John Ashton. Photo: Refracktion
A former climate diplomat told anti-fracking campaigners in Lancashire they were close to winning their battle against shale gas.
Speaking outside Cuadrilla’s Preston New Road site near Blackpool on the 454th day of protests, John Ashton said:
“You have kept this flame burning so that when this issue is decided it can only be decided in one way.”
Mr Ashton, formerly the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change at the Foreign Office, told the crowd that had gathered despite near-zero temperatures:
“We have almost won this struggle. We are so close now. But to win this struggle in the country, we have to win it here first. People up and down the country are with you.
“People will come here and remember that this is where the tide was turned.”
John Ashton. Photo: Refracktion
Describing the campaigners as “the real heroes”, Mr Ashton said:
“We’re not here to defend a field. We’re here to defend our country because what happens in that field over the next few months is going to be important for our country, important for our lives and the lives or our children.
“Do we want a country where the choices that are made are choices that are made with us or choices that are inflicted upon us? That’s what this whole moment in our history is about.
“The struggle over fracking is the struggle over whether we do politics with us or politics that gets done to us.”
John Ashton (left). Photo: Refracktion
Mr Ashton criticised the shale gas industry for promoting itself as a solution to climate change.
“They said ‘We can be in favour of fixing the climate and we can be in favour of fracking’.
“For six years, I was Her Majesty’s Special Envoy on Climate Change.
“The one thing I do know something about is climate change. Take it from me: you can be in favour of fracking or you can be in favour of climate change but you certainly can’t be in favour of doing both at the same time.”
Jamie Peters (left). Still from video by Talk Fracking
“Front line of climate struggle”
The rally also heard from Jamie Peters, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth. He said:
“One of the most important things you can do for climate change is stopping the fracking industry.”
He said people facing shale gas applications elsewhere in the England were drawing inspiration from Lancashire.
“What you’re doing is making a difference.
“You’re eating into their profit margin, you’re slowing down their work
“That’s what really terrifies the industry. You were not part of the plan for the fracking industry.”
Mr Peters said the shale gas industry was “falling apart politically”. It had, he said, admitted it was not getting a social licence.
“They know they’re not going to get the support that they need for this.
“They know there’s going to be an uprising like this. There’s going to be a Preston New Road everywhere they go.
“You are the front line of the fracking struggle but also the front line of climate change struggle.”
Categories: Opposition
DRILL OR DROP? 
This is what the frackers never understood.
Most English folk don’t give a damn about owt except one single thing. Their own 10 square yards.
You’d think that the phrase “an Englishmans home is his castle” would have given the imbeciles a clue.
Essentially the fracking industry is attacking the one thing that English folk care about and are prepared to fight for.
This is why they never ever stood a chance.
Since the very beginning of this idiocy it’s been like watching a slow motion death.
What an absolute waste of immense amounts of money.
‘Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek’. Barack Obama
Hi Sherwulfe, I looked up the quote and it ordinated from Alice Walker, an African American lady.
That was probably where Barak Obama sourced it.
Yes He Did.
Well it seems Alice Walker was also quoting from poet June Jordan who wrote “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/june-jordan
So much beautiful talent in the world, we can’t do better than to learn how to act humanely from these amazing people.
The sheer humanity of such people will always beat hate and totalitarian insanity.
Yes We Can.
Yes we can, yes we can!
Barack Obama whilst in power allowed the biggest expansion in Shale gas exploitation in his countries history
Ruth, I believe that you have misstated the title of your piece. It should read, “Lancashire campaigners winning the battle against fracking, say anti-fracking backslappers.”
Seriously? Right behind this guy they are horizontally drilling and getting ready to frack the site. They’ve pulled core samples which purport to demonstrate economic viability. And he claims to be winning? Perhaps he needs another cup of coffee, because he is clearly not awake.
BTW, it’s just slightly ironic that Mr. Joe Climate change says that you can’t be in favor of fracking and be in favor of doing something about climate change and yet the country that leads the industrialized world in fighting climate change and reducing GHG emissions is accomplishing that feat thanks to fracking!
