All that the fashionable alarm about globalisation, warming of the planet, changing climate, protecting wild nature have in common is an attack on an economic system based on the profit motive.
Above all, they attack the free market or, as they like to call it, capitalism, even though a system less like an “ism” would be difficult to find.
The prime driver of each issue is envy and some have dubbed this the politics of envy. An accurate description, it aptly describes how those who do not have blame those who have for them not having it. “It” being money, status, power and perceived freedom.
Instead of making the effort of climbing up the ladder themselves, the envious want a free ride to the top, with the government doing the pushing. The government, since it does not create wealth itself, takes it in the form of taxes – from Peter to pay Paul, as the saying goes.
The other significant common denominator of all environmental and economic protest is ignorance of the way economic growth and the profit motive work, with believers in each cause ignorant of both economic history and its twin, technology.
These protesters often regard themselves as progressive, but wish to turn back the clock. Their ideal is a return to some imagined sylvan past. Such thinking clearly qualifies as conservative, ie right-wing.
Of course, every generation believes in a Golden Age. This varies from person to person. For some, it is their school days. For others, it is a time when there were no traffic jams, no supermarkets, and so on.
Look closely at these happy memories and the myth disintegrates. School days were happy because parents took care of everything. There were once no traffic jams because only a few could afford cars, and they were not a patch on modern vehicles – poor brakes, exhausts filthier by far, and all of them gas guzzlers.
The family grocer and butcher could only sell local produce in season. The modern supermarket sells quality produce from all parts of the world, all year round.
Change is constant and, often, the problems of today are solved by the technology of tomorrow. An example is the motor car. It was invented to stop big cities drowning in horse urine and manure. Another is modern plumbing and sewerage systems. Together they saved thousands of city dwellers from dying of cholera.
For every problem facing us at any one time, it is a safe bet that someone, somewhere, is hunting for a solution. Why? Because inventors hope to profit from their inventions. Without a profit motive, inventive people would not bother to apply their minds and we would all be poorer in more than money terms. Whether a technological breakthrough comes from a genius working in a garden shed or a team in a corporate laboratory, makes no difference. The motive is the same: profit.
Nowhere in history has the drive to make money been as strong as it still is in the US. It is a country that values individual initiative, admires self-made millionaires, and encourages entrepreneurs of all kinds.
It is one reason behind the often chaotic drive to reach shale gas – made possible in the first place by a revolution in horizontal drilling techniques at great depths – and allowed to grow into an industry with as few regulations as possible.
In a process akin to a 19th century gold rush, parts of the Texas and Massachusetts landscapes were rapidly covered in gas wells. Landowners made large profits selling drilling rights to oil companies (this cannot happen here) but conservative environmentalists were appalled.
Assuming the same would happen here if drilling for gas in the Karoo were allowed, our own conservationists quickly formed the Treasure Karoo Action Group, which, in very little time, had a committee in place and enough donations to fly officials to conferences both here and abroad. Slowing down or preventing fracking altogether is the group’s mantra.
Technology has a surprise for these people. The technological wheel has turned, as it always does. There are now two alternatives to horizontal drilling, as we know it. The first is to use liquid petroleum gas (LPG) gel instead of water in the extraction process. The second is a method of drilling dozens of wells from one platform at ground level.
This latest technique is a major advance. It means that drilling operations require far less land – 2ha can service up to 51 wells. It means one access road instead of dozens, one connection to the grid instead of many and, if water is used, one collection and remediation facility, not dozens.
The impact on the environment is dramatically reduced (by 75 percent) using this new method. It is also much cheaper and therefore likely to be adopted here as well.
In other words, technology has responded to a problem. The change had nothing to do with conservative, placard-waving protesters. It has everything to do with the search for profit and the positive technological change inherent in economic growth.
If the Treasure Karoo Action Group knows about this new drilling technique it would seem they are keeping very quiet about it, just as they seem to have ignored the implications of LPG gel use instead of water for fracking.
If the group insisted on the use of both in South Africa, it might not get the headlines it is used to. It might even lose a few conservative backers. But it would be far more sensible because if there is oil and gas under the Karoo, nothing will stop it being exploited if it can be done at a profit.
In the US, the new system is steadily being adopted. By returning to viability some of the older fracked wells, this technique removes one of the key arguments against fracking – that it is not always a bonanza and often the wells run dry.
Does this new technology mean fracking needs no regulation? Of course not. What is important is that any regulations do not, in an attempt to placate the environmentalists, regulate this potential new industry out of existence.
In matters as crucial as obtaining a national source of cleaner energy, photo opportunity protests should be irrelevant, however loud they may be.
Keith Bryer is a retired communications consultant