Shaken Resolve

It has long been an axiom of our present religious orthodoxy that shale fracking is more efficient than solar, and indeed more efficient than almost any other energy source aside from moribund half-complete foreign-owned nuclear power stations. With fracking there may be a few minor earth tremors, an occasional cracked water pipe and, for the luckiest customers, a bracing flow of methane through the fatbergs; but production of solar energy is fatally reliant on the very source of global warming itself, and there are rumours in a few dank corners of the Conservative Party that the sun has been so disobliging as to stop being in orbit around the earth. Hence, for the past decade or so the Government has been cutting subsidies for solar while throwing money at the shale frackers, who have come through splendidly with the convenient discovery of absolutely squillions of cubic feet of gas. As usual, the only thing that stands between Britain and its rightful place on the fart-lit uplands is the beastly barrier of regulation, which permits only the very smallest of tremors for fear that the plebs will stampede. Two fracking firms have joined their voices in a squeal of indignation at not being allowed to cause greater damage, on the grounds that the limits under which they originally agreed to work have now become unworkable, at least if the boardrooms are to be kept acceptably joyous; while the Minister for Dim Bulbs apparently occupies both sides of the argument depending on who she happens to be talking to at the time. In the meantime, Great Britain continues to be an island surrounded by waves, lashed by winds and with every prospect of occasional exposure to sunlight; what can be the solution?