London (AFP) – Britain’s Labour government plans to permanently ban fracking, a highly controversial method of extracting fossil fuels, due to its environmental impact, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Wednesday. Although there is a moratorium on fracking already in place due to concerns it could trigger earthquakes, fracking is not yet fully banned in law.
“Let’s ban fracking,” Miliband told the Labour party conference in Liverpool. “It will trash our climate commitments, and it is dangerous and deeply harmful to our natural environment,” he said. His comments came after hard-right party Reform UK, which has surged in the polls, pledged to bring back the practice if it came to power. Miliband slammed Reform UK’s firebrand leader Nigel Farage in his address as “dangerous” and a “snake oil Tory city boy”.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is used to extract oil and gas from shale rock deep underground. Environmentalists argue the process contaminates water supplies, hurts wildlife, causes earthquakes, and contributes to global climate change. It is banned in many countries, including France and Germany, but has boomed in the United States. The Conservatives introduced a moratorium on the practice in England in 2019 after an Oil and Gas Authority report found it was not possible to accurately predict its potential for triggering earthquakes.
However, former prime minister Liz Truss briefly lifted the ban in 2022, sparking huge opposition from environmentalists and even some members of her own parliamentary party. The practice was swiftly halted again by her successor Rishi Sunak. Greenpeace UK welcomed Miliband’s speech on Wednesday, saying that fracking is “polluting, deeply unpopular, and… it’ll do nothing to lower energy bills.”
Miliband also used his speech to accuse US billionaire Elon Musk of enabling disinformation on his X social media platform and “inciting violence on our streets.” “We have a message for Elon Musk, get the hell out of our politics and our country,” Miliband said of the SpaceX and Tesla CEO who has repeatedly criticised Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government and spread dubious anti-immigration claims about Britain. Musk remotely addressed a far-right protest in London last month, in which he called for the Labour government to be ousted.
© 2024 AFP
