Source: BBC Radio 4: Farming Today
URL: N/A
Date: 26/01/2015
Event: Joan Walley: "there should be a moratorium in respect of shale fracking"
Credit: BBC Radio 4: Farming Today
People:
Charlotte Smith: Fracking should be put on hold in the UK - that's the conclusion of an all-party committee of MPs, which says fracking shale gas has the potential to pose significant risks to water and air quality, and to public health. It adds that it won't help meet climate change emission targets, as, although cleaner than coal, it's still a fossil fuel. Well, the Environmental Audit Committee also wants fracking banned outright in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, sites of special scientific interest and ancient woodland. Extracting shale gas is still at the exploratory stage, here in the UK, with companies drilling test wells, and while some local communities are campaigning against it, the government's keen to see it developed. Ministers think it has the potential to provide the UK with greater energy security, growth and jobs. Well, the Labour MP Joan Walley is Chair of the Environmental Audit Select Committee.
Joan Walley: My problem with it is that we've got a government that's going all-out for fracking, when what the government should be doing is looking at how we make sure that we keep within our climate change carbon budgets, and the government should really be looking at how any future investment strategy is linked to that, and we don't breach those carbon limits. And I think that the stage that fracking is at, in terms of its development, just at the exploratory stage here in the UK, is not really compatible with the long-term sustainability issues that we have.
Charlotte Smith: And your argument, then, is that it doesn't help, on climate change, because it is still a fossil fuel.
Joan Walley: It's a very polluting fossil fuel. There might be some argument if it was going to replace coal, but by the time that full-scale fracking comes on stream, then coal will already have been phased out and fracking will be actually competing with gas [sic] and with renewables. So economically, we don't see how it's going to make sense, in terms of the evidence that our committee received.
Charlotte Smith: The committee also points to potential significant risks to water, to air quality and to public health. Isn't that rather scaremongering?
Joan Walley: I don't think it's scaremongering at all, and if you look at other countries - Germany, France, you look at the US in parts, New York State - you see that there are similar concerns there. Look - what we need, if there is going to be any progress on fracking, is a whole coherent regulatory framework. And what we've got is exploration for fracking, and we've got different regulatory regimes, which are not really all put together. And there's no real long-term understanding of the risks that there will be, both to public health and to the environment, that would come from groundwater concerns, from water safety concerns and from the public health concerns. So - this hasn't been properly thought through, and commissions are being given for exploration, whuch will then lead to long-term production, without any of this being properly sorted out at the outset. So, for those reasons as well, my committee concluded that there should be a moratorium in respect of shale fracking.
Charlotte Smith: Now, in national parks and other protected areas, you actually want an all-out ban. Why is there a need to go that far?
Joan Walley: Well, I think there is, because we are custodians of the natural countryside - not just the beauty of the natural countryside but also what's there underneath the countryside, and we have to be there in terms of biodiversity, in terms of wildlife, in terms of the air that we breathe and the water that is there. So how can we give a green light for this huge scale of fracking, if we haven't sorted through, step by step, what the individual concerns are, in terms of environmental safety?
Charlotte Smith: The MP Joan Walley. That's it from us - I'm Charlotte Smith. The producer in Bristol is Sally Challoner.