Protections put in place should be relaxed only if further findings emerge providing evidence no harm will result

By Jim Emberger – Special to Brunswick News – Published Oct 5, 2024

A recent Narrative Research poll, commissioned by Brunswick News, on lifting the fracking moratorium noted that the second largest group of poll respondents (19 per cent) replied “I don’t know” to the questions.

That likely illustrates that the success of the moratorium. For ten years it has, ironically, removed the shale gas issue from civic and media discussion.

Young voters were children when the moratorium began. With little memory of it, or need to discuss why we have it, it’s reasonable that the poll finds them more supportive of lifting it.  Older voters, who recall the serious issues raised in the fracking battle, want to keep it.

Most newly arrived residents from elsewhere have no experience with the issue.

Unfortunately, what little information is in the public sphere is often disinformation coming from Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs’s media statements.

Higgs argues that we can fight climate change by selling LNG (liquid natural gas) to Germany to replace coal.  But Germany’s climate representative recently told Canadian officials point blank that Europe isn’t interested in our LNG, saying, “All studies show that the market is going to shrink. Germany will be driving forward on renewables, and gas demand will decline.”

Europe gets more of its electricity from wind and solar than from gas and coal, and imported 20 per cent less LNG than last year.

This follows last year’s Repsol statement that there was no business case for an LNG export facility in Saint John. In Goldboro, Nova Scotia, a proposed facility was abandoned for lack of financing.

As to fighting climate change by replacing coal with gas, the latest science tells us that LNG is much worse for the climate than burning coal. Methane (natural gas) is 86 times more powerful than CO2 in warming our atmosphere in the near term.

Reducing it is the most immediate way to slow climate change. With current reminders all around us of how quickly and seriously climate events are changing the world, this should be an easy and immediate decision.

Higgs assures us that fracking can be done safely, something he should know to be false. Public health groups recently sent him a letter calling for a complete ban on fracking.  They noted the numerous studies associating fracking operations with a host of illnesses and diseases, including premature births, birth defects, childhood leukaemia, asthma and heart disease.

The Premier should have learned some other things in 10 years of the moratorium.

Fracking a well in 2014 required a few million litres of fresh water. Now fracking a well can remove more than 100 million litres from the water cycle.

Studies have documented cases of water contamination of ground, surface and drinking water from toxic chemicals and methane itself.  Numerous lawsuits have resulted in multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements.

There have been no advances in how to dispose of the millions of gallons of toxic wastewater from every frack.  Wastewater is just pumped back into the ground under pressure in hopes it will stay there forever.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the process causes large numbers of earthquakes. That fracking itself causes earthquakes is also now firmly established.

Also established are, enormous taxpayer-borne costs for road and bridge repairs and abandoned gas wells, and long term social dislocations that accompany all boom and bust industries.

In 2014, New Brunswick’s government decided fracking was not worth all the risks. This applied the Precautionary Principle, which states that pausing, caution and review are called for when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is uncertain, and the potential outcomes can be disastrous.

Ten years of research and experience have confirmed their wisdom.

The protections put in place by the Precautionary Principle should be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound evidence that no harm will result.  This is also one of the five conditions specified in the process for lifting the moratorium.

It is obvious that the science does not support lifting the moratorium, and, in fact, it provides ample evidence that it must be made permanent.

If once again citizens discuss fracking, the public will soon learn or remember,  from media discussion or courtroom testimony, the wisdom behind the moratorium and how it saved our health, environment and infrastructure.

Otherwise, we risk being left behind in the 21st century economy, as a continued focus on fracking distracts us from developing an energy plan aligned with the necessary global transition to a clean energy economy.

We need a Premier with an understanding of energy, science, and markets that goes beyond political rhetoric, and for whom facts matter.

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