A former Greenpeace leader butted heads Tuesday with the anti-fracking movement by insisting that hydraulic fracturing is needed to help fight global warming.
Stephen Tindale, who was executive director of Greenpeace U.K. from 2000 to 2005, said that fracking, used to extract natural gas and oil from underground rock, helps combat greenhouse-gas emissions by reducing reliance on coal.
“[T]oday Britain faces its biggest environmental challenge ever — tackling global warming while still keeping the lights on,” Mr. Tindale said in the Tuesday article for the [U.K.] Sun. “And as a lifelong champion of the Green cause, I’m convinced that fracking is not the problem but a central part of the answer.”
He praised the British government’s recent approval of a shale-gas project in Lancashire, calling it “a great start, but that’s all it is. We need dozens more like it if Britain is to meet our energy needs in the decades to come.”