Energy: a new battle of Britain
Tuesday 20 August 2013
A handful of protesters have seemingly been allowed to threaten Britain's entire energy future, he writes, telling us that, until yesterday, the police were apparently unable to stop a self-regarding gaggle of activists and mini-celebs from halting the wholly legal operations of a company planning to drill for oil in a Sussex field.
That part of the story had to be told – and Booker does it in his usual entertaining fashion – but, on Sunday he will be looking at a far more sinister side to this affair. Mentioned in the Spectatorrecently, there is serious money behind the plot to disrupt the exploitation of shale gas.
The trail leads to Brussels, where the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) is at the centre of another vast nexus of influence, where NGOs and other groups come together to coordinate actions and organise funding, with serious money involved.
Behind the EEB are many of the government departments of environment in the EU member states, inlcuding the UK's DEFRA, but there are also the shadowy grant foundations, such as the Garfield Foundation, the Oak Foundation and the Sigrid Rausing Trust.
This latter organisation is especially interesting as it isn't even an environmental donor organisation, its main function being to support human rights globally. Founded in 1995, it has given away £191.9 million to human rights organisations all over the world – or so it says. But included in that is £880,000 paid to the EEB, with another grant of £300,000 which started on 1st July 2013.
The major funder of the EEB, however, which spends just over €2 million a year, is the European Commission, donating just short of €1 million. We also see the European Climate Foundation doling out €165,000.
But here is an organisation which has been party to a paper delivered to the European Union, arguing for greater controls over fracking, so severe as to prejudice the entire exploitation of shale gas. Thus, we have another example of the Commission paying itself to be lobbied, this time over an issue vital to the United Kingdom.
By comparison, the demonstrators confronting police this week, including the egregious Caroline Lucas, are just the icing on the cake – the visible part of a sinister nexus that enjoys millions in funding from a taxpayers and shadowy foundations.
This new "Battle of Britain", therefore, is largely being fought in Brussels, with the money doing the talking, the ultimate irony being that we are paying for attempts to block one of the most promising development in energy this century.
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Richard North 20/08/2013
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