Jim Emberger Commentary


The Opposition Energy Critic says that the discontinuation of the Energy Institute will stop the examination of the science surrounding shale gas. Energy and Mines Minister Donald Arseneault says that New Brunswick’s shale commission could approve development. Neither of these two political smokescreens reflects the actual rigorous scientific examinations of shale gas occurring elsewhere.

Lengthy and exhaustive reviews have recently been completed in four jurisdictions. All those jurisdictions then enacted bans or moratoria.

New Brunswickers know that our neighbours, Quebec and Nova Scotia, passed lasting moratoria following their reviews. The state of Maryland just enacted an additional two-and-a-half-year moratorium based on a review conducted by their highly regarded university system’s public health school.

But the most thorough review was undertaken by the state of New York. It had already declared a moratorium based on a previous public health review. Last week, after completing a ‘seven-year’ Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), they essentially banned shale development. All these jurisdictions reached similar conclusions, but New York’s extraordinary effort deserves quoting.

The EIS concluded that the scientific evidence showed:

“Significant uncertainty remains regarding the level of risk to public health and the environment that would result from permitting high-volume hydraulic fracturing.”

“In fact, the uncertainty regarding the potential significant adverse environmental and public health impacts has been growing over time.”

“Significant uncertainty remains regarding the degree of effectiveness of proposed mitigation measures.”

In other words, there are many serious risks needing much more study, the number and severity of the risks is continually increasing, and the effectiveness of mitigation and control efforts are questionable.

Most of the hundreds of scientific papers supporting these conclusions about risk can be found in two places and are periodically updated:

A Compendium by the Concerned Health Professionals of NY. ( con  cernedhealthny.org  ).

Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy. ( pse  healthyenergy.org  ).

Since these reviews, alarming studies covering health effects, wastewater disposal, water well contamination, air pollution, radon, and earthquakes continue to appear weekly.

One such comes from medical research about ‘endocrine disruptors.’ These are chemicals that in miniscule quantities act on the body’s hormone system, causing developmental, immune system and reproductive diseases. Children and pregnant women are particularly at risk.

A new review of the science about them concluded,“Many of the air and water pollutants found near (Unconventional Oil and Gas) operation sites are recognized as being developmental and reproductive toxicants, and therefore there is a compelling need to increase our knowledge of the potential health consequences for adults, infants, and children from these chemicals.” ( www.degruyter.com  ).

Another study found that several endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly used in gas production caused disease at a tiny fraction of the levels considered ‘safe’ by current standards. It also found that levels of these chemicals in the“air near oil and gas development can be orders of magnitude higher than exposures for which we found health effects.”( pubs.acs.  org  ) As to the questionable effectiveness of mitigation efforts, the Council of Canadian Academies already noted that neither the government nor industry adequately monitor shale development. Therefore, without scientific data, no jurisdiction can claim its ‘world-class’ regulations are based on science. Industry-defined ‘best practices’ are not scientific guarantees of safety or effectiveness.

The clear trends in the scientific review of shale gas are the increased identification of risks, and the resulting increase in bans and moratoriums. The few studies that our Energy Institute could complete in our one-year moratorium would have little effect on trends based on hundreds of studies. The Institute’s reputable scientists deserve thanks for doing some worthwhile baseline studies, but existing departments such as Environment and Health can direct such research.

The Institute had a problem beyond its ethically questionable founding by the former PC government and the now discredited Dr. LaPierre. If it had been intended to be an ‘Energy’institute, its mandate would have been to examine all energy options and help choose the best one, rather than to simply make shale gas palatable to the citizenry.

Our current Commission,staffed by volunteers,with only a travel budget and a less-than- one-year window,will work in the shadows of jurisdictions who conducted multi-year reviews with paid researchers,multi-million dollar budgets, and extensive human resources.

It is almost inconceivable that our Commission could reach a different conclusion. To contradict the now well-established scientific evidence of unacceptable risk, it would require truly extraordinarily difficult public explanations and levels of proof.

JIM EMBERGER

Jim Emberger is the spokesperson for the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance.

Please see a correction and apology on page A2.


Correction and apology

A June 12 letter to the editor questioned the truthfulness and motivations of Jim Emberger, spokesperson for the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance, including an assertion that his is a paid position.In fact,Mr.Emberger is a volunteer. Further,we have no information that Mr. Emberger has been untruthful.

We regret these statements were published unchecked, and apologize to Mr. Emberger.

