Campagnes, médias et actions
- Publié par : Jim Emberger
- Affichages : 3402
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.
- Publié par : Mark D'Arcy
- Affichages : 2188
Cette campagne est pour encourager les gens de toute la province à faire parvenir des courriels ou à téléphoner à plusieurs députés pour leur demander de parler ouvertement en faveur de la docteure Eilish Cleary afin qu’elle garde son poste. On encourage les gens et les groupes à rencontrer leur député local et leur demander de s’exprimer publiquement pour que la docteure Cleary réintègre ses fonctions. Vous pouvez utiliser Facebook et Twitter (#BringBackCleary) pour faire connaitre la réponse de votre député, qu’elle soit positive ou négative.
Plusieurs groupes dans cette province vont observer les députés qui se prononcent en public ou qui émettent des déclarations pour demander le rétablissement de la docteure Cleary dans ses fonctions. La liste des députés (à télécharger ci-dessous) va suivre les réponses des députés et sera mise à jour régulièrement sur ce site.
« Toi que Noël ramènera chez nous »
La campagne demande aux gens de toute la province de décorer leurs arbres, leurs couronnes et d'autres objets dans leur maison et dans leur collectivité avec le message « Réintégrez Dre Cleary pour les fêtes ». Amusez-vous et utilisez votre imagination !
- Utilisez de petites cartes pour recette avec un message et des rubans rouges ou verts.
- Étiquetez votre merveille favorite (p. e. une forêt, un cours d’eau, un fleuve, une zone humide, une baie) avec des objets qui incluent le message « Réintégrez Dre Cleary pour les fêtes ».
- Utilisez du papier d’aluminium pour créer de petits stéthoscopes comme décorations
Utilisez les « Cartes Cleary » (à télécharger ci-dessous et à imprimer).
- Inscrivez-y votre localisation, attachez-les avec des rubans verts ou rouges sur un arbre, une couronne, dans un endroit communautaire ou sur votre habitat favori et prenez des photos pour les afficher sur Facebook ou Twitter (#BringBackCleary).
- Préparez une carte pour votre animal favori, votre poisson, oiseau ou arbre menacé pour les coupes à blanc et les programmes de pulvérisations. Par exemple : « Biche atout » de « Saint-André, Nouveau-Brunswick. »
PAGE FACEBOOK PAGE: Reinstate Dr. Eilish Cleary
MOT-CLIC: #BringBackCleary
Liste téléchargeable des députés et Cartes Cleary.
- Publié par : Jim Emberger
- Affichages : 1645
Voici le lien à la vidéo de la présentation informative ‘'Shale Gas Experiment” par Dr. John Cherry du 17 novembre 2015. Elle a été publiée par l'Alliance anti-gaz de schiste du N.-B.
- Publié par : Jim Emberger
- Affichages : 3111
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.
- Affichages : 5451
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.
- Publié par : Terry Wishart
- Affichages : 2850
20 MARS 2014
Hotel Delta, Frédéricton
Bonjour mesdames et messieurs,
Bienvenue au lancement de la tournée de la Voix du Peuple.
Qui sommes-nous? D’abord, la Voix du peuple est un regroupement de citoyens inquiets, à travers un certain nombre d’organisations communautaires dont : Le Conseil des Canadiens (COC), Alliance contre les gaz de shale (NBASGA), le district de Frédéricton du Conseil du Travail (FDLC) et Unifor. Nous travaillons ensemble afin de porter à l’attention de nos collectivités ces importantes questions.
La tournée de la Voix du Peuple va se rendre auprès des collectivités de tous les coins de la province. Nous voulons entendre votre voix! Le but de cette tournée est de fournir au public en général les informations pertinentes relatives aux gaz de shale et à l’énergie propre.
Nous allons demander aux citoyens de nos collectivités :
· Savons-nous tout ce que nous devrions savoir à propos des gaz de shale?
· Les gaz de shale sont-ils le seul moyen de créer des emplois?
· Que voulons-nous avoir dans nos arrière-cours?
