Mayor Bob is wrong

Tina Law reports:

Dr Smith said hysteria was sweeping the country about the practice, and he called for some “science and commonsense” to be injected into the debate.

He likened the fracking debate to a modern-day version of the Chicken Licken story, in which a hen thinks the sky is falling in after an acorn hits her head.

He accused the Christchurch City Council of “jumping on the Greens’ ‘Don’t Frack with New Zealand’ bandwagon”, saying fracking had been done in New Zealand for decades and was used in the building of the Clyde Dam.

But Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said Christchurch had experienced 12,500 quakes, so it was “entirely reasonable” for the city to ban the controversial practice until someone could provide evidence it would not trigger more of them.

“We’re not going to take a risk on something that we are uncertain about until there is some certainty.”

Absolutely wrong. You don’t ban things until they are “proven” safe (an impossible thing to do). You ban things when they are proven unsafe.

It was not an entirely reasonable thing to do. It was an entirely kneejerk thing to do.