In addition, the original opinion piece to which the letter was responding was not published by the Times and Transcript. It should have been. That opinion piece appears today on page A9.


"We've made a list and we're checking it twice"


This campaign is to encourage people all across this province to e-mail and/or phone several MLAs and ask them to speak up publicly for Dr. Eilish Cleary to be reinstated.   People and groups are also encouraged to meet with their local MLA and ask them to speak up publicly to reinstate Dr. Cleary.  You can post on Facebook and Twitter (#BringBackCleary) the response from your MLA, whether positive or negative.    

Campaign organizing groups (see sidebar) will be watching for MLAs who speak in public or release press statements that ask to reinstate Dr. Cleary.  The MLA Checklist (download below) will keep track of these MLAs and be regularly updated on this website.

"Oh Cleary tree, oh Cleary tree."
Cleary wreath2

The campaign is calling for people across this province to decorate trees, wreaths, and other visible objects in your house and your community with the message "Bring Dr. Cleary Back for the Holidays". Have fun with it and use your imagination!
  • Use small recipe cards with the message written on it and affixed with a red or green ribbon
  • Tag your favourite natural wonder (e.g. forest, stream, river, wetland, bay) with objects that include the message "Bring Dr. Cleary Back for the Holidays"
  • Use aluminum foil to fashion small stethoscopes for decorations

Then take a picture and post on Facebook and Twitter (#BringBackCleary) which will encourage others to do it in their community or favourite natural wonder. 


Use the "Cleary cards" (download from below and print). 
  • Fill these out with your location, tie them up with a piece of green or red ribbon on a tree, wreath, community location, or favourite habitat and take a picture of it to post on Facebook or Twitter (#BringBackCleary)
  • Fill one out for your favourite animal, fish, bird, or tree that is threatened by our widespread clearcutting and spraying programs.  For example, "Doe Ramey" from "Durham, New Brunswick." 
Have fun with it!

FACEBOOK PAGE:  Reinstate Dr. Eilish Cleary
HASHTAG:  #BringBackCleary

Downloadable MLA check list and Cleary cards

Here's a link to the video of Dr. John Cherry’s informative ‘'Shale Gas Experiment” presentation in Fredericton, November 17, 2015. It was posted by the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance.

JIM EMBERGER COMMENTARY


   The Opposition Energy critic says that the discontinuation of the Energy Institute will stop the examination of the science surrounding shale gas. Energy Minister Donald Arseneault says that New Brunswick’s shale commission could approve development. Neither of these two political smokescreens reflects the actual rigorous scientific examinations of shale gas occurring elsewhere.

   Lengthy and exhaustive reviews have recently been completed in four jurisdictions. All those jurisdictions then enacted bans or moratoria.

   New Brunswickers know that our neighbours, Quebec and Nova Scotia, passed lasting moratoria following their reviews. The state of Maryland just enacted an additional two and a half year moratorium based on a review conducted by their highly regarded university system’s public health school.

   But the most thorough review was undertaken by the state of New York. It had already declared a moratorium based on a previous public health review. Last week, after completing a seven-year environmental impact statement (EIS), they essentially banned shale development. All these jurisdictions reached similar conclusions, but New York’s extraordinary effort deserves quoting.

   The EIS concluded that the scientific evidence showed:

   •“Significant uncertainty remains regarding the level of risk to public health and the environment that would result from permitting high-volume hydraulic fracturing”

   •“In fact, the uncertainty regarding the potential significant adverse environmental and public health impacts has been growing over time”

   • and“significant uncertainty remains regarding the degree of effectiveness of proposed mitigation measures.”

   In other words, there are many serious risks needing much more study, the number and severity of the risks is continually increasing, and the effectiveness of mitigation and control efforts are questionable.

   Most of the hundreds of scientific papers supporting these conclusions about risk can be found in two places and are periodically updated:

   • a compendium by the Concerned Health Professionals of NY at http://bit.
ly/1t8E2bo

   • Physicians, Scientists and Engineers for Healthy Energy at http://bit.
ly/1QbOtdD

   Since these reviews, alarming studies covering health effects, wastewater disposal, water well contamination, air pollution, radon, and earthquakes continue to appear weekly.

   One such comes from medical research about “endocrine disruptors.” These are chemicals that in minuscule quantities act on the body’s hormone system, causing developmental, immune system and reproductive diseases.Children and pregnant women are particularly at risk.

