Fracking Speech by Baroness Lynne Featherstone, at LibDem Spring 2016 Conference

12 Mar 2016

Fracking

(Lynne Featherstone's speech on Fracking to the LibDem 2016 Spring Conference is at about 2 hours 7 minutes in this video. The Motion was passed without Ed Davey's amendment by about 2 to 1. Ed's speech is before Lynne's.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmEyGSbsuHQ?start=7620

Conference:

We need energy security

We need sustainable energy

We need to meet our legally binding targets

Fracking won't deliver energy security.

Fracking is not sustainable

Fracking won't help us meet our legally binding targets

But it will deliver greenhouse gases.

It is not logical or sensible - at the very moment we have signed up to the wonderful, the amazing Paris agreement on climate change, - announced the end of coal - to encourage forward a new source of energy that emits greenhouse gasses.

Conference - we did last time we voted on this - conditionally give approval to fracking.

Those conditions have been broken.

We were promised that our national areas of exceptional beauty would be protected.

We were promised Local people would hold sway.

Gone

All gone.

Coalition was a difficult time for us and compromises were undoubtedly made.

Perhaps we downplayed the damage to our low carbon future that fracking would inevitably bring.

And of course we trusted the green leadership in the country - Ed Davey.

But now we have a Tory government and really - we are going to trust Tories?

They are crashing every green policy we put in place.

Tories are:

ending support for onshore wind power ;
sharply reducing support for other renewable technologies, including solar PV and anaerobic digestion;
ending renewable energy's exemption from the Climate Change Levy;
reducing the incentives to purchase low-emission cars ;
privatising and selling off the Green Investment Bank;
scrapping the Green Deal
weakening the zero carbon homes standard;
adding community energy to the list of sectors excluded from receiving Tax relief.;
ditched the £1billion budget for pioneering Carbon Capture and Storage;
ending the renewables obligation early - and on and on and on.

This government is destroying our renewable industries and is wreckless with our economic future.

But perhaps the most damaging effect of developing the shale industry will be that it will undermine the development to scale of renewable heat technology -

By 40 years

Renewable heat is vital.

Conference - we need clear green water.

We need a clarion message on climate change - not a fudge and an excuse for big business and Tory friends.

Conference I am asking you to stand up for what we signed up to in Paris.

Support the motion.

See also Lynne's earlier article "We must be an anti fracking party" and comments on it at LibDem Voice

Fracking

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