Go Mr. Joe Climate change! You’re on your game today!
The win is because former chair of ukog David Lenin-gas (get it haha not funny) has new toys to play with and new ways to abuse influence against the masses. He is now full speed ahead with marijuana legalization intent on becoming the next UK druglord. Aligned with Soros, the vote to allow ‘medicinal’ use is in parliament this week. From 20 years of dealing with marajuana, California USA is in a bankrupt state opioid abuse costs billions and only one person benefits… The guy who wants the UN in charge of a one world government. I have resources….
“You have kept this flame burning”. Well, he is a bit ahead of the reality, but will be correct shortly.
Anyone notice how during a cold spell Global Warming disappears and Climate Change takes over?
Meanwhile, the Beast from the East is building, time clocks are being over-ridden, thermostats turned up, wholesale gas prices up 14% last week which will filter through to bills shortly, plumbers will be awaiting the call outs and NHS will be on alert. But, at least, those local to PNR will be okay, if they haven’t spent their “gas-fall” on other items.
Clearly from that post you have no idea what “climate change” politically renamed from “global warming” really means.
The results of the effects of anthropogenic and natural cyclic fluctuations causes a rapid acceleration of fluctuations that increase year by year.
We have seen in the last fifty years or so, this unprecedented rate of acceleration. The result of that is the atmosphere and he oceans and the temperatures fluctuate more and more, to the point where the ambient planetary weather system equilibrium “flips” into a complete change in both base line temperatures and atmospheric expansion and such things as the gulf stream Humboldt current and the jet stream reach breaking point.
All these systems act together, the planets atmosphere and aqua sphere are interdependent for their stability.
The earth is warming up after the last ice age 12800 years ago and this process has been gradual with the odd rapid change.
What anthropogenic activity has done is to destroy the heat and CO2 “sinks” these being the absorption effects of the vast forests, the algae and the oceans ability to absorb CO2.
All these the human race has pillaged right across the planet.
The result of that is that these “sinks” being the absorption capability to slow down climate fluctuations no longer work so well.
So temperature fluctuations, high winds, local floods, unprecedented highs and lows in temperature occur rapidly one after the other. The weather systems then produce record high temperatures, record low temperatures, record wind speeds, record floods and droughts, ocean level rise and fall, high and low pressure fluctuations, acidisation of the oceans, destruction of the ozone layer, ocean and atmospheric currents are pulled north and south of the equator, the poles begin to melt, permafrost melts and releases trapped methane, the deep ocean beds release similar trapped methane in frozen form and we are back into the Great Permian Extinction system again. 90% of all life on land and worse in the oceans.
That last great Permian extinction was in effect natures “reset” and far from slowing down or even reversing that process, what are we doing to ensure our survival and that of all life on the planet?
Are we working with nature to strengthen and live within the earths natural energy systems?
Are we building intelligent systems of life and economics and energy systems that enhance and preserve natures million year heat and carbon sinks to ensure a future fo all our children?
No, we are allowing a few greedy psychopaths to destroy the earths natural systems to the point where they can no longer save us from our own folly.
And we are doing it to ourselves in the name of a few digits on a computer screen?
We are tearing the earth apart to grub up the last of it’s resources to fill the empty souls of greed and avarice. Not to feed the human race, but to profit from it’s need, profit is not fulfilling a need, profit is greed and exploiting need, the equivalent of Oxfam and UN personal demanding sex for food.
We are allowing pollution to destroy what last few oceanic and atmospheric and life sinks that remain, we are filling our oceans full of poisons and plastics that destroy oceanic life which sustains billions of other creatures, we cut down the forests and destroy ancient woodlands that contain the last few natural heat and CO2 sinks left to give us oxygen and to remove pollutants.
We despoil the earth to dredge up even more fossil fuels and gases that will eventually find their way back into our environment and polluted land, water and skies.
And yet some of us understand that the earth gives us all our energy needs quite freely, any intelligent being could see that without even half a brain cell.
So how is it that the rest of you cannot?