   A new review ( http://bit.ly/1yqfJvj
) of the science about them concluded,“Many of the air and water pollutants found near [Unconventional Oil and Gas] operation sites are recognized as being developmental and reproductive toxicants, and therefore there is a compelling need to increase our knowledge of the potential health consequences for adults, infants, and children from these chemicals.”

   Another study ( http://bit.ly/1CMad
kk ) found that several endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly used in gas production caused disease at a tiny fraction of the levels considered“safe”by current standards. It also found that levels of these chemicals in the “air near oil and gas development can be orders of magnitude higher than exposures for which we found health effects.”

   As to the questionable effectiveness of mitigation efforts, the Council of Canadian Academies already noted that neither the government nor industry adequately monitor shale development. Therefore, without scientific data, no jurisdiction can claim its “world-class” regulations are based on science. Industry-defined“best practices”are not scientific guarantees of safety or effectiveness.

   The clear trends in the scientific review of shale gas are the increased identification of risks, and the resulting increase in bans and moratoriums. The few studies that our Energy Institute could complete in our one-year moratorium would have little effect on trends based on hundreds of studies. The institute’s reputable scientists deserve thanks for doing some worthwhile baseline studies, but existing departments such as Environment and Health can direct such research.

   The institute had a problem beyond its ethically questionable founding by the former PC government and the now discredited Dr. LaPierre. If it had been intended to be an “energy” institute, its mandate would have been to examine all energy options and help choose the best one,rather than to simply make shale gas palatable to the citizenry.

   Our current commission,staffed by volunteers, with only a travel budget and a less-than-one-year window, will work in the shadows of jurisdictions who conducted multi-year reviews with paid researchers, multimillion-dollar budgets, and extensive human resources.

   It is almost inconceivable that our commission could reach a different conclusion. To contradict the now well-established scientific evidence of unacceptable risk, it would require truly extraordinarily difficult public explanations and levels of proof.

   JIM EMBERGER is a spokesman for the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance.



Only a Matter of Time
by D. Barrie Clarke, Adjunct, Department of Earth Sciences Dalhousie University

1. Most people, including politicians and resource-sector executives, consider issues on time-scales of hours to years, but earth scientists routinely deal with natural processes that occur over decades to millions of years. The issue, and consequences, of hydraulic fracturing properly belong in the latter category.

2. A time-bomb is a device that is set to cause destruction to people or property at some time in the future, after the agent that set the device is remote, in space and/or time, from its destructive effects. Conventional time-bombs have fuses that are hours to days in length, but environmental time-bombs have “fuses” that are decades to millennia in length.

3. Arsenic poisoning of the groundwater in Waverley, NS, in the 1970s, for example, was the unanticipated legacy of the gold-mining time-bomb set in the 1870s. Its arsenic- and mercury-contaminated mine tailings still constitute present-day environmental problems and future clean-up costs (Parsons et al. 2012). Those human-health and remediation costs are borne by people today, not the gold-mining companies of yesteryear. Fool us once, resource-extraction industry – shame on you.

4. Naturally occurring, deep-seated, low-viscosity materials (e.g., gas, petroleum, brine) always migrate upwards to lower pressure. The toxic cocktail of man-made fracking fluids will behave in exactly the same way. This migration of fluids is subject only to D’Arcy’s Law, which states that the fluid flow rate is directly proportional to the permeability (k), the hydraulic pressure gradient (dh/dL), and the cross-sectional area of the flow (A), and not to unscientific claims of safety by the petroleum industry.

5. Fracking deliberately destroys the impermeability (k=0) of rocks containing oil and gas; once their permeability is greater than zero (k>0), all fluids, both natural and synthetic, begin their upward migration, even if the well casing is properly sealed. In the absence of any stratigraphically higher impermeable horizons, those fluids will have hydraulic connectivity with the surface and must eventually reach the groundwater system (Vengosh et al. 2013).

6. “The complexities of contaminant transport from hydraulically fractured shale to near-surface aquifers render estimates uncertain, but a range of interpretive simulations suggest that transport times could be decreased from geologic time scales to as few as tens of years. Preferential flow through natural fractures [and] fracking-induced fractures could further decrease the travel times…” (Myers, 2012).

7. For balance, Flewelling and Sharma (2014) offer the expected, contrary, dismissive, industry-funded view.

8. Fluid migration times are longer than the history of fracking in relatively shallow horizontal wells, but it’s only a matter of time until the fracking fluids reach the groundwater system. What goes down, must come up. The petroleum industry already knows this. How else to explain the Bush-Cheney “Halliburton exemption” from the anti-pollution provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act in the USA? http://www.independentwatertesting.com/education-center/148-what-is-the-halliburton-loophole.html

9. Poisoning of the groundwater again in Nova Scotia could, therefore, become the undesirable 2114 legacy of a fracking time-bomb set in 2014, but by that time the frackers will be long gone with their environmentally untaxed profits, and future generations will be left to pay in terms of their health and their taxes again. Fool us twice, resource-extraction industry – shame on us.

