Extreme Energy is coming to the South Downs and it’s time to get involved. Conventional oil peaked back in 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Then, as prices rose, the energy companies rose to the occasion and started to investigate unconventional sources of fossil fuel.
Now we’ve entered the age of what’s being called Extreme Energy. This environmental nightmare includes mountain top removal, tar sands, deep sea drilling, Arctic extraction and, now, the latest guise is hydraulic fracturing, or fracking as it has come to be known.
Fracking has been happening in parts of the US for the last 20 years, mainly in out of the way places, where farmers in the Midwest, struggling to make a living, have given licenses for drilling for shale gas deep under the earth. A recent film, Gasland, shows how many of these farmers now regret their decision as their groundwater and their drinking water has become contaminated.
Fracking involves drilling about 1km into the earth and then about 1km horizontally. The layers of rock, or shale, are then blown up using underground charges. Water, sand and a toxic mix of chemicals, including benzene, are then pumped at high pressure into the rock, releasing the fossil fuel gas which is captured at the surface.
The good news is that fracking hasn’t yet really started in the UK. One test drill has been carried out near Blackpool, and that caused two earthquakes that were felt at the surface. But prospecting oil companies have bought extraction rights to whole swathes of England, including the South East, where there is, apparently a lot of shale gas. Cuadrilla, which was the company responsible for the Blackpool earthquakes, has got planning permission to test drill at Balcombe, 15 miles from Lewes, which is at the headwaters of the river Ouse and very near the Ardingly reservoir. Lewes Against Fracking is holding their first meeting next Friday 10 February at 7.30 pm at the Subud House. And later today 6-8pm a there’s a conference about Extreme Energy at the University of Sussex; speakers include the amazing ecocide laywer Polly Higgins.
Extreme energy isn’t just an abstract think happening out there. It’s intimately connected with our way of life. It’s about finding new sources of energy to keep civilization on the road. It’s the reason behind oil wars in the middle east and it’s why the mainstream are ignoring climate chaos. There is, just, still a way out of all this and it involves a double helix of activism and solutions. One strand is about getting informed and involved as active citizens. The second is about organising ourselves to make a sane transition away from fossil fuels.
onight Ovesco, Lewes’s renewable energy company, features in a special preview showing of In Transition 2.0, showing at the Town Hall at 8pm. It’s free. Hope to see you there.