Back in the seventies there was the move to develop SETI. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
Perhaps we should have been searching here on earth for terrestrial intelligence, because it is obvious that if there ever was such a thing here, we sure ain’t it.
No martin climate change, global warming and stupidity are right here and if we dont pull the plug on more polluting fossil fuel profiteering and follow the intelligent natural way to produce our energy now.
We will go down in the history of some other emergent species as the dumbest fracks ever.
I am anti-fracking and think Climate Change is TOTAL IDIOCY.. to think that the number one cause in everyones life should be to try and alter the Earths temperature or try and reduce co2 when methane from cows and fracking (methane blow offs) is the larger issue. So when people use the words ‘climate change’ my mind flips on the ‘ignore’ switch. There are MORE IMPORTANT and impactful social causes to deal with. Like maybe funding water desalinization & purification plants. Like major funding into battery technology, developing oil wells that dont require horizontal drilling, hydroponics to feed people (not gmo), microbiome & drug addition, or preventing one person from controlling world influence… so.many.issues.
The solution to ‘anthro-pogenic’ warming and resource depletion is either instituting a world-wide 1 child policy for the next 100 years no exceptions, or… dare I say it… war. Massive population reduction was certainly a key point of the Sierra Club around 2002 before they onboarded ‘birth control’ and ‘abortion’ which obviously is not forced upon people in middle east and some asian nations…. why???
Hells teeth! Eugenics anonymous too?
Ahh, ze old methane from cows ploy too eh?
Hundreds of millions of years of vast herds of anything from dinosaurs to mammals blackening the continents with numbers so vast they ran into billions and not a sign of rapid climate change?
Even with our genocidal extinction of all such herds these claims still emerge as if we are oh so pure and don’t contribute so much as a sneeze in a hurricane (clean version) towards climate change?
It’s the rate of change of climate that characterises the present anthropogenic onslaught on the ecology of the earth.
Always fun to watch these fracking clones trying to insert their divide and conquer tactics declaring “I am anti-fracking”! Then let themselves down by trotting out all those frack earth potty puerile policies?
Dead giveaway. No one ever says anything so crass.
What next?
Claims of being 17?
New desperation strategy?
Do you really think that such climate change denying and totalitarian eugenics rubbish is not so transparent and disingenuous that it cannot be spotted a mile off?
Oh well, it just goes to prove just what lengths these types are prepared to go to reserve their insane oligarchic hegemony.
Sad really.
Wow talk about pure emotional response out of LEFT field. My anti-fracking record speaks for itself, google my posts. Still your ‘religion’ is pure madness- luckily sane people don’t have to onboard that fight. There are good SANE reasons to be anti-fracking. Climate change is NOT ONE OF THEM.
I was laughing dear, slight difference.
Yes it is, to deny it is simply ignoring everything that is going down at the moment all across the world. Trump would be pleased?
Dear dear, if you want to crow about “emotionality” then perhaps the comment you posted should not have included “shouting” such as that post did and continued here?
What did you say so calmly and scientifically that climate change is? Oh yes “TOTAL IDIOCY” Is that a scientific term? Or an emotional response? Not one i had come across before? Climate change by its simple definition, is a fact of life, it happens every day, are you objecting to the anthropogenic cause of climate change? Or just all of it?
If, however, you have any proof whatsoever that the present undeniable rapid acceleration is anthropogenic or indeed a natural climate change is indeed some sort of, what? Fabrication? Lie? Misunderstanding? Illusion? What?
Then perhaps please tell us all right here all about it, i will be fascinated to see it? I imagine thousands of scientists would be waiting on tenterhooks for such revelations?
But, please, do me a favour? No more emotional shouting? Makes my screen ache?
Sadly ‘c’ war will occur naturally; as are artificially sustained cereal crops are no longer viable and populations move resulting in first conflict, then war. It has already begun, speeded up by the ability to see ‘golden paved cities’ via the internet and well trodden paths serviced by people traffickers.
It’s like the oil and gas debate; you can put forward your small poo sticks to sail under the bridge, but ultimately they end up lost in the vast ocean. In the meantime the climate is indeed changing due to human intervention through fossil fuels, intensive farming and disregard. Those who have studied climate change are now calling out for a more aggressive change, the softly softly approach is not working due to misconceptions, investment and greed. The cry is ‘we are gonna die for sure at this rate’.
