{"id":6020,"date":"2013-10-13T12:08:18","date_gmt":"2013-10-13T16:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=6020"},"modified":"2013-10-13T12:09:10","modified_gmt":"2013-10-13T16:09:10","slug":"france-unfracked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/france-unfracked.html","title":{"rendered":"France unfracked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nNo fracking France, affirms France’s highest court.\r\nNo, silly utilities, fracking is not like geothermal power.\r\nYes, utilities, you’ll have to write off a lot of fossils in the ground.\r\nBut there’s far more money to be made in clean energy, so get on with it!\r\n

\r\nMat McDermott wrote for Motherboard yesterday,\r\n\r\nYou Can’t Frack France<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAfter a constitutional court review, France's\r\nban on hydraulic fracturing<\/a> for natural\r\ngas and oil has become "absolute,"\r\nin the words of Environment Minister Phillipe Martin. In its\r\ndecision<\/a>, the court found that the ban, which dates back\r\nto 2011 but was challenged by fossil fuel companies companies,\r\nwas not "disproportionate." <\/p>\r\n

The method companies used to challenge the ban was to challenge\r\nthe fact that hydraulic fracturing was and is still permitted to\r\nbe undertaken in production of geothermal power. After reviewing the\r\nstate of the technology involved, the court found that there is enough\r\ndifference in the practice and potential environmental harm caused when\r\napplied to geothermal versus fossil fuels that prohibiting the latter and\r\npermitting the former did not violate France's constitution. <\/p>\r\n

For opponents of fracking around the world, it's being\r\nhailed as a victory, rightly so. But the thing I find most\r\ninteresting in this all is that it's a perfect example of what is\r\nthe most direct, if in some ways rockiest, method of preventing climate\r\nchange—simply deciding, and mandating, that a certain resource,\r\nor extraction method in this case, will not be used. <\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe story repeats a specious utility claim that keeping 80% of fossil\r\nfuels in the ground will mean writing off $20 trillion in assets.\r\nThat may be true, but there’s a lot more money than that to be made\r\nin\r\n\r\npower from the sun<\/a>, wind, waves, and tides, plus efficiency and conservation,\r\n\r\nall tied together with a smart grid<\/a>.\r\nDivest now,\r\nVSU<\/a>,\r\nand buy renewable energy stocks.\r\nHelp utilities not get left behind in their coal-smoked past,\r\nand lead us to a bright sunny day!\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No fracking France, affirms France’s highest court. No, silly utilities, fracking is not like geothermal power. Yes, utilities, you’ll have to write off a lot of fossils in the ground. But there’s far more money to be made in clean energy, so get on with it! Mat McDermott wrote for Motherboard yesterday, You Can’t Frack […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,20,6124,32,134],"tags":[1003,8706,7057,308,426,8701,8702,8710,12,7,562,8715,6,8743],"class_list":["post-6020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-law","category-natural-gas-2","category-pollution","category-vsu","tag-divestment","tag-environment","tag-fossil-free-valdosta","tag-fracking","tag-france","tag-georgia","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-pollution","tag-valdosta","tag-vsu"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1z6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6022,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6020\/revisions\/6022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}