“The wave of noisy protests against shale gas in Lancashire and Yorkshire in recent years looked like a grassroots movement. It was anything but.

It was peopled by a middle-class rent-a-crowd, ramped up by misleading scare stories from Friends of the Earth, amplified by the BBC and The Guardian, funded by wealthy hedge-fund billionaires, and welcomed by incumbent energy firms worried by the prospect of new competition for renewables, nuclear or offshore gas.”

This article was originally published on the climatechangedispatch.com website. To read more click here.