Former Greenpeace Boss Rebukes “Keep-It-In-The-Ground,” Calls Fracking the “Answer” for Climate
Thursday October 20, 2016
A former head of Greenpeace made headlines this week when he rebuked his former colleagues’ “Keep-It-In-The-Ground” platform by noting that hydraulic fracturing was “part of the answer” for climate change. Stephen Tindale, a former Greenpeace executive director from 2000 to 2005, who identified himself as a lifelong green, said,
“Fracking is not the problem…but a central part of the answer.”
Speaking about a newly approved shale gas project in Lancashire, Tindale continued,
“And if activist groups including Greenpeace really want to help the environment, they should stop protesting about projects like this and let them be built as quickly as possible.”
Of course, the UK only has to look across the pond to the United States where increased availability and use of natural gas for electricity generation has enabled Americans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions significantly. As Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has explained, “We’ve been improving our emissions in this county without agreeing to the Kyoto accords, without Congressional action because of innovation form the natural gas area.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has also pointed to natural gas having a key role in the United States’ emissions reduction. According to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report,
“[T]he rapid deployment of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal-drilling technologies, which has increased and diversified the gas supply…is an important reason for a reduction of GHG emissions in the United States.”
As EID reported earlier this year, growth of the natural gas sector has also helped the U....