I don’t know if anyone watched the BBC news at 10:00 PM last night? It had an interesting piece on it about Colorado in America and the battle between fracking companies and environmentalists.

I have never been to Colorado, but it looks stunning. Deserts, plains, snow capped mountains, canyons, rivers and gigantic lakes, make it a diverse and stunning place. It also has shale gas and lots of it.

Shale Gas & Deregulation

I don’t know much about shale gas apart from the fact you have to drill deep down to get to it. It has the potential to wreck the environment with ugly drilling sites, toxins going into rivers and of course, the potential for earthquakes. However, it makes money and in Trump’s America, money is more important than the pesky environment.

In the last couple of years, over 50 environmental laws protecting the Colorado landscape have simply been ripped up. The people who live, work and enjoy the beauty of Colorado, are struggling against the odds against the wrecking of their state, but they don’t have much chance.

Deregulation of the environment is one of the most alarming aspects of populist movements such as Trump’s America and Brexit. It is sold as crushing unnecessary red tape that curtails industry from growth, but that is far from the truth.

Deregulation is about ripping up environmental law, dismissing scientific studies as fake news and allowing industry to regulate themselves. This leaves workers’ rights, health and safety and the environment all vulnerable to a ‘profit first’ ideology. It also has the potential to leave public services open to a ‘sell it or shut it’ policy. A policy that has already had an impact on places such as public swimming pools and libraries.

Big Mick Down the Pub

Big Mick down at The Dog & Duck will tell you that climate change is a load of bollocks. He will tell you that health & safety at work has gone mad and that the young Swedish climate protester needs a good shagging. He read it in ‘The Sun Says’ editorial, so it must be true.

However, the truth is, we are wrecking the planet. Boris Johnson’s government can’t wait to get into bed and do post-Brexit trade deals with a country that is intent on smashing up regulation on health & safety, food standards and the environment.

Oppose it and you are not deemed a sensible person who cares about the future for your kids and grandkids. No, you are lefty snowflake to be shouted down by Big Mick who has a CSE grade 4 in woodwork. Big Mick knows his shit.

It’s all About Profit

And what’s all this deregulation about? Why its about making a profit of course. It’s about a race to the bottom and the selling off of anything that has a price (health for example). If it hasn’t got a price, just bulldoze it. If it saves money, just pump the chemicals into the local river or up to the sky.

And what about Big Mick down at The Dog & Duck? What will happen to him when decades of bad food and beer have finally toppled him from his bar stool, relieving locals of his incessant parroting of ‘The Sun Says’ bullshit?

What will Big Mick do when he has no money to pay for his treble heart bypass? Will he realise that for years he has been a metaphorical turkey voting for Christmas?

Why, he’ll blame the foreigners of course.

He read it in The Sun.