Fracking Risks Compared to Asbestos and Other Environmental and Health Dangers.
While the title of the new British government report Innovation: Managing Risk, Not Avoiding It sounds cheery, the news it contained about fracking, among other environmentally dubious technologies, was anything but.
The annual report of the government chief scientific advisor featured a lot of “better living through science”-type happy talk about scientific and technological advances, but warned, “Competition is becoming ever more fierce, vital global resources are dwindling and environmental problems are mounting, making innovation an ever-present challenge.”
It’s a case that University of Sussex professor Andy Stirling makes strongly in a chapter entitled “Making Choices in the Face of Uncertainty: Strengthening Innovation Democracy,” using fracking and the fossil fuel industry in general as an example.
“History presents plenty of examples of innovation trajectories that later proved to be problematic—for instance, involving asbestos, benzene, thalidomide, dioxins, lead in petrol, tobacco, many pesticides, mercury, chlorine and endocrine-disrupting compounds, as well as CFCs, high-sulphur fuels and fossil fuels in general,” he writes. “In all these and many other cases, delayed recognition of adverse effects incurred not only serious environmental or health impacts, but massive expense and reductions in competitiveness for firms and economies persisting in the wrong path. Innovations reinforcing fossil fuel energy strategies—such as hydraulic fracturing—arguably offer a contemporary prospective example.”
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