Fracktious

I was at a very packed Victory Hall in Balcombe this evening for a public meeting about a nearby gas drilling site operated by Cuadrilla - the company that recently brought earthquakes to Lancashire, with its hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operation there.

Cuadrilla's CEO was there to explain how regulation of the fracking industry in the UK is far from the ecological armageddon currently developing in the States. But this was never going to cut much ice with the noisy, and in some cases quite rude, crowd.

Many of the questions directed at Mr Cuadrilla concerned earthquakes and the degree of carcenogicity of the chemicals used in the drilling process.

Strangely no one mentioned the most important point - we can't keep sucking this stuff out of the ground and burning it. The atmosphere surely can't take much more.