ISBN: 978-0-9523454-8-0
Second edition
Reviews
An ‘essential resource for everyone engaged in fighting the fracking menace’. Fracking Capitalism argues while protests can slow fracking, what’s really needed is an ecosocialist economy that rejects short term profit, and embraces democratic ownership and long term sustainability. Derek Wall reviews for Climate & Capitalism
‘Fracking Capitalism is probably the most accessible and succinct explanation I have come across tracing government rhetoric, the resistance movement and the behaviour of the police throughout this debacle.’ Review by Kieran Gibb on Avalanche
Fracking Capitalism exposes the cowboy economics that underpin the fracking industry in Britain. Thanks to the authors, people can finally know the real truth behind the Coalition government’s controversial policy. Frack capitalism instead – review by Bheki Moyo
Fracking Capitalism
Action Plans for the Eco-Social Crisis
Second edition with updated text and 8 extra pages. Exposes what’s behind the corporate-state plan to frack Britain and what we can do about it.
By a special A World to Win writing team:
Penny Cole, Matt Worsdale, Gerry Gold and Donald McQueen. Edited by Paul Feldman.
With colour photos of the Balcombe struggle by Peter Arkell.
Contents
Introduction by editor Paul Feldman
Chapter 1: The great shale gas deception
Widespread hydraulic fracturing – fracking – for shale gas
threatens large areas of rural Britain with unimaginable
industrialisation and pollution of air and water.
Chapter 2: Planning system silences the voice of the community
When it comes to the planning process, the system is
weighted heavily in favour of fracking companies. Local
authorities have little room for manoeuvre in the wake of
current law and government “guidelines”.
Chapter 3: Resistance movement threatens the frackers
Communities are uniting across the world in actions aimed at
thwarting the shale gas corporations and exposing the anti-environmental
consequences of their operations.
Chapter 4: Trapped by a corporate state web
A web of connections stretching from corporations, to lobbyists,
through to ministers and to departments of state ensure that
the business of government is business itself. Britain is not
so much a democracy as a corporatocracy, where the interests of
companies are deemed synonymous with those of the state.
Chapter 5: The road to ecocidal suicide
Contrary to government and industry rhetoric, shale gas will actually increase global greenhouse gas emissions.
This can only intensify the climate change crisis that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described in great
detail in its 5th assessment published in September 2013.
Chapter 6: It’s a socio-eco crisis – time to act
The rapid adoption of fracking to obtain gas or oil, and the reaction it is provoking before things get under way in Europe,
contains all the elements of an extreme economic, ecological, social and political crisis with a common underlying cause.
Chapter 7: Frack capitalism to build a sustainable future
Slowing, then halting, global warming requires an immediate reduction in the quantity of fossil fuels burned. The major question
facing humanity is: can we rely on the existing governing structures to make this happen? The evidence against is clear enough.
