What the frack is going on?

One Saturday in early November, the UK Government announced it would bring fracking to an immediate halt in England. At first glance, the news reports suggest this is something to celebrate - a win for the years of campaigning and protesting for environmentalists. But, on closer inspection, it dawned on me that the recent coverage around the fracking ban has been so incredibly misleading that I’ve been left stunned. I feel compelled to wade in just to balance out the hype with some truth and pull out the facts.

The misinformation around this fracking saga (#frackgate) isn’t just about politics, this is about the integrity of content and the lack of accountability when it comes to sharing facts on online. I’ve seen quite a lot of influential media outlets and respectable organisations using click bait style headlines claiming that we’ve made a major breakthrough on this issue. We haven’t and we shouldn’t pretend we have.

Delve beneath these headlines and you’ll unearth the real fracking facts... which I’ve summarised here for your ease!

Fracking has been HALTED, not banned.

It will resume as soon as the earthquakes it causes (we hit almost 3 on the Richter scale in Lancashire!) can be verified as predictable and controlled by scientists.

This policy is NOT an outright ban, it can be reversed.

The “science” they are exploring is based on minimising potential risk of an earthquake, it doesn’t even consider the climate science.

By halting plans with a view to recommencing work, fracking continues to goes against the ambitions of the Paris agreement and it doesn’t support the Government’s pledge to be net zero by 2050. These inconvenient points have been completely overlooked.

Ultimately we’ll be back to extracting fossil fuel from the ground.

So whilst you see the mainstream media and social outlets celebrating this fracking “ban”as a victory. Please consider, instead, that what you are really seeing is fake news, clickbait headlines, poor journalism, lack of research and greenwash.