Opposition To Fracking Is Growing WorldWide

People are becoming more aware of the dangers of Fracking — the method of pumping high pressured water and chemicals into the ground to extract natural gas from shale rock.

This technique is very controversial because these chemicals can potentially seep into the ground water harming ecosystems, as well as tainting the water table that humans drink from.

Fracking has also been linked to dangerous environmental issues that normally never posed any risks in certain regions. For example because of Fracking; parts of Oklahoma now have to deal with Earthquake hazards that are comparable to California.

Currently only four Countries have Fracking Bans, Bulgaria, France, Germany and Scotland. Some districts in Countries allow fracking while others ban it. As seen in the United States and Canada; certain potential wells are not being developed because local authorities have refused permission to energy companies.

The premise behind the recent Fracking boom is that governments promise an alternative to fossil fuels and large quantities of cheap gas that will last for decades and cut their reliance on imports. The issue with this is that they completely disregard the long term environmental issues that will arise. With out a healthy ecosystem, humans and other species cannot thrive.

In the U.S. and Canada, where a large-scale fracking boom has altered the balance of world energy resources and cut the price of gas so much that both coal and nuclear have struggled to remain competitive in electricity production.

But allegations that fracking contaminates water supplies and creates small earthquakes have led to a backlash in local communities across the world.




In Algeria, for example, where water is extremely precious, it led to large-scale protests. And in Europe, a much more crowded continent where homes and villages are always close to the proposed drilling sites, there has been a lot of local opposition.

The issue has also become much more controversial because of the increasing awareness of climate change. Exploiting new fossil fuel reserves is also seen as going against last year’s Paris Agreement on climate change, when most governments of the world signed up to prevent dangerous global warming.

It is unlikely that Fracking will have an easy time in the future. A report by the University of Nottingham on public attitudes to the new industry has shown that support has sunk to an all-time low in the UK.

“It has dropped from 58 percent in favor in July 2013 to just more than 37 percent in October 2016—the first time that a majority of people has been against fracking. The surveys have been running annually since 2012.”

The reasons for opposition are all environmental, because of local effects and also the unacceptability of more fossil fuels as an energy source. The current day and age requires alternative sources of energy that do no pollute and harm the environment. Fracking, fossil fuels, and other forms of combustible energy sources are outdated and need to be phased out as quickly as possible.

Professor Sarah O’Hara, of the School of Geography at Nottingham and co-director of the survey, said:

“The sharp downturn in support for the extraction and use of shale gas in the UK over the last 12 months is hugely significant, as is the fact that for the first time since we began running the survey in March 2012 more people are against shale gas extraction than in favor.

“It is clear that people are not only concerned about possible impact on their immediate environment, something that dominated early debates around shale gas, but importantly are beginning to think more broadly about the implications for greenhouse gas emissions and future climate change.”