climate change

Federal carbon tax ‘overreaches and invades’ N.B. jurisdiction: court docs

Date: February 7, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, NBASGA, Press Releases

ADAM HURAS, Telegraph Journal, 7 February 2019

The Trudeau government’s carbon tax “overreaches and invades” provincial jurisdiction, according to New Brunswick’s legal argument filed in a Saskatchewan court that aims to challenge Ottawa’s looming price on carbon. The province’s attorney general’s office has filed a factum ahead of the prairie province’s carbon tax court challenge set to be heard next week.

New Brunswick sought to intervene in the case as the Higgs government attempts to fight the carbon tax slated to be handed down by Ottawa beginning in April.

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NBASGA given Intervener Status in Saskatchewan Carbon Pricing Case

Date: February 6, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, NBASGA, Press Releases

For immediate release: February 6, 2019

[Le français suit]

FREDERICTON — Today, the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA) announced it has been accepted as an intervener in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeals reference case against the federal carbon tax.  NBASGA will intervene in support of the federal government and against New Brunswick.

“Climate change is happening here and now, and it needs a fair, effective and immediate response,” says NBASGA’s Jim Emberger.  Winter and summer flooding, storm surges from intense storms and sea level-rise, droughts, heat waves and other climate change effects are already disrupting the lives, livelihoods, and well being of New Brunswickers, and are predicted to get worse.

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Fracking In 2018: Another Year Of Pretending To Make Money

Date: January 28, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Fracking and Economics

by Jim Emberger (from Huddle Today)

January is a popular time for reviewing the previous year to see where we are now. Since I write about the shale gas industry and global warming, let me share some annual reports from both, along with some commentary.

Fracking in 2018: Another Year of Pretending to Make Money: This has my vote for best title. The author notes that the 60 largest U.S. fracking companies have been accumulating losses at about $80 million per year for a decade. Investors and lenders lost $70 billion in loans due to 330 North American bankruptcies following the price crash of 2014, and last year The Wall Street Journal calculated industry debt around $180 billion.

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End ‘profligate use of fossil fuels’

Date: December 7, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking News
Commentary by Jim Emberger,Telegraph Journal, 7 December 2018

The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance initially gave Premier Blaine Higgs’s throne speech a decent review. We’re now having second thoughts. In the speech, the new government made a strong statement against “inter-generational theft,” which it defined as stealing the future from our children by creating debt today that they would have to pay back.

That being a moral principle, we assumed it would be applied universally. The most poignant example of “inter-generational theft” is the failure to address climate change and environmental degradation by continuing our profligate use of fossil fuels.

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For our Physical (and Economic) Well-being, Leave the Gas in the Ground

Date: December 6, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Fracking News

by Jim Emberger, for Huddle.

There has been much discussion recently about the economic case for bringing fracking to the province versus the health and environmental risks of doing so.

The authors of a recent Huddle article (New Brunswick’s Ban On Fracking Must Be Overturned) framed their economic argument for fracking with the quote, “The development of ‘natural resources’ is one of the biggest drivers of business investment in Canada,” and they then argued that there is lots of investment money going to the fossil fuel provinces, while New Brunswick misses its share.

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NBASGA Reaction to the Higgs’ Government Throne Speech

Date: November 22, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking & Health

(Press Statement 21 November 2018)
(le français suit)

FREDERICTON — After reviewing Premier Higgs’ throne speech, Jim Emberger, Spokesperson for the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA), stated that the organization is “cautiously optimistic about the willingness and ability of the minority government to act sensibly in its approach to our mandates of preventing unconventional oil and gas in the province and slowing climate change by developing a green economy.”

The speech made a strong statement against ‘inter-generational theft’, or stealing the future from our children.

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Window is closing to avert climate disaster

Date: November 5, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change

JIM EMBERGER COMMENTARY   Telegraph Journal, 2018-11-05

Amidst the excitement over New Brunswick’s political situation and the hubbub surrounding cannabis, Brunswick News columnist Chris Morris provided a sober shot of reality in a commentary advising our new MLAs to pay attention to the latest, vitally important report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Her column,“New Brunswick position unclear as clock ticks down on carbon plan” (Oct. 20, A17), says, in no uncertain terms, that we have roughly 12 years to make sweeping changes to the way we live, or we and our children will face a world with climate conditions never experienced by our species.

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New Brunswick position unclear as clock ticks down on carbon plan

Date: October 24, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change

CHRIS MORRIS   Telegraph Journal,  Daily Gleaner,  Oct.20, 2018.

The clock is ticking towards the Jan. 1, 2019, deadline for Ottawa to impose carbon taxes on provinces without their own plans, and it remains unclear what will happen in New Brunswick.

It’s an important issue and probably played a bigger role in the outcome of the Sept. 24 election than most realize. The Liberals studiously avoid calling the price on pollution a tax, but that is how many view the extra costs it is expected to add to already-stretched household budgets.

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Tories are incoherent on ‘regional social license’

Date: September 13, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Moratoria, Most Asked Questions, Social License

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.”

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Keep fracking ban to slow climate change

Date: July 24, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: climate change, Fracking and Economics, Moratoria

Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, 24 July 2018

It was gratifying to see a recent article acknowledging that climate change has already changed our weather, and that weather-related problems will become ever more frequent and severe (“Not .. our grandparents’ weather, July 14, A2).

In the piece, a senior climatologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, David Phillips, laid out in no-nonsense terms that New Brunswickers will be challenged to adapt to our increasingly confused climate.

Warnings and good advice about adapting are a necessary discussion, but the real conversation we need to be having on climate change is about ‘preventing’ the growing threats from a changed climate.

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