Commentary by Jim Emberger / Telegraph Journal
11 January 2019
Just before the holidays, Brunswick News interviewed Steve Moran, CEO of gas producer Corridor, Inc. This interview, and conversations that followed it, contradicted everything that Premier Higgs told us about lifting the shale gas moratorium.
The New Brunswick Election is September 24 (Early polls September 15, 17) and hydraulic fracturing is once more an issue of interest to New Brunswickers.
Before you vote, consider this: There are many issues to be considered when choosing how to vote. Sometimes we have to choose between two parties, each of which has some positions you support, and some you don’t.
Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, 13 Sept 2018
The freshly released Progressive Conservatives platform contains only a single sentence on shale gas, and leaves “regional social license” – mooted by leader Blaine Higgs in April – entirely unexplained.
Even without adequate detail in the platform, the very concept is a clear case of putting the cart before the horse.
The shale gas moratorium’s first condition sensibly dictates that, before social license can be granted, citizens must receive “clear and credible information about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on public health, the environment and water.”
Jim Emberger Commentary, Telegraph Journal July 12,2016
In the government’s mandate to the Commission on Hydrofracturing were five instructions, including how to obtain ‘social license’. While there is no legal definition of that term, social license is, in essence, the citizenry’s informed decision on whether or not to proceed with an industry based on an evaluation of the risks and benefits.
Jim Emberger Commentary, Telegraph Journal, 27 March 2016
Krista Ross’ [Fredericton Chamber of Commerce] recent commentary (12 March 2016) suggested that New Brunswick’s citizens are too unsophisticated to understand the science behind the risks surrounding shale gas, making them easy targets for shale gas opponents to manipulate with fear.
These condescending assertions are, fortunately, easy to dismiss. Our Alliance continues to direct the public to the hundreds of independent scientific studies that are now collected into a Compendium available at: http://concernedhealthny.org/compendium/.
The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance provides the following statement about the report issued last Friday by the New Brunswick Commission on Hydrofracturing.
The Commissioners recognized that the discussion about shale gas had to be looked at in the contexts of the immediate need to combat climate change, the lack of a coherent and forward-looking energy policy for the province, and the inadequacy of current institutions and procedures in New Brunswick to deal with either shale gas or with the new realities of a low-carbon world.
JIM EMBERGER COMMENTARY
The Miramichi Leader, 19 February 2016
The Commission on Hydrofracking will soon submit its report and the government will make its decision on the future of shale gas. After five years of examining the pros and cons, what evidence has accumulated to support each side?
If a solid economic case for shale gas ever did exist, it has now evaporated. It is now common knowledge that to offset the rapid depletion of shale gas wells, producers continuously drilled more of them.
JIM EMBERGER COMMENTARY
The Daily Gleaner, October 31, 2015
In its letter to the New Brunswick Commission on Hydrofracturing (reference “‘Social license’ needs definition, say Tories”, by Adam Huras, Telegraph Journal, 17 October 2015, ), the Progressive Conservative party asks for an explanation on how “clear and credible information about the impacts of hydraulic fracturing on health, environment, and water can be obtained without hydraulic fracturing occurring in New Brunswick.”
It’s amazing that educated people would ask such a nonsensical question. When confronting a high-risk situation only a fool would ignore the experiences of others who have faced and studied those risks.