Campaigner outside Downing Street, where a letter signed by 8,000+ people was delivered to the Prime Minister, 1 December 2018. Photo: Carol Jefferson-Towner
Campaigners delivered a letter to Downing Street this afternoon, signed by more than 8,000 people, calling for an immediate halt on fracking in the UK.
The signatories, who include politicians, academics, community groups and residents in affected areas, also demanded a halt to coal bed methane activities and the use of acid to release oil and gas.
The letter said:
“Developing an unconventional oil and gas industry in the UK will result in unacceptable negative impacts on the environment, local communities, public health and the economy.
“The greenhouse gas emissions resulting from this new fossil fuel industry will also increase climate change at a time when the UK needs to be investing heavily in clean renewable energy and moving rapidly towards a low-carbon economy.”
The letter was delivered during a march and rally in London marking the start of the latest UN climate talks in Poland, which aim to decide the ‘rulebook’ for the Paris Climate Agreement.
Steve Mason, of the campaign network Frack Free United, with the 8,000+ signature petition, 1 December 2018. Photo: Frack Free United
The signatories comprised:
- 32 politicians
- 17 academics
- 20 non-governmental organisations
- 39 community groups from across the UK
- 13 Scottish community councils
- 18 international organisations
- 9 leading environmental campaigners
- 7,922 people in UK areas affected by unconventional oil and gas operations
Barry Gardiner MP calling for a ban on fracking in the UK, 1 December 2018. Photo: Frack Free United
Barry Gardiner MP, the shadow secretary of state for international trade, energy and climate change, supported the calls for a fracking ban:
“Action now could not be more important. … We know that rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented change is needed. Why does this government continue to support fracking? It is economically, environmentally and ethically wrong. We must ban fracking, invest in a low-carbon economy and create a net zero future.”
Sian Berry, co-leader of the Green Party, with the letter calling on the prime minister to ban fracking, 1 December 2018. Photo: Frack Free United
Sian Berry, co-leader of the Green Party, said:
“The UK must show political leadership by ditching climate wrecking policies like fracking and airport expansion, and committing to the bold and radical action we need to save the planet.”
Steve Mason from Frack Free United said:
“There is heavy opposition [to fracking] already, with only a few active sites in the UK. Thousands of communities are in the firing line. It’s time to halt fracking in the UK and secure our future energy strategy without impacting thousands of communities across the country and locking us to a fracked gas policy for years to come.”
Categories: Opposition
DRILL OR DROP? 
Barry Gardiner Labour MP for Brent North
London Borough of Brent Pension Fund
Estimated Indirect Fossil Fuel
Fracking Investment Investment £20,608,500.00
(through pooled funds)
Fossil Fuel Investment £37,470,000.00
Great that you of all people should be campaigning for fossil fuel divestment in local government, but what has it actualy got to do with the Shadow SoS?
Do you think he invests the council workers pension funds? No you don’t, not really.
I’ve seen you trot this bs out so many times I have to ask you what is the story here? Why the bile for Labour?
The Labour Party issued the exploratory drilling licences to start the U.K shale Gas industry in 2008…
I think you should take it up with them, if it wasn’t for the Labour Party we wouldn’t be discussing this at all…
The labour Party are right behind Shale Gas investment…
Take The Labour run Greater Manchester Council, they are top of the pile for investing…
Greater Manchester Pension Fund £989,047,680.30 invested in foreign fracking operations, that’s nearly £Billion!!!
Andy Burnham knows exactly where the pension fund is invested as Councillors have regular meetings on management of their funds and even have guidelines which direct ethical forms of investment detailing specifically climate change. I am very surprised Friends of the earth haven’t pushed for a legal hearing on such a contradiction by Local Councils?
Maybe give Andy a ring as Greater Manchesters £Billion makes Brents pension contribution to shale Gas operations look like small change…
But for now places like Lancashire whos Council have £186,958,925.94 invested in foreign fracking activities and £339,925,319.89 in fossil fuel investment keep on making money from these activities abroad but try and stop at all costs it happening in Lancashire???
Conflict of interest? You decide…
‘The labour Party are right behind Shale Gas investment…’ – the last Labour government were hoodwinked the same as you. Thankfully they are now awake – so the answer is NO, The labour Party are NOT right behind Shale Gas investment…; next
‘Andy Burnham knows exactly where the pension fund is invested’ – I hope this is correct for your sake as am sure this statement will make it’s way back to the party involved; wouldn’t want to have egg on your face, would you now?
Don’t worry sher Andy is fully aware of the £Billion invested by Greater Manchester Council in foreign fracking operations…
It has been revealed that UK councils are investing more than £9bn of public money in fracking companies through their pension funds. Despite many councils voting against fracking developments in their own areas, they have failed to pull investment funds out of the industry.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/04/councils-investing-fracking-industry-local-authorities-green-pensions
http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=4213
http://aboutmanchester.co.uk/greater-manchester-councils-investing-1-billion-into-fracking-industry/
https://foe.scot/press-release/revealed-scottish-council-pensions-are-backing-fracking-overseas/
Fire up the Gas stove sher, not for my face I eat them for breakfast…
You mean Labour are right behind Shale Gas investment in foreign Countries…
Paris protesters steal a police assault rifle and burn cars and Christmas trees with 110 injured and more than 200 arrested as clashes and demonstrations continue into the night and spread to Toulouse, Marseille and the Netherlands
It comes a week after rioters brought chaos to Paris in a movement against fuel prices and high living costs
If we continue to import more and more energy this will be the U.K this time next year…
Even if the production price of wind power has decreased over time, its growth, like that of photovoltaic solar energy, has considerably increased the price of electricity for households, as Germany has already seen for quite some time, and as France has begun to see since the implementation of the Grenelle de l’Environnement wind power programme in 2007…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/01/paris-france-protests-yellow-vests-gilets-jaunes-champs-elysees
Ruth & Paul, do you know if all 8,000 of these signatures are from people who have turned off their gas in protest? Or do they think it’s okay to use fracked gas, as long as it is fracked in a distant land and then imported (creating more GHE emissions than domestic fracked gas)? A little clarification would be helpful! Thanks
Barry “we export more gas than we import” Gardiner.
