Natalie Bennett: Why fracking is Yorkshire's number one environmental challenge

ONE environmental issue stands out in Yorkshire: fracking. Through rain and snow and biting cold, the people of Kirby Misperton and their supporters have been showing their determination to ensure that their community isn't fracked.
Anti-fracking demonstrators at Kirby Misperton have Natalie Bennett's full support.Anti-fracking demonstrators at Kirby Misperton have Natalie Bennett's full support.
Anti-fracking demonstrators at Kirby Misperton have Natalie Bennett's full support.

So when making a list of hopes for 2018, I’ve got to start with a ban on fracking in England. That feels achingly close, given that the people, from Balcombe to Barton Moss, Upton to Marsh Lane, have demonstrated very clearly that they don’t want this extreme technology, and in the six years since Blackpool fracking caused earthquakes, the industry has got precisely nowhere.

Its argument for fossil gas as a transition fuel towards renewables was weak in 2011, and it is a nonsense now, as the rest of the world powers ahead with renewables while Britain threatens to be left behind.

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And its on renewables that my second hope for 2018 lies, particularly community and locally owned. We might not often be described as “sunny Yorkshire”, but there’s more than enough sunshine here to let domestic solar take off, particularly as battery storage powers ahead.

There’s no doubt 2018 will be the year that the combination of solar panels, domestic batteries and electric cars becomes more common – with the car and batteries providing also balancing storage for the grid and a handy little earner for their owner.

With onshore wind now probably on balance the cheapest source of electricity in the UK, we could again be putting that Yorkshire wind to good use, particularly with community or municipal projects that can keep the profits in our cities and towns – helping to counteract some of the worst effects of Tory austerity with funds for libraries and children’s centres, social care and parks.

Combine that with improvements in home energy efficiency – the cleanest, greenest, best possible energy being of course that which you don’t need to use – and we could be making real progress towards an energy system fit to the 21st century.

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Kirklees Council has shown the way, with Passivhaus covenants on land it sells for housing – many other Yorkshire councils could follow suit. And in Sheffield it would be great to see the council backing the first scaled development of highly-efficient Reach homes.

But for immediate results for human health, top of the “hope” list has to be effective action to tackle air pollution. That demands cleaning up our public buses and support for drivers for cleaner taxis, but above all cutting pollution from private cars.

It means providing better, more convenient and reliable public transport as a real alternative to the car, and support for walking and cycling. The additional benefits – less congested, more community-friendly streets, healthier people and reduced pressure on the NHS – can be considered a bonus.

And on those streets, we can hope to see a great deal less plastic litter. In 2017, we saw awareness of the way we’re choking our planet with plastic grow rapidly. Companies are starting to end the use of plastic straws, stock paper-stem cotton buds and plastic cups, but 2018 has to be the year we stop focusing product by product and start to end the use of all unnecessary single-use plastic.

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That’s a keep-us-busy list to improve human lives, but in 2018 we can also hope for real progress on caring for our much-abused natural world. The uplands 
are a crucial environment on which management has to 
change – one key step being ending the illegal persecution of raptors, particularly hen harriers. The driven grouse shooting industry has finally acknowledged it is a problem, but there’s only one way forward for our uplands to end this “factory farming” of a single species in denuded environments – a ban on driven grouse shooting.

But there’s much more to be done on Yorkshire’s arable lands too. This week I’ve been at the Real Farming Conference, hearing of the rapid progress being made in organic and near-organic and minimum tillage production – farming that protects soils and doesn’t poison the planet. With the national ban on the neonicotinoids, we can gradually hope to see some recovery of the insects that are at the base of crucial food chains.

I’ve focused on hopes, not fears, because there’s only positives 
here – ways forward that can ensure we stop trashing the planet while also building a society that gives the communities of Yorkshire a 
more secure, certain life, free from the immediate fears of not being able to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head.

But I do have to finally include a specifically Sheffield hope – that we will not see the unnecessary loss of one more healthy street tree – after nearly 6,000 have been felled by the partnership of Amey and the city council.

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It’s a hope that extends beyond trees – to our NHS, to our schools and our nursing homes – that we might start to move away from putting private profit before public good. It’s time for change.

Natalie Bennett lives in Sheffield. She is a former leader of the Green Party.