READER LETTER: Fracking - This is not the only way to provide energy

In response to James Spence of Worksop (Guardian November 25), of course we need energy.
NWGU Fracking protest at the Bassetlaw Council Planning Committee. David LarderNWGU Fracking protest at the Bassetlaw Council Planning Committee. David Larder
NWGU Fracking protest at the Bassetlaw Council Planning Committee. David Larder

But we can choose the way we make it. We could have had free electricity back in 1901 when Tesla patented in the US getting it from radiant energy in the air. However big money talked in two ways. His factory mysteriously burned to the ground and the big oil companies pushed hard to get the developing car industry using oil to make into petrol.

Now we have the big energy companies making that the small people pay through the nose.

We do not need to rely on extreme energy sources such as methane from cracked open shale thousands of feet below ground. I believe methane is hugely more damaging to our planet than even burning coal. The high-pressure water is a total waste of pure water brought in by tanker after tanker through small villages. This is mixed with lubricating poisons and threatens sandstone reservoirs that we use for drinking water.

Recent research reports from hundreds of doctors where fracking is taken place in America shows that there are serious health issues near fracking sites.

Country after country has banned fracking. We should not be concentrating on encouraging it in England. It is not as James says “the only way to meet our future energy needs”

Instead of giving massive Government financial advantage to the fracking companies, we need more support for tidal energy, wind energy and the wonderful solar farm which I suggest James goes and visits near Hayton Lakes. We also need to develop commercial energy storage batteries. And people could also wear an extra jumper in cold weather and save energy.

Fracking is not about one or two wells in one or two fields. To make it commercially viable there have to be hundreds of wells in this area.

Let us save our planet and not go back to the 19th century when Bassetlaw was littered with the dirt from coal mines which also raped the earth on which we live.

David Larder

Chairman,

Bassetlaw Against Fracking