The Guardian reports on UK energy and climate minister Ed Davey’s lame effort to espouse the fracking industry’s “Our CO2 is OK” line:
Fracking for shale gas is not a “great evil” and can act as a bridge to a “green future” in the UK as long as it is properly regulated, according to the energy and climate secretary Ed Davey.
In a major speech in defence of exploiting domestic shale gas he said that Britain can extract the gas without endangering the country’s climate targets.
But the energy and climate secretary’s comments were accompanied by a warning in a report from his department’s chief scientist that exploiting shale gas in the UK will cause global greenhouse gas emissions to rise without an international deal on climate change.
Davey said the debate over shale gas has been marred by exaggeration and misunderstanding. “You would be forgiven for thinking that it represents a great evil; one of the gravest threats that has ever existed to the environment, to the health of our children and to the future of the planet.
“On the other side of the coin, you could have been led to believe that shale gas is the sole answer to all our energy problems … Both of these position are just plain wrong.
“Gas, as the cleanest fossil fuel, is part of the answer to climate change, as a bridge in our transition to a green future, especially in our move away from coal,” said Davey, at a speech at the Royal Society in London. He added the report showed that “with the right safeguards in place the net effect on national emission from UK shale gas production will be relatively small when compared to the use of other sources of gas.”
Any policy justified by its climate affect is guilty until proven innocent.
In this case, the discussion seems to be among government officials rather than involving the fracking developers.
It’s true that some energy developers have fallen into the “eat me last” syndrome and that’s a bad idea. Every energy developer should realize that the watermelons (as opposed to real environmental stewards) are their mutual enemies. Nuclear and hydro and coal and methane may compete but the watermelons intend to end all of them.