The fear factor

Enviroloons thrive on fear, fear of the future, fear of resources running out etc. in a sense they are the ultimate in glass half empty types in that the "professional" greenies know if a solution is ever found for our energy problems they'll be out of a well paid job where it's a case of money for simply objecting to anything.
Shale gas extraction is a case in point, it might well sort out our long to mid term energy problems and move us away from foreign suppliers, at least or until someone somewhere finally manages to sort out fusion power.

BBC.

Green campaigners are objecting to plans to explore for gas on farmland in Kent, which they fear will lead to controversial shale gas extraction.

Coastal Oil and Gas Ltd, based in Mid Glamorgan, wants permission to drill an exploratory borehole at Woodnesborough to test coal and shale for gas.

The company said it mainly wanted to extract methane from coal, but did not rule out shale extraction in future.

The Kent Green Party said it was sceptical about Coastal's claims.

Green Party spokesman Steve Dawe said it believed that if gas was found in shale at the site, the company would later seek to remove it using the controversial fracking method.

Fracking was being used in Lancashire but was suspended last week as a precaution after two earthquakes in the county.

The process involves shattering hard shale rocks underground to release gas using either hydraulic pressure or tiny explosions.

"If they find the possibility of exploiting shale gas they will," Mr Dawe said.

"We wish to rule out such exploitation because it is a deeply polluting activity."

 Controversial, check, deeply polluting, check, earthquakes, check. Yep all seems to be in order for the standard enviroloon dogma output. Shale gas extraction is only controversial because greenies say it is, the method itself is not controversial at all just simple physics and chemistry. Nor I suspect does it cause earthquakes, land settlement perhaps, but not real earthquakes, what happened in Lancashire was an earth tremor, they got them before shale extraction started as well, Blackpool had an earth tremor of about 2.2 on the Richter Scale back in 2009 long before they started to extract shale gas. But any excuse by enviroloons to shut down a process they know will put a spanner in the works of driving us all back to a brutal medieval existence (except for those at the top of the tree) It's the same with nuclear power, greenies hate anything that actually works, they'd rather we played about with environmentally flawed and useless bird mincers that only run at 20% capacity and only if the wind blows at the right speed. They're even happy for the generating companies to be paid not to use them when they aren't needed.
Now, I'm all for protecting the environment from pollution and the unnecessary destruction of the landscape (which oddly enough is what a bird mincer does) I'm also very much for an energy policy that works when its needed and when I want it and not simply because the wind is blowing that day. That gives several options non of which are in favour of by enviroloons. We're sitting on masses of coal, we can build nuclear plants (and are) or we can (also) extract shale gas any of which will keep us warm and energy supplied for decades. Personally I don't want to see our old, our sick and our very young dying off from cold during a bad winter, but that I suspect is what the greenies will think is a price worth paying for their destruction of our civilisation.