Shale Gas and Coalbed Methane Briefing

Unconventional Fossil Fuels: unsafe, unnecessary, unwanted

You’ve probably come across fracking in the news and wondered if the reality is as ugly as the word. Maybe you’ve heard about the new natural gas boom and wondered what shale gas and coal-bed methane mean for our energy needs. 

As conventional oil and gas sources run out, and the cost of extraction rises, we are in the middle of a big push to exploit fossil fuels by ever more extreme means. However, not only does climate science demand we that we leave these fossil fuels in the ground, there is a growing body of evidence from the USA and Australia, where these industries are more developed, that there are inherent and unacceptably high environmental and health risks associated with shale gas and coal-bed methane extraction.