Hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') has enabled the recovery of previously inaccessible resources and rendered new areas of the underground 'productive'. While a number of studies in the US and UK have examined public attitudes toward fracking and its various impacts, how people conceptualise the deep underground itself has received less attention. We argue that views on resources, risk and the deep underground raise important questions about how people perceive the desirability and viability of subterranean interventions. We conducted day-long deliberation workshops (two in each country), facilitating discussions among diverse groups of people on prospective shale extraction in the US and UK. Themes that emerged in these conversations include seeing the Earth as a foundation; natural limits (a greater burden than the subsurface can withstand versus simply overuse of natural resources); and ideas about the fragility, instability and opacity of the deep underground. We find that concerns in both countries were not limited to specific, localised impacts but also addressed ecosystem links between surface and subsurface environments and broader questions about the use, identification and value of natural resources.

中文翻译：

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受干扰的地球：美国和英国页岩开采审议中的深层地下概念

水力压裂（“压裂”）使以前无法获得的资源得以恢复，并使地下的新区域“富有成效”。虽然美国和英国的多项研究调查了公众对水力压裂及其各种影响的态度，但人们如何将深层地下本身概念化却很少受到关注。我们认为，关于资源、风险和地下深处的观点提出了关于人们如何看待地下干预的可取性和可行性的重要问题。我们举办了为期一天的审议研讨会（每个国家两个），促进了不同群体之间关于美国和英国潜在页岩开采的讨论。这些对话中出现的主题包括将地球视为基础；自然限制（比地下所能承受的更大的负担，而不是简单地过度使用自然资源）；以及关于地下深处的脆弱性、不稳定性和不透明性的想法。我们发现，两国的担忧不仅限于特定的、局部的影响，还涉及地表和地下环境之间的生态系统联系以及关于自然资源的使用、识别和价值的更广泛问题。