp?id=1959]