LETTER: there is no guarantee that fracking is safe

I am appalled by the supplement that Ineos paid to include in local newspapers last week.

In my view, it was a propaganda exercise intended to influence the people of Nottinghamshire into believing fracking is safe and good for the country.

In my view, fracking is dangerous to health, the global climate, water supplies and it will blight the local environment.

The supplement mentions fracking will be safer in the UK than in the USA where the following effects have occurred, including: earth tremors; the pollution of water supplies, the escape of methane (a gas which has 21 times more impact on global warming than carbon dioxide); and concerns about adverse effect on people’s health.

No amount of regulation can guarantee the process will be safe in the UK.

What appals me the most about the supplement is Stephen Tindale, and by association Ineos, in my view do not support local democracy. He welcomes the Government decision to give “Cuadrilla permission to begin fracking for shale gas in Lancashire.” He accepts “it is legitimate for national government sometimes to overturn decisions of local government in issues of national importance”.

I do not believe fracking is of national importance as many other countries and US states have either banned the process, or introduced a moratorium until further research on the process has been undertaken.

Instead, I believe local people should decide the future of the environment in which they live and not be dictated to by Westminster, especially as a greater percentage of people living in the UK do not support fracking compared with those that do and the differentiation between the two groups increases in areas which are threatened by fracking.

Every effort should be made to develop renewable energy sources, this does not mean just wind and solar power, there is also tidal and wave energy.

There is great potential here. It is estimated tidal power alone could generate 20 per cent of the UK’s energy needs.

The Government should be supporting these sources more than it is.

Instead, in its 2015 manifesto, it pledged to give “local people” a “final say” on wind-farm applications.

Why the double standards on local democracy?

Helen Hartnell

West Stockwith