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.

We do not need new sources of carbon-based energy. Even if fracking were popular with local residents – even if it did not cause minor local earthquakes – it has no place in the energy mix of the future.

Boris Johnson was only bowing to the inevitable in agreeing to the experts’ recommendation to suspend fracking, but let us be grateful for small mercies. This decision allows all parties in this election to focus on the urgent questions of how best, and how quickly, to decarbonise the British economy.

It is encouraging, again, that all parties recognise the success of energy policy over the past decade – in particular the stunning rise in production and fall in cost of offshore wind power. All three main parties deserve some credit for this. The Labour government laid the foundations before 2010, the Liberal Democrats did the heavy lifting and the Conservatives have overseen the delivery phase.

Theresa May’s swansong was to set a demanding target for a net-zero carbon economy by 2050, which has now been locked in as the parties compete to try to bring the date earlier.

That means some hard choices all round for Mr Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn and Jo Swinson: on nuclear power; on domestic heating and cooking; and above all on international efforts to re-engage the United States with the UN climate negotiations.

We shall continue to hold all the parties to account on environmental issues, including the Green Party, Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and the parties in Northern Ireland.

But the decision on fracking is a good place to start.