So the first fracked gas has arrived and Scotland has got the jitters. It’s a carbon fuel, burn it and it heats up the planet, it causes chaos and dustbowls and refugees. Yet no one ever says we should stop drilling for oil. Go figure
It’s the word, isn’t it? Fracking. Who wants to be fracked? Not the Scottish Government for sure.
Invited to attend the arrival of the first fr a ck ed gas at Grange mouth refinery last week, not a single minister or representative was available.
The political worry is that if you show any encouragement to the process of getting gas out of the ground by pumping in high-pressure water, then you’ll be fracked at the polls.
Why a Government who promised Scotland independence on the wealth of oil drilled from under the sea so hates gas flushed out from the ground appears a bit odd.
The gas under our feet might be worth billions to the Scottish economy and employ thousands but while North Sea oil was good, fracked gas is bad.
The annual economic report for the North Sea was out last week and it’s as black as a penguin in an oil slick.
Operators in the oil and gas sector are running major debts – close to £3billion – while job losses since 2014 are put at 120,000.
The boom years are not simply on hold, they are long gone and never to return.
The number of job losses includes associated jobs across the economy, so it’s not just in Aberdeen or just in the energy sector that the pain is felt. When oil goes, we all suffer economically.
So you would think that when an alternative job creator and money- maker comes along, people would jump on board.
But no – Scotland is consciously choosing not to convert its natural assets into billions even at a time of austerity.
It just shows how far the world has turned since the first oil came ashore in the 70s.
Back then, Scots drove Hillman Imps and yearned for the big cars and larger life of America. Now, the car as a status symbol is diminishing as we yearn for a planet which can survive.
The good, tested and proven reason not to get the gas out from under the Central Belt is because it’s a carbon fuel which produces carbon dioxide when used, which in turn traps heat in the atmosphere.
Burn this stuff and the world gets hotter. A hotter world means chaos for humans – farming land reduced to dust, water supplies drying up, shoreline communities submerged, millions of people turned into refugees.
Scary stuff – but it’s not clear it is this apocalyptic vision which keeps politicians awake at night.
While the Scottish Government are rightly committed to renewable energy sources, ministers don’t talk of a post-carbon economy or recommend we stop drilling for oil.
In fact, the Government are very keen on adding to carbon emissions elsewhere – the First Minister re-opened the Dalzell Steel works in Motherwell last week.
She could find time in her diary for this because we all like steel; proper jobs where real things are produced and old skills kept alive.
All of which is fine and well but steel production is one of the worst producers of carbon gases. The industry admits that to make a ton of steel, nearly two tons of CO2 goes into the air.
No mention of that when Nicola Sturgeon was smiling under her hard hat at the launch.
Politicians like some carbon energy sources and dislike others, the way people choose Smarties.
That’s why several anecdotal arguments against fracking are kept alive – that flames will leap from your kitchen tap, the earth will quake and children will be poisoned.
The Scottish Government’s own scientific advisers have sifted through the scare stories and found none stands up to proper scrutiny. Yet even professors can’t convince the SNP or Labour that fracking is OK.
Why? Because of the big contradiction at the heart of our lives. We all know the planet is the only home we have and we’d be fools to burn it but so much of our life depends on carbon that we can’t think of giving it up.
While Scotland frets over what to do, the American economy thrives on the profits from fracking.
If you wanted to end food banks, build new hospitals and protect welfare, the obvious thing to do would be to frack.
If voters cared as much for new opportunities in fracking as they do for old industries such as steel, there would be no argument here.
Seems to me we either plan for a post- carbon economy and get serious about that or we take one last chance on heating up the world.
But playing pick- and-mix is a cop-out on both the economy and the environment.