Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A 2013 technical memo on seismic considerations at Site C dismissed fracking as a potential threat to public safety. But since then a wave of industry-triggered earthquakes — and BC Hydro’s concerns about the waste water disposal well near the Peace Canyon Dam — suggest that fracking and dams are simply incompatible land uses.
The issue here is about science and uncertainty. So first, What is ‘science’? It is a process for how we find, measure and then evaluate the real world in order to identify how it works. The problem is, particularly for contentious debates in the media and politics, that we seldom hear about the degree of confidence attached to scientific findings, or the uncertainties that surround them.
In a 58 page ruling, Magistrate Judge Martin C. Carlson discarded the jury’s verdict in Ely v. Cabot and ordered a new trial, extending the legal battle over one of the highest-profile and longest-running fracking-related water contamination cases in the country.
A new University of Guelph study proves what many western Canadian landowners have long documented — that methane gas leaking from energy industry wells can travel great distances in groundwater and pose safety risks, contaminate water and contribute to climate change.
The recent Supreme Court ruling on Jessica Ernst in her case against the Alberta Energy Regulator demonstrates once again that Canada’s myopic legal system can easily lose sight of justice.
“I just wanted y’all to see it before it happens,” said Paul Matta, 47, a school board member who works for the local housing authority and suspects his way of life will disappear with the arrival of heavy industry in his quiet town, a grid of brightly painted homes, tourist shops, and a single restaurant.
In a global economy where we drive cars built in Japan, work on computers made in China and eat shrimp caught and peeled in Thailand, why do we hesitate to use oil pumped in Saudi Arabia? Do we fear oil shortages or embargoes? We’ve weathered those before. The oil exporting countries can only hold back so long- they have to sell the stuff. Camels won’t drink it, and you can’t make vodka from it.
The US Energy Information Administration, or EIA, regularly updates its estimates for how much oil and gas might be recovered in the future, and at what rate. With the application of new technology from year to year, those estimates generally keep going up. But it’s important to remember that they are just estimates — and the devil is always in the details.
Another U.S. scientific study has confirmed that methane emissions from oil and gas activity are increasing more rapidly than previously estimated, and that these increases were happening at the same time that the North American shale gas boom and related fracking frenzy took off.
Tensions between economic development, energy policy and environmental and health concerns are common in public health’s history. Often, economic and energy development trump environmental and health concerns, leaving public health playing “catch-up.”
On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific advisors finished their review of EPA’s national study on fracking and sternly rebuked the EPA for claiming that its draft study had found no evidence of “widespread, systemic” impacts to drinking water.
On Sunday, July 24, a day before the opening of the Democratic National Convention amid turmoil in Philadelphia, the U.S. climate justice movement seized the moment to convene and march in large numbers for a clean energy revolution.
