Fracking fury
Petrochemical giant Ineos and Aberdeen firm Reachcsg are taking Scottish ministers to court over their decision to convert a moratorium on the controversial gas extraction technique into an indefinite ban. So Ineos fracking gas to burn will have an adverse effect on climate change while Ineos burning fracked gas shipped across the Atlantic will not.
Paul Holyrood We do need fracking, of course, intelligently, carefully regulated for safety, like commercial airlines, or we voluntarily, without good reason, close down a source of natural wealth. Even the Greens know that Scotland cannot prosper otherwise, though perhaps they are rich and do not care for the rest of us.
charles wardrop The Scottish Government took this decision because it didn’t know what the answer was, so it applied the precautionary principle. My main concern is that messages from FOE Scotland are often from the heart and driven by popular science. Decisions like this should be based on sound science.
James Peach Even if they can prove that the decision to ban fracking was based on erroneous technical data and analysis what will they achieve? Can a court of law overturn a ban voted on by a majority in the Scottish Parliament?
City Loon If the Scot Gov wished to ban it then they should have done it for all the right reasons or at least some proper reasons, but absolutely not to keep themselves in power by sucking up to the Greens. They should have allowed a limited go-ahead to see how things went and to establish if environmental concerns were justified.
Generalcuster The Scottish people are overwhelmingly against fracking – financially it doesn’t justify the environmental costs and it’s an industry that’s dying while the real money and sustainability for Scotland is in renewables (most other countries think so, too).
Dunnomuch These numpties are quite happy to dump millions of tonnes of concrete and steel on our hills, carve thousands of miles of new tracks but are complaining bitterly about some tiny little wellheads.
Ben Palmer ... and if they’d just discovered there was oil under the North Sea they’d have banned extracting that as well.
Uncle Monty