{"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":"<p>\nNo fracking France, affirms France&#8217;s highest court.<br \/>\nNo, silly utilities, fracking is not like geothermal power.<br \/>\nYes, utilities, you&#8217;ll have to write off a lot of fossils in the ground.<br \/>\nBut there&#8217;s far more money to be made in clean energy, so get on with it!<\/p>\n<p>\nMat McDermott wrote for Motherboard yesterday,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/motherboard.vice.com\/blog\/you-cant-frack-france\"><br \/>\nYou Can&#8217;t Frack France<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2013\/08\/22\/us-france-carbon-tax-idUSBRE97L14I20130822\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;width:225px\" src=\"http:\/\/s1.reutersmedia.net\/resources\/r\/?m=02&#038;d=20130822&#038;t=2&#038;i=772001837&#038;w=460&#038;fh=&#038;fw=&#038;ll=&#038;pl=&#038;r=CBRE97L1M1000\"><\/a><br \/>\nAfter a constitutional court review,&nbsp;<a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-10-11\/fracking-ban-upheld-by-french-court-as-constitutional.html\">France&#39;s<br \/>\nban on hydraulic fracturing<\/a>&nbsp;for natural<br \/>\ngas and oil has become &quot;absolute,&quot;<br \/>\nin the words of Environment Minister Phillipe Martin. In <a\nhref=\"http:\/\/www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr\/conseil-constitutionnel\/francais\/les-decisions\/acces-par-date\/decisions-depuis-1959\/2013\/2013-346-qpc\/decision-n-2013-346-qpc-du-11-octobre-2013.138283.html\">its<br \/>\ndecision<\/a>,&nbsp;the court found<!--more--> that the ban, which dates&nbsp;back<br \/>\nto 2011&nbsp;but was challenged by fossil fuel companies companies,<br \/>\nwas not &quot;disproportionate.&quot;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The method companies used to challenge the ban was to challenge<br \/>\nthe fact that&nbsp;hydraulic fracturing was and is still permitted to<br \/>\nbe undertaken in production of geothermal power. After reviewing the<br \/>\nstate of the technology involved, the court found that there is enough<br \/>\ndifference in the practice and potential environmental harm caused when<br \/>\napplied to geothermal versus fossil fuels that prohibiting the latter and<br \/>\npermitting the former did not violate France&#39;s constitution.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For opponents of fracking around the world, it&#39;s being<br \/>\nhailed&nbsp;as a victory, rightly so. But the thing I find most<br \/>\ninteresting in this all is that it&#39;s a perfect example of what is<br \/>\nthe most direct, if in some ways rockiest, method of preventing climate<br \/>\nchange&mdash;simply deciding, and mandating, that a certain resource,<br \/>\nor extraction method in this case, will not be used.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/solar-vs-fossil-fuel-stocks.html\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3831\/10191122464_a6dab95a3b_n.jpg\"><\/a><br \/>\nThe story repeats a specious utility claim that keeping 80% of fossil<br \/>\nfuels in the ground will mean writing off $20 trillion in assets.<br \/>\nThat may be true, but there&#8217;s a lot more money than that to be made<br \/>\nin<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/solar-vs-fossil-fuel-stocks.html\"><br \/>\npower from the sun<\/a>, wind, waves, and tides, plus efficiency and conservation,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/european-utilities-scared-of-renewable-energy.html\"><br \/>\nall tied together with a smart grid<\/a>.<br \/>\nDivest now,<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/fossil-free-valdosta.html\">VSU<\/a>,<br \/>\nand buy renewable energy stocks.<br \/>\nHelp utilities not get left behind in their coal-smoked past,<br \/>\nand lead us to a bright sunny day!<\/p>\n<p>\n -jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No fracking France, affirms France&#8217;s highest court. No, silly utilities, fracking is not like geothermal power. Yes, utilities, you&#8217;ll have to write off a lot of fossils in the ground. But there&#8217;s far more money to be made in clean energy, so get on with it! Mat McDermott wrote for Motherboard yesterday, You Can&#8217;t Frack [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"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"],"_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}]}}