The Guardian: Caroline Lucas deserves a medal, not a criminal record, for opposing fracking
This week a court in Brighton will deliver its verdict on the Green party MP Caroline Lucas who is being prosecuted for causing an obstruction outside the Balcombe gas fracking site. The possibility that one of the most sensible politicians in parliament could receive a criminal record, rather than the medal she deserves, for standing up against greedy energy bosses tells us everything we need to know about the topsy-turvy state of British politics on the environment.
In fact the past few weeks have been an object lesson in why Britain desperately needs more politicians like Lucas – that is, if we are to emerge from this recession with a chance of improving ordinary people's living standards rather than being locked into an outdated fossil-fuel economy and a desperate struggle to cope with increasingly dangerous climate change.
It started with George Osborne bragging about his desire to "extract every drop of oil we can from the North Sea". Presumably he had his ears covered when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest damning assessment of the threat from human-made climate change, providing yet more evidence of the extraordinary risks our political leaders are taking by continuing to ignore scientific advice that we need to rapidly stop burning fossil fuels.