What the Frack is Going on?

I must confess that my disappointment at learning of the advance of the shale frackers into my backyard rapidly morphed into the miserable realisation that I am going to have to learn about a whole new energy technology. Unwanted technical knowledge is the inevitable lot of the environmental activist. The shale oil drilling has reached public consciousness because of the suggestion that the operations of the Cuadrilla company near Blackpool has caused two minor earthquakes. In my backyard there are threats of similar developments by a previously unknown company called Coastal Oil and Gas which has already submitted plans to begin drilling at Llandow industrial estate in the Vale of Glamorgan.

There is limited information available about the Bridgend-based company Coastal Oil and Gas, although local campaigners claim that it is a husband-and-wife team which is fronting up a major investment from a larger Australian company. Certainly, whatever the past activities of the company they appear to have left no internet trace. The difficult question for me is precisely how this company came to own the rights to what is a natural resource. My best information so far is that, in our bizarrely feudal system, all land in the UK, and the resources in it, belong to the Crown. So can we assume that Gerwyn Williams, MD of Coastal Oil and Gas, has taken a trip to the palace with an envelope of greasy tenners? Answers to this question would be very welcome.

Although the quantities of gas available appear to be fairly limited, the race is on to profit from this latest energy boom. In South Wales this boon for a tiny number of people while the majority bear the cost has haunting echoes of the history of coal. It was a small number of English coal barons who grew fat, while the working people of Wales suffered and died in the pits. This time around there should be no permission given to exploit natural resources unless the value of those resources is shared fairly amongst the local community.

You can post your opposition to fracking and support the call for a moratorium until a participatory democratic process guaranteeing environmental safety and fair sharing of the proceeds here.
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Shit: We're All in it Together!

Amongst many excellent regular events that take place in Stroud are the coffee-house discussions, where, over biodynamic refreshments, we put the world to rights. The quality of the presentations is excellent and for people who think they know it all already (or is that just me?), it is amazing how much you learn every month.

This month's theme was water. The presentations were wide-ranging: water as a cause of war, a source of disease, a fascinating part of our local landscape. The most important message was that 'Water is an energy issue'. Some 5% of world energy is used in pumping our water . . . and sewage.

You can't talk water, it seems, without also talking dirty. We learned how it is fairly recently that we have used water as profligately as we do now, largely as a channel for taking our wastes out of sight and out of smelling distance, thus effectively removing them from our minds. But not from the environment, of course. For they remain just a short distance from us, in rivers and seas, decomposing and providing a friendly home to bacteria and viruses.

Yet just as I have had to learn on the farm that dung is our friend, so can we form a much closer relationship with our wastes. It emerged that many who were at the discussion already proudly fill piss-pots which they use as compost activators. Human 'solid waste' still seems hedged around with taboos, as I have felt impelled to head it round with quotation marks. It can provide excellent fertiliser when treated suitably.

The solutions to the problem of water and waste are very local indeed. The model appears to be to turn your home into a water recycling unit. By taking the rainwater from the roof and the barely soiled water pumped to your home and circulating them you can minimise the need to bring water in and send sewage out.

Why aren't more people doing this? The pressure of the market and of making profits appears to be the culprit again. It is at the points that water enters and leaves the home that profits can be made, hence the political pressure to keep us all tied into a vast, bureaucratic water system rather than playing our role as part of Nature's water cycle.

So, a lot was learned, although the content of the learning was perhaps something we already knew. The economic system Marx called capitalism is just not a very good way of organising things, and taking more responsibility and doing things on a smaller scale can usually work better. A simple, but important message that is being relearned through various more or less savoury media.

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