Les réunions tenues dans les mairies vous donneront une vue d’ensemble de l’évidence scientifique des effets du développement des gaz de shale, plus spécifiquement de la fracturation hydraulique des gaz de shale. Nous voulons à cette occasion discuter avec vous des alternatives possibles au développement des gaz de shale, notamment l’énergie propre et les emplois propres.
Nos préoccupations sont les préoccupations de beaucoup de gens. Nous sommes ici aujourd’hui, solidaires de plusieurs autres organisations qui ont appuyé la tournée de la Voix du Peuple. Pourquoi? Parce qu’ils sont trop inquiets et préoccupés par les dangers des gaz de shale et par le manque de consultation auprès de la population.
Ces organisations sont :
CUPE
Unifor
Le district de Frédéricton du Conseil du Travail
La Fédération du Travail du Nouveau-Brunswick
L’Alliance contre les gaz de shale
Le Conseil des Canadiens
Le Conseil de Conservation du Nouveau-Brunswick
L’Union nationale des Fermiers
Et plus encore…
La tournée va faire valoir pourquoi autant de personnes et d’organisations se prononcent contre les gaz de shale, incluant 130 municipalités, organisations communautaires et associations professionnelles. Tout récemment, plusieurs syndicats de travailleurs ont demandé un moratoire provincial/national sur le développement des gaz de shale.
Pourquoi les citoyens ont-ils organisé cette tournée? Parce que nous croyons que la voix du peuple est vitale dans une démocratie. Au cours des quatre dernières années, il n’y a eu que peu ou pas de consultation ou de rencontres publiques initiées par le gouvernement ou par l’industrie. Alors, les gens s’organisent par eux-mêmes. Il n’y a pas eu non plus de consultations qui ont été menées auprès des Premières Nations.
De plus, le gouvernement du Nouveau-Brunswick a failli envers le public en ne lui présentant pas de compte-rendus de l’évidence scientifique des effets néfastes de la fracturation et du développement des gaz de shale. La population n’obtient pas l’information dont elle a besoin.
Le Premier ministre voudrait nous faire croire que les gaz de shale constituent la seule voie pour créer des emplois dans cette province. Nous savons que cela est faux. En fait, selon Blue-Green Canada, pour le même montant investi, il y a sept fois plus d’emplois de créés avec l’énergie propre et en augmentant l’efficacité de nos bâtiments qu’avec l’industrie du pétrole et du gaz.
Par exemple, le rapport de 2013 de l’Industrie de l’énergie propre du Massachusetts démontre que dans l’état voisin, la Pennsylvanie qui extrait les gaz de shale, il y a deux fois plus de travailleurs de l’énergie propre comparé au nombre d’employés qui travaillent dans l’industrie du gaz naturel. 80,000 emplois ont été créés dans le domaine de l’énergie propre contre 40,000 dans le secteur du gaz naturel.
Les emplois propres et l’énergie verte sont possibles et financièrement viables à long terme. Les emplois reliés aux gaz de shale disparaissent une fois le forage des puits terminé.
Il est plus sensé que les néobrunswickois investissent dans les alternatives reliées à l’énergie propre que dans les gaz de shale. C’est plus sécuritaire et ça crée plus d’emplois. En agissant autrement serait une belle occasion de perdue pour notre province.
Nous croyons que la population trouvera les solutions au problème. Le peuple a cette responsabilité.
Merci infiniment!
La Coalition de la Voix du Peuple
voiceofthepeopletour@gmail.com
- Affichages : 17838
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.
- Affichages : 5379
- VOICE OF THE PEOPLE TOUR: Red Dot Poll Results for Stanley NB May 27 2014
- VOICE OF THE PEOPLE TOUR: Red Dot Poll Results for Perth Andover NB May 21 2014
- VOICE OF THE PEOPLE TOUR: Red Dot Poll Results for Rexton NB and area May 14 2014
- VOICE OF THE PEOPLE TOUR: Red Dot Poll Results for Sussex NB and area May 8 2014
- http://www.nben.ca/index.php/en/news-from-groups/600-voice-of-the-people-tour-red-dot-poll-results-summary-for-st-stephen-and-area-may-1-2014
- Affichages : 5001
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.
- Affichages : 5516
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.