The hilariously imbecilic comments by Lord Howell on appropriate locations for shale gas 'fracking' have helped to reinforce the stereotype of out-of-touch Tories as home counties types with an ignorant and clichéd view of places beyond the southeast. You do suspect that what he really meant was fracking is OK, so long as it happens a long way from where I (and lots of other important people like me) live and work.
In this, he's probably not all that different to some of the protesters in Sussex taking direct action against Quadrilla's exploratory drillings. As ever, the protesters are made up from a hotchpotch of groups and individuals including bigger organisations like Friends of the Earth.
I'm perfectly happy with the idea of people protesting on the basis of a moral objection to fracking per se, probably because I agree with them. The worst thing that could happen environmentally is for us to find a cheap and plentiful source of oil and gas, allowing us to continue on our merry way to climate change hell in a gas guzzling handcart.
The problem is that many of the protesters are not coming from any kind of moral position on this, even though they may mobilise environmental concerns to aid their cause. Many of them, like Lord Howell, don't care whether fracking takes place or not, so long as it doesn't take place near them. They may even applaud the provision of cheaper fuel.
That is the essence of nimbyism - it's not just 'not in my back yard', it includes notions of 'I don't care if it's in your back yard'. At root it's an inherently anti-communitarian and anti-collectivist impulse.
Earlier in the week Geoffrey Wheatcroft tried to make a positive argument for nimbyism in the Guardian: that everyone fighting hard to protect their own local environment is the only real defence against the encroachment of modern ugliness and despoiling which is the flip side of economic growth.
It's a superficially attractive argument particularly to those on the right because it incorporates the idea that local activity based on self interest (enlightened or otherwise) has primacy. It conveniently ignores the realities of power politics: that the negative aspects of economic development tend to be heaped (sometimes literally) on the poorest because they are least able to fight their corner, lacking the social and financial means to do so.
As an argument espoused by a national media journalist living in the prosperous enclave of Bath, this appears to me to be a self-serving and rather complacent line to take. So, there is a recognisable geography of power. The most powerful tend to live in nicer (i.e. more aesthetically pleasing) areas.
This closely aligns to the geographies of wealth and social class, but has a distinctly north / south flavour because the concentration of important social connections (i.e. connections to those in national politics and the media) is primarily concentrated in the greater south-east.
The result of the wealthy and well connected being geographically concentrated in more aesthetically attractive areas makes it easier for them to make a case against economic development, when such proposals emerge. They are fighting from the high ground, whereas the poor have no such tactical advantage.
The logical conclusion of this arrangement of power, geography and aesthetics is that even those small pockets of greenery in poorer areas to be sacrificed for development, whilst the wealthy are able to prevent even those economic developments that might benefit the country as a whole.
From those that have much, nothing will be asked. From those that have little, everything will be taken.
I think I’ve just found the Conservatives’ strapline for the next election.
