CE Watts (Fracking our way to destruction? Letters, June 6) gives us his deeply informed view of fracking, no doubt based on his years of experience working with the technology.

Or not, as is clear from statements such as “fracking is dangerous to the environment on a grand scale”.

No it isn’t. There is a great deal of propaganda flying around from special interest groups, probably the same people who would despoil our countryside with wind farms and solar arrays, and want us all to revert to an agrarian economy that was struggling when there were five million people in this country, not 60.

The letter on the opposite page by Barry Burton on tidal power was a splendid riposte to the dreamers and whiners who support these wind and solar chimaerae, the same people who expect someone else to pay for it.

CE Watts is probably unaware that fracking has been carried out for decades in the North Sea fields with no ill effects; Europe's largest onshore oilfield is at Wytch Farm in Dorset, but it has been so well hidden in an SSSI I bet no one reading this paper has ever seen it. Fresh water is not essential for fracking; seawater and raw water can be used successfully, so Southern Water is unlikely to dry up.

The problem that must be addressed is well casing seals failing; the technology exists to ensure reliable seals and must form part of licence conditions.

While our population grows, and we have no desire to revert to a lifestyle more in common with 1913 than 2013, we have to create energy in the short term at an affordable price while we develop effective alternatives such as tidal, nuclear (fission and fusion) and offshore wind.

Gas offers the least impactful solution in the short term and is far preferable to coal.

Fracking can be done without leaks, earthquakes, pollution and drought. It could give our economy a chance to compete again in the world. If God has blessed this sceptred isle with one last chance in the energy lottery, we must grasp it if we can.

Yes, we have to do it right, but the technology already exists, we have British expertise to do the work, and it won’t need the bucket loads of subsidy that onshore wind and solar extract from all of us, making a privileged few rich while those of us not owning a private solar array or wind turbine struggle to meet ever rising energy bills, and suffer the visual and audible effects of these energy nasties.

The policies we adopt have to ensure the wellbeing of our people now as well as in the future, and not exist solely to assume a moral high ground that is both ineffective on the international stage, and directly damaging to our national interest.

PAUL WOOD, Southampton.