Letter: Security of food and water '˜at risk'

The government has tried to bury a report listing threat to food security as a key concern as climate change and extreme weather affects us all. In our area, INEOS, which wishes to frack Ryedale, fail to draw attention to the news that last month they took over Moorland Energy, which has a licence to extract oil and gas across a swathe of the southern end of the North York Moors.

They also inherit the outstanding planning permission for a gas processing plant at Thornton Dale which even fracking supporter Lorraine Allanson publicly opposed on two occasions.

When asked in Pennsylvania where he would put a gas processing plant, our MP Kevin Hollinrake said: “I have no idea. Not near my house”.

Yet fracking requires just such unsightly, smelly gas processing plants, plus noisy compressor stations, pipelines, thousands and thousands of lorries, and thousands of wells, which will be sighted close to homes and right next to and drilling under the North York Moors National Park from this licence area. Leaking unburnt methane is 84 times more potent that carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

With renewables now increasingly undercutting fossil fuels on cost, and green gas from food waste increasing, there has never been a better time to rise up and peacefully defend our communities - and OUR food security, water security, and our tourism and economic security, from the pernicious threat of this dirty toxic industry.

Ian Conlan

Middlecave Road, Malton