Politicians avoiding tough questions on fracking issue, While the shale gas mantra focuses on jobs, cheap energy and recovery, the evidence contradicts these claims by Scott Coombs, August 19, 2013, The Irish Times
When I was in school, my English teacher introduced me to the concept of “God words”, words whose associations are so visceral that they can’t be argued against. As a result, rational discourse flees from them like birds from the sound of a hunter’s rifle. I went to school in Ronald Reagan’s America and my teacher cited “Liberal” and “Communist” as God words. Use these words against your opponent and they’re unlikely to get a fair hearing. Thirty years later and we have new words. During his recent speech at St Angela’s College in Sligo, Taoiseach Enda Kenny linked fracking to reducing emigration, creating jobs, and lowering the cost of energy. Jobs. Recovery. Cheap energy. Never mind that many legitimately question whether these are jobs worth having, or that the energy is really cheap when you consider all the costs.
David Cameron is at it too, writing in the Daily Telegraph that fracking has “real potential to drive energy bills down” and that a thriving shale-gas industry could create tens of thousands of jobs and millions of pounds for local communities. Jobs. Recovery. Cheap energy. How can anyone not be in favour?
… Estimates for the number of wells that could be drilled in the northwest are in the region of 3,000, drilled in sets of between 16 and 24 on sites about five to nine acres each, requiring an infrastructure of roads, pipelines, storage and treatment facilities, millions of gallons of water and hundreds of tons of chemicals, delivered by thousands of lorries and forced into the earth’s crust by large noisy compressors each time you frack each well. If analysis by the US Securities and Exchange Commission has any relevance to Ireland, only 600 of these wells will be commercially viable.
… Tamboran Resources, the Australian company who applied for a licence to explore the shale in north Leitrim and Cavan, claim that “€7 billion gas investment could create 600 full-time jobs”. That’s €11.6 million per job. Leaving aside whether that really represents value for money, let us bear in mind that that is not a net figure.
Food, agriculture and tourism support almost 500,000 jobs and even a marginal loss resulting from fracking will significantly exceed the jobs promised by fracking promoters. Just last month, the New Zealand-based dairy co-operative Fonterra announced that it would no longer accept milk from any new dairy suppliers based in areas of New Zealand where fracking waste has been spread and covered. In the United States, if all the jobs promised by fracking promoters materialised, it would have reduced the 2012 unemployment rate by a whopping 0.5 per cent. Hardly a “game changer”, Mr Rabbitte. [Emphasis added]
