When the State Department’s long-awaited Final Environmental Impact Statement into the controversial Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline was published last week, it was met with dismay from the environmental community.
Slowly the science is catching up with fracking. Nearly every month a new scientific paper is published warning of the serious ecological or health harm caused by the controversial process.
After spending $ 5 billion on a fruitless and damaging Arctic drilling campaign, Shell has admitted defeat by suspending its plans to drill in the Arctic this summer.
As the debate on fracking heats up in the UK, politicians are keen to point out that the process is safe. The influential Conservative MP Peter Lilley appeared on TV the other night and arrogantly dismissed any concerns with fracking. “Any problems with the environment, safety and health can be satisfactorily managed”, he told the audience.
As the European Commission continues to deliberate as to whether to adopt its landmark climate change legislation, called the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), there is increasing evidence that planned pipelines in North America could turn Europe into a significant market for the Canadian tar sands.
And on it goes. One accident after another. But this time a major disaster was averted by a whisker. On Monday a freight train, which was carrying fracked and highly flammable shale oil from North Dakota, derailed on a bridge over the Schuylkill river in South Philadelphia.
