We arrived at Port Elisabeth today. A long journey finally brought us to our the first stage of out visit. There is a lot of information to be studied, discussed. A lot of reports need to be interpreted and a lot of practical issues need attending to.
What is the problem then? Company want to frack, citizens start to inform themselves, citizens get ignored by government, citizens organize and demonstrate, start to deploy all the activistic and judicial means they have at their disposal, and so on... and so on..... end of story for the frack companies. A lot of the factors seem similar to the resistance in other countries. But there are also differences that complicate things.
It's not the first time that we see that companies are corrupting the most fundamental principles of democracy. If you have seen the sequel of Josh Fox's movie, you have seen that the traditional US political parties are corroding at high speed due to giant lobby campaigns and super pacs, thus destroying all credibility amongst citizens in out current system. The republican voter finds himself fighting the same republican politician he voted for because the politician sold his sole to the gas companies...
In South Africa a similar trend seems to be developing. Sad enough this is not the only problem. The lack of information and the grim future outlook for a big majority of the South African people, makes that they give up on politics and grasp everything the can. So along comes Shell...... Shell, with a smooth and slick propaganda campaign to convince this, mostly coloured, majority, that shale gas will bring the Walhalla on earth: plenty of jobs, "clean gas", more jobs, refrigerators, schooling for children, infrastructure, more jobs, etc, etc, etc.
And like the CEO Jan Willem Eggink said: "100 percent save by tracking in the Karoo..".
The perversity of using this kind of propaganda to drive a wedge between two groups in the South African society is appalling. I know that I cannot hold him personally responsible for these kind of cloak and dagger ops, but it's time that people start "naming-and-shaming" the tactics that are used.
The last point I'll make for today is that Shell knows that financially seen shale gas ops are a ponzi scheme. That's the reason they selling their assets in the US as fast as they can. They way to make money is to be the first drilling in this shalegasfield to sell it with huge profit afterwards. And in 20/30 years, Shell will be the one having profited the most without having to pay for the damages....
Well, Shell is in for a rough ride in South Africa. They just don't know it yet.
And lets be frank, it's a weird situation to arrive in a county in the middle of the winter to find that it's 22 degrees centigrade and the sun is shining like it were summer. I made a pic of the newest solar powerplant. The solar energy industry is developing at a staggering rate here in South Africa. There are alternatives and these will carry the real solutions and real jobs for the South African people. We didn't pick this fight, but "by Jove" we will finish it...:
"We shall defend our (is)land, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the ......." WC
Kind regards,
Jose Gil Paris
#SouthAfrica, the future #solar superpower... so who needs #shalegas and #fracking in the #Karoo?18/8/2014
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The majority who knows me might not know this, but about four years ago the dutch council of the city of Boxtel issued a permit to a company called Cuadrilla. This company applied for a permit in order to start test-drilling for shalegas, including hydraulic fracturing or better known as "fracking". The city of Boxtel lies approximately 10 miles from where we live.
Not long after that, we learned that Cuadrilla also wanted to apply for a permit on a location in Helvoirt….. 1,5 mile from where we live…. This we learned from the fact that they made arrangements with a local tree-farmer in the village, and secrets in villages have very short legs… At first we didn't think a lot of it. In Holland we're raised with the idea that gas is safe, clean, cheap and easy. We've been pumping conventional gas since 1960 from the Groningen Fields without much fuzz….. until the last years when it proved that the province of Groningen is suffering earthquakes because of these gas operations. And things are getting worse over there: recent studies show that earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.0 are very likely to happen. After gathering information about shalegas and fracking we sat around the table with a couple of neighbours. The information we found was quite discomforting. It became even worse when we discovered that Cuadrilla had 0% experience with fracking ops, despite all the fancy stories they were telling and "happy-go-lucky" gatherings they were organizing in the surrounding villages. Meanwhile the intell about the catastrophic effects on water, communities, environment and citizens were pouring in.. But all hell really broke loose when the movie "Gasland" by Josh Fox was released. After seeing it on the net, we immediately started to translate it in dutch and organized screenings. We even convinced dutch national television to screen the film. Since then the fight has been very hard and dirty… Support from the politicians has been meager: just one politician has been behind us all the way since the beginning. Still, support is growing, little by little.. I've been following the development of the shalegas' industry attempts to roll-out fracking ops in the Netherlands for about 4 years now. I've listened to the half-truths, omissions, spin-tactics, propaganda campaigns. I've read about the "cloak-n-dagger" tactics to win local politicians over to their side. Politicians who vowed to serve the citizens, but instead seem to just protect the interests of the oil and gas industry. Politicians whose span of the future counts just four years, the years that they're in office. The last years I've met a lot of people and talked about the future of the energy market and the shalegas lobby. I went to Brussels and Balcombe and camped there and saw people of ALL sorts, conservative, progressive, young, old, black, white, skinny, fat, angry, happy….. EVERYONE UNITED. People who think that the future is not the four years that a politician is in office, but are convinced that the future is far more than that. Convinced that every generation that comes after us deserves to live in an environment free of chemical disasters, with clean, free and cheap energy and also free of conflicts and wars caused by the fight for fossil fuels. Idealistic? Maybe. Realistic? 100%! Considering the fact that the menace of shalegas fracking is a worldwide threat, we will be visiting South Africa to meet with farmers and grass-roots movements in the threatened regions of the Karoo. We want to learn what their situation is and exchange information and tactics to stand united in our fight. The citizens' resistance against the gas industry needs all the help it can get and we'll try to do whatever we can to support them. Our group consists of the following people: - Mirjam Bemelmans, Shalegas-free Boxtel - Irma Gommers, Shalegas-free Boxtel - Hylke Hekkenberg, Shalegas-free Noord Oost Polder - Eva Wu, Friends of the Earth Netherlands - Ike Teuling, Friends of the Earth Netherlands The resistance is growing and getting stronger by the day! Remember that short-term energy policy solely focused on short-term profit, is a non-solution that will not solve anything. United we can win this fight and stop fracking! You're welcome to follow my blog about our trip to South Africa and I welcome your comments. With kind "frack-free" regards, Jose Gil Paris |
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