A bunch of self-important luvvies has signed a letter calling for a moratorium on Britain’s barely nascent fracking industry. (H/T Bishop Hill)

The list of contributors is like a Who’s Who from Hell.

They include:

Michael Mansfield QC – champagne socialist lawyer; champion of every bankrupt liberal cause ever

Katharine Hamnett – once tried to upset Margaret Thatcher by wearing a t-shirt saying in big letters that she didn’t like Pershing missiles

Helena Bonham Carter – murdered Dobby the house elf

Russell Brand – literally constructed by the Devil from his own toe-jam, belly-fluff and stray pubic hair

Dana Nuccitelli – spoof Guardian “columnist”, rumoured to be the creation of Craig Brown, designed to satirise the wilder fringes of environmentalist lunacy

George Monbiot – see Dana Nuccitelli

Will Self – the pseudo-intellectual’s Russell Brand; once took heroin on an aeroplane

Jeremy Hardy – left-wing comedian who has struggled for material ever since Margaret Thatcher ceased to be prime minister

Sam Branson – rich person’s son

Sir Paul McCartney – formerly married to the creator of a world-famous veggie snack range; was once in a band with the guy who did the voices on the children’s TV series Thomas The Tank Engine; banned from one of his wives from smoking dope

Friends of the Earth – a bit like the Khmer Rouge, but more agrarian and anti-intellectual

Frankie Boyle – faux hard-man comic who keeps ruining it with his achingly right-on tweets and his propensity to sign fluffy round robins at the behest of brain-dead eco-activists

Greenpeace – Like Friends of the Earth but in boats

Greta Scacchi – actress who used to get her kit off a lot in films, for artistic reasons obviously

Yoko Ono – world-renowned artist, global singing talent, respected everywhere for her intelligence, charm and self-effacing wit

Noel Fielding – wears make-up and feathers. Kids consider this far-out and zany and justification for a career.

John Pilger – journalist who thinks everything is America’s fault. Everything!

Bryan Adams – proto Justin Bieber; his theme to that Robin Hood song effectively destroyed the entire 1980s

Dale Vince – dog-on-a-rope crusty made good by government fiat

Thom Yorke – wrote the soundtrack to environmentalist, exploding-kids snuff video No Pressure; refuses to play songs with tunes any more because that’s, like, selling your soul to the man

Chris Baugh (Assistant General Secretary PCS) – sorry mate, no one’s heard of you, nor are they going to bother finding out what PCS stands for. Prat Continuity Syndicate? Penile Chocolate Society?)

What’s worrying about this list of names is that, for all these people’s manifest flaws, they represent some of the most culturally dominant figures of our time, in pretty much every paper and on every television programme all the time 365 days of the year.

So what is the important message they have to impart on the subject of fracking?

The government says that fracking is safe even though it is banned in several European countries and US states. There is substantial evidence showing that fracking causes water stress risks water contamination and soil contamination, earth tremors – and is a threat to human, wildlife, bird, fish and livestock health. This technology will not bring down fuel bills and will not provide a jobs boom, but it has the potential to leave a damaging environmental legacy for future generations.

Almost every word of that paragraph is a lie or a grotesque distortion of the truth.

Yet these spoilt luvvies – so cushioned by their wealth that they don’t need to give a damn about the benefits which will undoubtedly accrue to the UK economy and the jobs which will be created if ever the fracking industry gets off the ground – are free to indulge in half-baked, whimsical protests like this because they are no consequences for being proved wrong.

It goes all against my libertarian instincts but for once, I believe it is time the government put its foot down and nipped this attempt at celebrity eco-sabotage in the bud. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has shown the way by banning government meteorologists from sounding off about “climate change”. Now it’s David Cameron’s turn to show his mettle. From henceforward, all slebs caught spouting unutterable drivel about environmental issues should be superglued to the blade of a giant wind turbine and left to rot like crucified rebels on the Appian Way. The signatories of that letter would make an excellent start.