Energy

Farmer Sprays Manure At Actress Emma Thompson During Fracking Protest [VIDEO]

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Andrew Follett Energy and Science Reporter
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An angry British farmer sprayed manure at several Greenpeace activists, including actress Emma Thompson, Wednesday after they illegally defied a court order and protested hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on his land.

The Oscar winning actress and activists broke a court-ordered injunction and filmed a parody of the TV show “Great British Bake Off” for Greenpeace. The owner of the field, who has leased the land to fracking company Cuadrilla, repeatedly circled the activists with his tractor, spraying them with manure. Thompson was not hit by the spray, but several Greenpeace activists were.

Protesters have been banned from the site since 2014 by court order and several police officers were present during the ordeal. It is not clear if the fracking company will sue.

Thompson is most famous for her roles in the films”Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” “Love Actually” and “Stranger than Fiction.”

“I’ve been aware of this issue for a while with my work with Greenpeace and it came to a head for me when David Cameron went to the Paris Climate Conference and signed on to the protocol and then on the sly at Christmas, when nobody was looking, gave the nod to 200 fracking sites in Britain,” Thompson told The Daily Mail. “It proved to me our Government is saying one thing and doing the opposite.”

The British Parliament voted in December to allow fracking under Britain’s national parks by a vote of 298 to 261 and began awarding licenses. There were no fracking licences awarded in Scotland, which has a moratorium against fracking.

Energy consulting groups estimate that fracking will create 74,000 new jobs in the U.K. and safeguard another 100,000. Fracking would offer up to $16.5 million in benefits to local governments and communities per site.

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