10. Humans can, and eventually must, live without fossil fuels, but never without water. So, where will the people of North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Texas, and New Brunswick migrate when their groundwater becomes irretrievably contaminated by fracking fluids, except to pristine places such as Nova Scotia, which had the prudence and good sense to reject hydraulic fracturing in 2014?

D. Barrie Clarke clarke@dal.ca, Adjunct, Department of Earth Sciences Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2

Resources
Much of the objective scientific information that the Hydraulic Fracturing Panel needs to consider is available on-line in places such as the Council of Canadian Academies panel website: http://www.scienceadvice.ca/en/assessments/in-progress/shale-gas.aspx
and (in English) from Germany’s premier geological research institute (GeoForschungsZentrum-Potsdam): http:// /www.shale-gas-information-platform.org/
Also, because the shale gas issue should not be considered in isolation, I highly recommend Energy for Future Presidents by Richard A. Muller (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012, ISBN 978-0-393-34510-0) as a comprehensive and highly readable account of all current and future energy options.

References
Flewelling, S. A. and Sharma, M., 2014. Constraints on upward migration of hydraulic fracturing fluid and brine. Groundwater 52, 9-19. doi: 10.1111/gwat.12095
Myers, T. 2012. Potential contaminant pathways from hydraulically fractured shale to aquifers. Groundwater 50, 872-882. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6584.2012.00933
Parsons, M.B., LeBlanc, K.W.G., Hall, G.E.M., Sangster, A.L., Vaive, J.E., and Pelchat, P., 2012. Environmental geochemistry of tailings, sediments and surface waters collected from 14 historical gold mining districts in Nova Scotia; Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 7150. doi:10.4095/291923
Vengosh, A., Warner, N., Jackson, R., and Darrah, T., 2013. The effects of shale gas exploration and hydraulic fracturing on the quality of water resources in the United States. Procedia Earth and Planetary Science 7, 863-866. doi: 10.1016/j.proeps.2013.03.213

Acknowledgements: I wish to thank G.B., J.C., J.D., A.F., A.M., D.P., M.P., and J.W. for their constructive comments on this document.


Voice of the People Tour kick-off

Delta Hotel Fredericton - March 20 2014

Who are we? Firstly, the Voice of the People Tour is being organized by concerned citizens through various community organizations: the Council of Canadians, the New Brunswick Anti Shale Gas Alliance, the Fredericton District Labour Council and Unifor. We are working together to bring these important issues to the people in our communities.

The Voice of the People Tour will be coming to communities in every corner of the province. We want to hear your voice!

The purpose of our tour is to provide public education about shale gas and clean energy.


We will be asking the people in our communities:


  • • Do we know everything we need to about shale gas?
  • • Is shale gas the only way to create jobs?
  • • What do you want in your backyard?
The town hall meetings will provide an overview of scientific evidence of the effects of shale gas development, specifically hydraulic fracturing of shale gas. We also want to discuss possible alternatives to shale gas development, namely clean energy and clean jobs.

Our concerns are broadly shared. We are here today in solidarity with many other organizations who have given their endorsement to the Voice of the People Tour. Why? Because they too are concerned with the dangers of shale gas and the lack of consultation with the people.  


These organizations are:

CUPE
Unifor
Fredericton and District Labour Council
The New Brunswick Federation of Labour
New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance
Council of Canadians
Conservation Council of New Brunswick
The National Farmers Union
And more...

The tour will highlight why so many organizations and people are against shale gas, including 130 New Brunswick municipalities, community organizations, and professional associations. Most recently, many labour unions have called for a Provincial/national moratorium on shale gas development.

Why have the citizens organized this tour? Because we believe that the peoples' voice is vital in democracy. Over the past 4 years there has been little to no consultation or public meetings initiated by the government, nor by industry. So, people are organizing themselves. Also, there has been no consultation with the First Peoples of this land.

In addition, the Government of New Brunswick has failed to provide the public with peer reviewed scientific evidence of the harmful effects of shale gas fracking, and shale gas development. The people are not getting the information they need.

