The suspension of fracking gets this climate-crisis election off to a good start

Editorial: We promised to cover issues of substance in this election campaign, and none is more important than the effort to avert climate disaster

In our election pledges to you, the reader, The Independent promised that our coverage of the contest would go beyond Brexit and beyond the horse-race reporting of who is ahead and who is behind.

Above all, we said, the all-encompassing and lasting issue is the climate crisis. So in that sense, the campaign has got off to a good start with the government announcement of a moratorium on fracking.

The use of pressurised water to fracture rock for the extraction of natural gas is yesterday’s technology for yesterday’s energy market. Even if it could be commercially viable – and so far only one fracking operation has been started in Britain – it would not be so for long.