Picasso's 'Geurnica' connects to coal seam gas

Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” told of the death and destruction that disrupted life in the small Basque town in 1937.

Pablo Picasso's iconic 'Guernica'.

This massive piece of 20^th century iconic art told not only of the brutal tragedy of war, but warned of the violence energised and prosecuted by what was then modern technology.

Everything, but nothing has changed.

Leap forward nearly a century and today’s technology is unimaginably better, killing with precision in which the perpetrator is remote from the grisly consequence of their behaviour, but the intent is still the same.

Sitting through a recent day-long discussion about coal seam gas (CSG) there appeared to be a bizarre and yet tenable connection to Guernica

CSG is, as is with the extraction of any fossil fuel, about technology that when used inappropriately can bring difficulties, disruption, and at the extreme, death.

Picasso’s Guernica is the product of technology and human intent driven by a lust for power and the satiation of greed that has overridden decency and a sense of care for our fellows.

Listening to the CSG advocates it was difficult to escape a legacy of realities that equate with the terror of those Guernica people who were going about their business on a regular market day when aerial-borne technology left their lives in disarray.

The CSG technology is, however, at the other end of the spectrum, being something from below rather than above.

Victorians presently enjoy a moratorium on CSG, but the protagonists are ready to exploit our Victorian soils the moment the ban is lifted, possibly after next year’s state election.

Advocates of CSG praise it with enthusiasm and with equal conviction play down its disadvantages, of which they argue are few, contrary to their opponents who rate in such a way that it is as disruptive to communities as what happened in Guernica.

Depending on who is talking, CSG is either alarming or a wonderful boon to humanity.

Just as it is with climate change, personal ideologies inhibit peoples’ thinking, causing them to either rally behind this “new” gas or irrevocably damn it.

Exploration for and exploitation of the gas appears relatively safe and brings with it access to a fresh power source that allows for the continuation of an energy-rich life style.

Others adhere to a contrary view, arguing the process risks the purity of essential aquifers, rogue escaping gases damage our atmosphere and it consumes alarming amounts of water.

Complex and convoluted laws seem to favour the “drillers” rather than landowners and appear inadequate to administer a process that has sufficient potential to unravel the integrity of whole communities.

Picasso’s Guernica was of another time, but the passion it ignited is of the type needed today to balance this debate about an unconventional gas.