14 DAY TRIAL // This June 4, United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron received a rather unexpected and not at all pleasant home visit. Thus, the folks who dropped by the Minister's home in Oxfordshire uninvited were Greenpeace activists.
Media reports say that these environmentalists arrived at David Cameron's country home in South East England looking to convince the Prime Minister that hydraulic fracturing was a threat to the environment and public health.
The protest was the result of rumors that the United Kingdom government was looking to give fracking companies permission to drill under people's home without having to ring the doorbell and ask for approval first, Business Green informs.
“It's been dubbed the fracking law – and put simply, it'll clear the way for fracking firms to drill for shale gas under our homes, even when they don't have permission,” environmentalist Simon Clydesdale writes in a blogpost published just before the protest.
“Fracking – or hydraulic fracturing – is a destructive and dirty process using a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to blast rocks and release trapped gas and oil,” the Greenpeace activist goes on to argue.
While at David Cameron's country home in Oxfordshire, the greenheads who took part in today's protest pretended to turn it into a fracking site. Thus, they set up security fencing around the home and did not shy away from voicing their complaints while at work.
“We'll be setting up our own fracking site, right outside the prime ministers front door -- letting him know just what it looks like when his garden is turned into an industrial zone,” Simon Clydesdale explains this stunt.
By the looks of it, the environmentalists even went as far as to attach a sign reading “We apologize for any inconvenience we may cause while we frack under your home” to their fencing, folks who witnessed the protest unfold say.
High officials in the United Kingdom are now looking to further develop the country's fracking industry in an attempt to boost energy security, limit the reliance on imported gas, and move towards phasing out coal.
Environmentalists do not see things quite like this, and they maintain that hydraulic fracturing stands to cause noteworthy environmental pollution and push climate change and global warming into overdrive by triggering an increase in the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
“Fracking won't deliver energy on a meaningful scale for years, if ever, by which time we'll need to have moved away from dirty fossil fuels and towards high-tech clean power if we're to head off dangerous climate change,” Simon Clydesdale says.
Furthermore, “As ministers chase their imaginary energy El Dorado, the real solutions to boost our energy security, like slashing energy waste and backing renewables, are being sidelined. We'll all pay a price for their shale craze.”