Barry Barry Barry
So big picture of Barry saying no to fracking… Oooooohh!
Barry doesn’t want British shale Gas… No Barry likes Chinese funded Nuclear power stations in the U.K…
Why???
Barry Gardiner, shadow international trade secretary, has received more than £180,000 in staff costs from the firm that acts as chief legal adviser to the Chinese embassy.
At the same time Mr Gardiner, 59, has been employing the son of the firm’s founder in his Westminster office. Parliamentary records show that the donations partly fund the son’s salary.
Mr Gardiner has generally taken a pro-Beijing stance in his shadow portfolios. In his previous role as shadow energy secretary, he supported Chinese involvement in Britain’s nuclear power industry. He has spoken out strongly in favour of the Hinkley Point power station, which is being built in financial partnership with a Chinese state energy giant.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-cash-link-to-top-labour-mp-65d3c92j8
Barry Gardiner Shadow Minister (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) (Energy and Climate Change), Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade
I, too, welcome the Front-Bench Members to their new positions—along with my stalker friend. After putting 25,000 highly skilled jobs at risk and jeopardising 500 much-needed STEM apprenticeships; after offending the Chinese Government and risking £18 billion of investment in the nuclear industry, which is a vital part of our energy mix; and after sending shockwaves through the investment community, which now thinks that the Prime Minister does not understand the meaning of fine investment decisions, does the Secretary of State agree with those in the industry who say that the Prime Minister’s cautious approach now looks more like dithering?
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2016-09-13a.749.3
Please feel free to watch Barry in action in the video, skip the Harry potter stuff if you want and go to 09:25 mins and listen to Barry on pension funds and keep in mind as I stated earlier that:
Barry Gardiner Labour MP for Brent North
London Borough of Brent Pension Fund
Estimated Indirect Fossil Fuel
Fracking Investment Investment £20,608,500.00
(through pooled funds)
Fossil Fuel Investment £37,470,000.00
It’s your choices far more than your abilities that show who you really are Barry…
We know what Barry Gardener’s and Labour’s choices will be if the less than inspirational Brexit deal means the right return to the opposition benches once again.
He announced it 2 years ago and has repeated on numerous occasions, Labour will ban fracking and unconventional oil extraction (AKA naturally fractured conventional resources, or Weald exploration)).
He keeps repeating it so there shouldn’t be any whining about it when the day comes.
Here’s what he said at Leith Hill Protection Camp in March:
“The way in which we moved the policy from a policy that said a moratorium to one that said ban, was quite simply because technically people were able to say well it is possible to do this with environmental safeguards however difficult it may have been to apply those safeguards in any given situation and however much companies might have got round it, technically it might have been possible but the moment that you have the Paris agreement and the knowledge that the world was now set on a course of regulation that would bring us down to as close to 1.5 degrees above the historic background as possible and that we had 5 times more oil and gas reserves identified than the world could use if it was to meet that target that was the time at which you had to say no, we now need to be setting in place, with clarity, the targets, and this is not an anti business thing, if you’re an oil and gas business, if you’re an energy company, you need to know that over the next 30 years (or whatever it is) you’re going to get a return on your investment so what we were saying to the industry is you will not get a return on this investment and that was the point of making that announcement. We’re not the government at the moment we weren’t able to say “you’ve got to stop tomorrow” but what we can say is look we’ve given you due notice if we become the government in a few years time be on notice that if you make that investment now you’re going to be left with stranded assets. And that was the best way that we could signal to those companies that this was a really stupid investment for their financial committees to determine. And that absolutely we have to get the world on the right trajectory and we should not be investing in fossil fuels we should be investing in renewables we should be growing an economy that is a low carbon moving to a zero carbon economy. And you don’t do that unless you give out the right message and that was something that even in opposition we could do and actually the Paris Agreement enabled us to make that signal because the world then had set the regulatory framework for achieving it.”
(Other pro renewable parties are available, the value of your investments may go down as well as up).
In the above video Barry states “we have to get the WORLD on the right trajectory” 04:00 minutes in…
So why are Local Councils investing £9,000,000,000 in foreign fracking operations???
For the record the sofa Barry is sitting on has a typical amount adding up to 9 litres of oil and Gas products in it, we also wouldn’t be able to see or hear Barry without those plastic products waved in his face…
Barry didn’t mention his Chinese Nuclear friends though…
Kishy. You may want to listen to the French people’s reply to the question of what they are protesting about – the latest tax if ‘just the straw that broke the camel’s back’; it is not just about the tax but everything that has led to this point [Macron’ policies and austerity]…you have yet again taking something out of context for your own material gain and job security; shame
Your wrong sher it is all about the fuel tax…
https://www.euronews.com/2018/11/16/what-s-all-the-fuss-about-the-french-fuel-tax-hikes-euronews-answers
Nope; try again…stop wasting digital ink.
60+ millions in UK didn’t sign. So the petition is meaningless.
Not quite as meaningless as this one though TW? https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/104792