It is however every individual’s responsibility to make the changes, and because of those who refuse or abuse, who still acknowledge the ’emperor’s new clothes’, work triply hard. I don’t know if we will make it; only time will tell.
John Anderson, as you well know an administration makes the decisions, BA was thwarted at every turn with his reforms. It’s not about the gang, the wisdom was from the individual. BA signed the US up to the Climate Accord, which sadly Trump has reversed to keep his buddies happy.
Interesting comments c. Water is certainly going to be an increasing problem in many more areas of the world, and population growth will be at least equal. I can see that either/both will be the likely cause of the next major conflict.
The problem with current trends in population growth is that much of the increase is into what we would term middle class, and that means they have the financial resource, and desire, to consume. Any political class who try to stop that will be removed, unless they reduce them to peasants again and that will end up with the same result, but a little less quickly.
UK will be on the edge of such global movement and unable to change the direction of travel. Therefor, being self sufficient and secure in sources of input, particularly energy, might become even more critical.
More eugenics?
Heavens, it seems to be the last world war totalitarian imperatives are emerging all over again?
Climate change deniers and eugenicists?
Blinkers off, blinkers on, blinkers off, blinkers on……
A lovely idea Martin, but sadly if you’ve got it,someone who hasn’t will come and take it away from you….
The best solution is to share the planet’s resources, promote responsibility at individual and governance level and above all listen. So many things consumed are not needed and are tossed into the trash whilst many starve or are slaves of ‘regimes’.
Whilst we hold on to our bag of sweeties, someone will be plotting to take them at the first opportunity. For the first time, renewable energy can free the people from intimidation and economic slavery, no wonder those sitting on iron thrones and their sock-puppet minions resist.
War to reduce population?
And who benefits from war?
Countries are destroyed, their populations scattered to the four winds and stronger countries and corporations move in and asset strip the lot? This has happened with Iraq and Libya, and Yugoslavia and is being attempted with Syria now.
Has any of those actually improved anything? Peoples travel half way across the world looking for sanctuary and quickly find themselves trapped in criminal exploitation, sex and child slavery, and being used as political pawns in the emigrations and immigration markets. Not to mention the aid agencies activities being compromised by some of their own staff?
People become just more victims to profiteering and exploitation, that propagates the ongoing disasters across the planet, nothing is solved, not even the frankly psychopathic cry for population reduction.
War is not and has never been an answer to anything, it just propogates more war, then all the wars join together. War is a suspension of civilisation and should never be proposed as a strategy for any social or political or religious, or financial motive, war is insane, and that is all it is.
hear, hear!
Nothing wrong with self sufficiency unless the cost is even .00000001 % of a chance that water and crops could be poisioned by food chain transport of chemicals. That is total and permanent devastation and so the security of self sufficiency does not outway the insecurity. Fracking is not community friendly whereas perhaps traditional non horizontal extraction can be. It is not a risk worth taking. Governments actualy desire population growth to cover ever increasing budgets and the aging population. Overpopulation is not a eugenics issue- it is a real, sane and present issue.. look at China. And yes it is hard to argue against the positive environmental impacts of killing 4 billion people off.. less resource consumption, green house gasses, demand for oil etc. all around. It isn’t ethical, but extreme population control can be achieved… As far as the middle class goes, there are a few influential people about who control pharmaceuticals/opiods, marajuana, food production (Monsanto) and have passed around the idea of a world-tax for multinational corporations.. redistributing wealth is the goal… Intersectionalism is one mans game and he just happens to be anti-oil. Fun stuff.
Nothing wrong with self sufficiency as an idealism but has never existed in practice; someone has always got some thing that someone else wants. In the event of a crisis – Irish potato famine – the notion of self sufficiency strikes fear though many hearts.
Co-operation and trade work best for the common good; as long as greed does not upset the balance; again an idealism but one closest to the tribe society we know and love.
Well said John