REGARDING the anti-fracking protestors putting jobs and businesses at risk.

I would like to take a wider view of the anti-fracking debate. The alternative view is that clean air, uncontaminated land, and clean water are the essential ingredients for all life on our planet. We are rapidly approaching a worldwide situation when manmade climate change is telling us that we cannot go on polluting our planet as we have done. It may come as a shock to know that the earth only 2.5% of fresh water, the rest is ocean and water contaminated naturally; which is unsuitable for humans or animals.

Fracking should be banned worldwide. It is only the stock market’s continual drive for ever more profit and “shareholder value” that is driving this short term economic burst. There is little or no consideration for the precious land and water that is contaminated, long term, by this unsustainable practice.

We need more local supplies of energy; 50 per cent of generated electricity is lost in transmission via pylons. Similarly, our homes and buildings need to be better insulated. The UK does not have a good reputation for building new energy efficient homes and public buildings.

Protestors may be putting a very small number of jobs at risk but fracking is putting the planet at even greater risk.

Mrs F. Henderson

Wingates

Westhoughton