The Premier would have us believe that shale gas is the only way to create jobs in this Province. We know this is not true. In fact, according to Blue-Green Canada, for the same investment there are seven times more jobs created with clean energy and building efficiency than with the oil and gas industry.

For example, The 2013 Massachusetts Clean Energy Industry report showed that there were double the number of clean energy workers compared with the number of natural gas workers in neighbouring shale gas state of Pennsylvania. 80,000 jobs were created in the clean energy versus 40,000 jobs in the natural gas sector.

Clean jobs and green energy are possible and more financially viable and long term. Shale gas jobs disappear once the wells are drilled.

It makes more sense for New Brunswick to invest in clean energy alternatives instead of shale gas. It's safer and creates more jobs. To do otherwise would be a lost opportunity for our Province.

We believe the people will be the problem solvers in this tour.

The people have this responsibility.
 

Signed - 
The Voice of the People Coalition

voiceofthepeopletour@gmail.com


 

The following are the words of Passamaquoddy Elder Hugh Akagi. He presented at the 'Energy For Everyone' initiative, run recently in Saint John.

Address by Chief of the Passamaquoddy Nation, Hugh Akagi at 'Energy For Everyone'

Saint John October 3, 2013



Once again I wish to thank the wolastoqiyik for the honour to walk in your territory.

When first asked to speak at this event I recommended someone I knew who would deliver a better message in a more powerful way than I possibly could, yet I was gently reminded through the following message that I have an obligation to be here: I thought - and you can correct me - that the pipeline marine terminal and marine traffic, poses a risk to the waters of the Passamaquoddy. This may be an issue that you are interested in.”

Needless to say, I was humbled and she was right. 

“I see signs all through Passamaquoddy territory, including the waters, that we can no longer entrust the safety and well being of this planet to those compromised by their addiction to money”

I am interested and more than concerned that our energy bubble is about to burst. I see signs all through Passamaquoddy territory including the waters that we can no longer entrust the safety and well being of this planet to those compromised by their addiction to money. Money is not real, it is a paper substitute for land, for water, for creatures that share this planet with us and even for the lives of those often described as collateral damage for the comfort of others.

“Don’t forget our earliest dependence on oil put the largest creatures to ever inhabit this planet on a list of endangered species just to keep the lamps burning in Europe”

Do you require proof of each of these? In sequence: comprehensive claims for Indians (money for land, well yes we are supposed to be grateful that they no longer bribe us with alcohol, but come on, paper? Let’s use the currency of the day- - land!), water is threatened every day by our addiction to energy. . .Irving Whale, Valdez, Gulf of Mexico, Ocean Ranger, Grand Banks Newfoundland . . . Don’t forget our earliest dependence on oil put the largest creatures to ever inhabit this planet on a list of endangered species just to keep the lamps burning in Europe.

When asked to attend a meeting on the destruction of science, I gave simple advice, help us help you. Natives have rights you need to access if we are to counter the behaviour of governments willing to sacrifice anything so that corporations will fill their pockets come election time when campaign contributions determine who will be the elite in the world they create for us.

Read the Paper. Why did Chief Sock feel the need to evict a corporation? Why did he assure that “Private property owners have nothing to worry about . . . But companies exploiting Crown lands for fish, wood, minerals or gas are being told to get out now”?

“…Governments willing to sacrifice anything so that corporations will fill their pockets come election time when campaign contributions determine who will be the elite in the world they create for us”

Could it be because one represents a non-human entity empowered with human rights and the other is a human entity deprived of human rights, and he knows the difference! Perhaps because governments have reneged on their promise to protect human rights, not sell out to the highest bidder at the first opportunity.

As Canadians aren’t we tired of being the brunt of jokes such as: If you hit an American he will hit you back, but if you hit a Canadian, he’ll apologize?

Why do we accept Government behaviour as normal when it is often immoral in character?

“…Wake up New Brunswick, it’s time to stop the tail from wagging the Dog. It is time to take control of our lives and we can start by standing in solidarity with those who are willing to do the right thing”

Wake up Canada, Wake up New Brunswick, it’s time to stop the tail from wagging the Dog. It is time to take control of our lives and we can start by standing in solidarity with those who are willing to do the right thing. We can stop believing the constant diet of lies we are being fed by those attempting to convince us to give them what they do not have and that is our consent. A portion of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples protects the will of the People using “free, prior, and informed consent”. No wonder Canada likes to refer to this as an “aspirational” document.

