Dear Mr President,

It has been reported that Jonathan Deal, chairman of the Treasure Karoo Action Group (TKAG), a lobby group opposed to the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the Karoo, wants to meet you. Deal is a recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize: he recently returned from the US where he collected a cash prize of $150,000, met President Barack Obama and visited various states where fracking is flourishing.

Mr President, you are a proponent of robust debate; it is something you perpetually encourage in the face of critical issues. Democracy, for the time being, ensures that debate thrives, and thus the aforementioned meeting would — and should — be supported.

It is reasonable to assume that the basis of Deal’s argument will involve his experiences, and possibly those of environmental lawyers attached to the TKAG. Because forewarned is forearmed, I wish to present my own concerns related to these experiences.

History and myth

Environmentalists and associated parties, from the US lobby that successfully facilitated the ban of the insecticide DDT in the 1970s (resulting in arguably the greatest genocide of Africans during the 20th century) to Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, have repeatedly proved themselves immaterial adversaries of rational debate.

At the Franschhoek Literary Festival in the Western Cape last weekend, Deal participated in a debate about fracking and allegedly acted aggressively towards at least one audience member after the discussion as he tried to interrogate that person’s views, which contradicted his own.

I have followed the Intelligence Squared series of debates in London and the US for nearly five years, yet I cannot recall a single incident where a participant, however enraged by the content, confronted an audience member in an unbecoming manner.

One of the most competent ministers in your Cabinet, Dipuo Peters, has often said, on record, that should shale gas deposits be discovered in South Africa, these be exploited. In the event you quote this during the meeting, I can only hope you are not subjected to any such hostility.

Fracking, while undisputedly successful in North America, parts of Europe and Australia, has been sabotaged by subversive celebrity elements that shun science in favour of documentaries such as the Oscar-nominated Gasland — written and directed by environmental activist Josh Fox — as evidence to support myriad flimsy claims, many of which have been obliterated.

Mr President, in parts of that documentary one can virtually see Fox's nose growing as he narrates. The same applies to a recent film called Promised Land, starring Hollywood's finest, and a group of celebrities who have joined another lobby entitled Artists Against Fracking. These scare-tactic movements are vehemently anti-development and risk averse, subscribing to the theory that progress is defined by a group of hippy guitarists surrounding a tree.

Reality

Two weeks ago, credible reports showed that the unemployment level in South Africa was venturing dangerously north of 25%. Last week, Eskom came within 0.06% of its demand margin. Petrol is nearing luxury status — food even more so — and the unions seem intent on enforcing hourly effects on the rand similar to those of PW Botha’s Rubicon speech. The National Development Plan is subjected to derogatory impulses from public officials who clearly have not read even the summary. A World Economic Forum report released this year ranks the quality of our education fourth from last in the world — in maths and science, we beat only Yemen.

This scenario, Mr President, is not a media-led stitch-up based on racist stereotypes (you told Peter Hain as much). It is reality, as evident among the shanties of dusty Karoo towns as it is on the outskirts of Johannesburg, forged by pressure that can only be alleviated by the prospect of development.

Logic

Mr President, it is estimated that the Karoo is host to the fourth-largest deposit of shale gas in the world. The shale gas is located as deep as 4km below the surface, roughly 3.5km beyond the location of the water aquifers — the contamination of which form the lion’s share of the environmental lobby’s concerns (it has also mentioned local infrastructure and agriculture as potential "victims" of fracking).

Only intensive environmental impact studies, in particular those that relate to groundwater reservoir studies and their respective geological gradients, will indicate the threats, if any — but if there are indeed threats, it is likely that rampantly advancing technology will mitigate these. The Karoo is a landscape of symbolism, but the Galapagos Islands it is not. Yet to emphasise its agenda, the environmental lobby has presented premature and reactive propaganda that undermines due processes against the spirit of our environmental legislation.

Perception

Faced with the deeply offensive C-word, nothing else, including the environment, matters. Blaming the media or opposition for the public obsession with corruption is to conveniently ignore the ruling party’s failure to suspend the likes of John Block, confront claims against Dina Pule or even acknowledge that this flawed approach was the rationale behind the foundation of the party’s integrity committee in Mangaung last year.

Mr President, if the public cannot trust the justice minister (for some, a recent revelation), then they will not trust the government’s involvement in this potential gas industry beyond authorisations, regulations and penalties. But were the government to apply the same responsible, effective and transparent approach that it has to the renewable energy programme, it would be able to alter existing perceptions.

In conclusion, Mr President, I wish you luck for the meeting. Humbly I would ask that when you are presented with the alleged bad, you dispel the discredited myths and you don’t forget the potential good.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Lincoln Reader