Knowing the truth
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” John 8-32
So what ARE we to make of @backingfracking’s lie that the Church of England is Backing Fracking?
First of all they make the claim on Facebook that the “anti-fracking narrative (has been) sacrificed on the altar of the Church of England…that’s right, it’s Backing Fracking!”
To do this they use a picture of a Catholic Church in Canada
Yes really! It’s a picture of the Holy Name of Mary Catholic Church on Bridge Street in Almonte in the diocese of Ottawa.
Isn’t this just a bit worse than using a picture of Grasmere as an analog for the English countryside? What would Friends of The Earth or the ASA have to say about that I wonder?
Next, on Twitter, they publish a picture of the Archbishop of Canterbury apparently saying “Blessed are the frackers” and claiming The Church of England is Backing Fracking.
The only trouble is – it isn’t.
The Church of England actually said about the paper they are referring to:
“This is not a policy paper. It is a briefing paper to outline key issues and to highlight that fracking is not morally different from any other extractive industry – it’s about context.”
The paper itself is riddled with caveats and offers only cautious and conditional acceptance of fracking as long as several conditions are met. It concludes:
The key to whether or not fracking is a morally acceptable practice thus turns on three points: the place of shale gas within a transitional energy policy committed to a low carbon economy; the adequacy and robustness of the regulatory regime under which it is conducted, and the robustness of local planning and decision-making processes. Having concluded that shale gas may be a useful component in transitioning to a low carbon economy, we are persuaded that a robust planning and regulatory regime could be constructed. However, these are aspects that will need constant vigilance.Ongoing research and monitoring of impacts on health and environment will be needed
So the Church isn’t backing fracking – it remains agnostic on the subject. Anyone who has studied these issues in any depth will realise that the conditions specified here are a long way from being met, and anyone who studies the paper itself will instantly hear alarm bells ringing. For example, when looking at the potential “benefits” , they quote Cuadrilla’s estimate of 250 FTE jobs per development wells from their 5 year old Regeneris report instead of using up-to-date data from their planning application, which make it clear there would only be 11 FTE positions created by 4 development wells.
It’s hard to believe that a vicar is an admin of the group responsible for this unholy mess isn’t it.
What will the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Julian have to say? Watch this space.
Of course if having the truth exposed is awkward for you, then you can always change it.
So Michael Roberts seems to have deleted the inconvenient comments, in which he displays his paranoid insistence that I am everyone who posts on his Backing Fracking page
and replaced them with something he obviously hopes will get him off the hook with his bishop.
The trouble is Michael, we have the before and after screen shots and we know you are one of the admins of Backing Fracking and have at very least chosen NOT to delete any of the offending posts.
