Karoo Fracking - Update

Last week I attended a meeting that was held at one of the local guest houses, 'Onse Rus'. The informal meeting was more of a gathering of people in the town, who were worried about the recent lifting of the moratorium on fracking exploration.

I found out that the fact that even though the moratorium has been lifted, it is not definite that Fracking will take place in the Karoo for a number of reasons.

• Firstly, the moratorium that has been lifted is one that enables the fracturing companies to prospect the area in search of gas. This means that, 
• the government have not given Oil companies the go ahead yet, 
• and if these Oil companies do not think it is worth the expenditure to Frack, they won't

Keep in mind that I am being very optimistic. The other thing that sort of shocked me is that if Fracking in the Karoo does happen, it will happen in at last two years from now. That throws out any ideas I had about joining the Monkey Wrench Gang. Damn!

I don't want to give the idea that we needn't worry about fracking. We do, because someday it will destroy our homes, if we cannot put a stop to it.

There are a number of things that we can do. Firstly, you are welcome to donate to a number of organisations that are taking our problem to the constitutional courts, but I am not going to get into that, because I feel it is stronger and more serious to take a hands on approach.

Therefore, I suggest you visit the group Global Frackdown, on Facebook. It is an event around the world, held on the 22nd to protest fracking. I am not going to tell you what to do, but there is what I am doing;

1. I am going to help some of the people who were gathered at the meeting tie black wreaths around the big tree's in the main road of Prince Albert. (With the help of my friend Emma, we counted all the possible trees that sided the main road.
2. I have designed a stencil, to spray onto the wreath. Here it is, all done and on an old x-ray laminate. Seems to work very nicely. 
3. I am also going to dress up on Saturday, mostly in black, with a gas-mask I found in our garden shed. I don't have a anti-fracking t-shirt yet, but I plan to get hold of one before it is too late!

So, that pretty much sums it up... Oh, I am also going to attend another talk on fracking tomorrow, so watch this space :)