Let’s see are there any other documents that might be considered aspirational, I believe the series of omnibus bills would indicate that the Oceans Act is simply an aspiratinal document, as is the fisheries act, and if you follow the trail of behaviour I might suggest the province is willing to take a page from the Feds by treating the Human Rights Act and Rights to clean Water as aspiratinal as well.

“No written law may be forced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principals of fairness, morality, and justice that transcends human legal systems. Perhaps our Mother and her creatures have more rights than we realize” 

Oh by-the-way, I cannot find the word aspirational in Wikipedia, Websters or Oxford, so it would appear our Federal leadership has created a word which is not real to describe a document as not being real!

Something I did find in the dictionary was the “legal” definition of “LAW”: No written law may be forced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principals of fairness, morality, and justice that transcends human legal systems. Perhaps our Mother and her creatures have more rights than we realize.

So, if we cannot believe the Feds, and we cannot trust the Province, who can we trust, the Indians?

“We honoured the treaties of peace and friendship which means we were the only party to respect the covenant between our Nations. You need to understand us, you need to understand that our connection to the land is real”

This won’t be easy folks because I believe most of you are still afraid of us. We are not the enemy. We are not friends because we are the enemy of your enemy. We honoured the treaties of peace and friendship which means we were the only party to respect the covenant between our Nations. You need to understand us, you need to understand that our connection to the land is real. Our need to protect comes not from acts or legislations but from the Earth herself. Now I have come full circle, this is a Native thing. The reminder was not that this is about an issue but about existence. It is about respecting the Earth as our Mother and protecting her while she nourishes us and our children.

“The reminder was not that this is about an issue but about existence. It is about respecting the Earth as our Mother and protecting her while she nourishes us and our children” 

If we keep behaving like spoiled children demanding more than she can give, then we will destroy her. If we do not protect her lifeblood, what you refer to as the waters then she will suffer as well. No amount of pipelines and black oil could replace her incredible circulatory system scientists call the world’s air conditioner. If you keep clear-cutting her hair, which you refer to as forests, she will burn from exposure to the sun. If you poison her blood, your oceans, all the life giving contents will die as well.

“No amount of pipelines and black oil could replace her incredible circulatory system scientists call the world’s air conditioner. If you keep clear-cutting her hair, which you refer to as forests, she will burn from exposure to the sun”

Sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the task ahead but we always have a choice, and that is to do what is right or do what is easy and like I said, this won’t be easy. But we have friends in-the-room. We need to believe that there are good lawyers who will not charge an arm and a leg to help, we need to believe there are police authorities that understand the need to protect the People above corporate profits, we need to believe there are politicians willing to give instead of take from their communities, and we need to believe that we can all work together for the common good.

Often this world seems upside down when I hear that Julian Assange is being punished (seeking asylum) for telling the truth and Bradley Manning was condemned for having a conscience while the murderers remain unpunished and free. What country hunts Eric Snowden for exposing the “spy story” of the century while protecting the criminals who were entrusted with a Nation’s security? And how can a Nation with Nuclear weapons attack another country because they are “suspected” of having weapons of mass destruction? The United States Government is shut down because parties cannot agree on a health plan to serve their citizens. People who have lied about their credentials are used to justify Fraking, when confronted they too are protected by those in authority who should be embarrassed but never are.

Yet giving up is not an option and we now know that energy is not all it’s fraked up to be.
The purpose of this toolkit is to help people and communities fight fracking, protect water and public health, and curb climate change. It was inspired in response to the inquiries the Council of Canadians receives from people who have just heard that fracking is happening in their community and don’t know what to do about it.

The first section of the toolkit provides a summary of fracking in Canada’s provinces and territories and includes information about the current state of fracking, laws related to fracking – such as permit requirements for water takings and drilling – and what community actions are already underway. The second section contains ideas and suggestions about what you can do to fight fracking, including case studies and how to pass a resolution against fracking. This section also includes public education tools such as social media tips and sample letters to the editor.

You can find it here.
Le Devoir gaz de schiste INSPQ Article in French (See attached) basically stating that the Public Health Institute of Quebec has ruled (reported January 31 in Le Devoir, daily paper from Montreal) that fracking for natural gas, during its exploration and development pose real risks for the health of citizens and its environment. ONe more confirmation that fracking is a dangerous practice, for people and the environment!

This easy to read 3 page article looks at the Public Health Institute article written in September 2013, but only posted on their website in January 2014. The report addresses the risks to water contamination and air pollution as they affect the health of the local population. There is a moratorium on fracking in Quebec.

 © 2018 NBEN / RENB