The psychology underlying people's behaviour is as fascinating as the things they do. “Change blindness” is a case in point. Psychologists describe it as the inability of people to notice anomalies, differences and the unusual in their surroundings. The obvious, it seems, is not always obvious...For example, we seem to have an inherent inclination to overlook or rationalize as normal the weather abnormalities that arise from global warming. If this strategy doesn't serve to diminish the significance of an extreme weather event in our minds, we excuse it by extending the range of normality — a once-in-a-century event occurring once every ten years is deemed normal.
Read this story from Mother Jones on a new law that will bar doctors from revealing to their patients the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing that may be affecting their health. (March 23, 2012)
Under a new law, doctors in Pennsylvania can access information about chemicals used in natural gas extraction—but they won't be able to share it with their patients.* A provision buried in a law passed last month is drawing scrutiny from the public health and environmental community, who argue that it will "gag" doctors who want to raise concerns related to oil and gas extraction with the people they treat and the general public.
Pennsylvania is at the forefront in the debate over "fracking," the process by which a high-pressure mixture of chemicals, sand, and water are blasted into rock to tap into the gas. Recent discoveries of great reserves in the Marcellus Shale region of the state prompted a rush to development, as have advancements in fracking technologies. But with those changes have come a number of concerns from citizens about potential environmental and health impacts from natural gas drilling.
There is good reason to be curious about exactly what's in those fluids. A 2010 congressional investigation revealed that Halliburton and other fracking companies had used 32 million gallons of diesel products, which include toxic chemicals like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, in the fluids they inject into the ground. Low levels of exposure to those chemicals can trigger acute effects like headaches, dizziness, and drowsiness, while higher levels of exposure can cause cancer.
I'm down in New Zealand at the moment, filming for a feature documentary involving the unconventional gas industry - particularly the increasingly controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" - which I've been working on for the past year with a fellow Canadian filmmaker...Maori and concerned citizens in New Zealand have been dealing with the oil and gas industry for a long time but it's only the past several years - and particularly the past few months - that fracking operations have really been ramping up. And the parallels between Canada and New Zealand on this issue, as we have been learning quickly, are positively striking.
Read this article from the Calgary Herald on the decision by the Nova Scotia Provincial Government to put a two year moratorium on natural gas hydraulic fracturing while it gathers more science on the controversial practice. (April 19, 2012)
CALGARY - Companies searching for oil and gas in the Maritimes received conflicting messages this week around the use of hydraulic fracturing to develop the resources.
New Brunswick granted a five-year licence to Calgary-based Windsor Energy to explore and drill for natural gas on Tuesday while Nova Scotia banned fracking until the summer of 2014 to have more time to review the contentious technology.
Energy Minister Charlie Parker said the provincial government wanted to study reviews being drafted by the U.S. Environment Protection Agency and Environment Canada on the effects of fracking.
Parker cited other jurisdictions have been reviewing how fracking could affect water re-sources and earthquakes.
"We think it's important to get the best possible information that's out there and make an informed decision after we've learned all that," Parker said.
Critics of the NDP administration suggest the government is freezing discussion about hydraulic fracturing until after the next election.
Public concern has in-creased in the past year about the technology, which pumps massive amounts of waters and chemicals down well bores to crack open reservoirs of so-called tight oil and gas. Protests against frack-ing escalated in areas such as the Maritimes, where little onshore oil-and-gas development has occurred.
Monday's announcement was a setback for companies such as Elmworth Energy, a subsidiary of Triangle Petroleum Corp., which holds a 10-year lease representing the province's first shale-gas development project.
Read this letter by celebrated environmentalist and author Sandra Steingraber - published on the Orion Blog - on the story that's been sending shock waves through the American environmental community over the past month. Steingraber takes her once beloved Sierra Club to task for accepting $25 million in secret donations from major unconventional gas player Chesapeake Energy. (March 23, 2012)
Dear Sierra Club,
I’m through with you.
For years we had a great relationship based on mutual admiration. You gave a glowing review of my first book, Living Downstream—a review that appeared in the pages of Sierra magazine and hailed me as “the new Rachel Carson.” Since 1999 that phrase has linked us together in all the press materials that my publicist sends out. Your name appears with mine on the flaps of my book jackets, in the biography that introduces me at the speaker’s podium, and in the press release that announced, last fall, that I was one of the lucky recipients of a $100,000 Heinz Award for my research and writing on the environment.
I was proud to be affiliated with you. I hoped to live up to the moniker you bestowed upon me.
But more than a month has past since your executive director, Michael Brune, admitted in Time magazine that the Sierra Club had, between 2007 and 2010, clandestinely accepted $25 million from the fracking industry, with most of the donations coming from Chesapeake Energy. Corporate Crime Reporter was hot on the trail of the story when it broke in Time.
From the start, Brune’s declaration seemed less an acknowledgement of wrongdoing than an attempt to minister to a looming public relations problem. Would someone truly interested in atonement seek credit for choosing not to take additional millions of gas industry dollars (“Why the Sierra Club Turned Down $26 Million in Contributions from Natural Gas Interests”)?
Here, on top of the Marcellus Shale, along the border between Pennsylvania and New York—where we are surrounded by land leased to the gas industry; where we live in fear that our water will be ruined, our mortgages called in, our teenage children killed in fiery wrecks with 18-wheelers hauling toxic fracking waste on our rural, icy back roads; where we cash out our vacation days to board predawn buses to rallies and public hearings; where we fundraise, donate, testify, phone bank, lobby, submit public comments, sign up for trainings in nonviolent civil disobedience; where our children ask if we will be arrested, if we will have to move, if we will die, and what will happen to the bats, the honeybees, the black bears, the grapevines, the apple orchards, the cows’ milk; where we have learned all about casing failures, blow-outs, gas flares, clear-cuts, legal exemptions, the benzene content of production fluid, the radioactive content of drill cuttings; where people suddenly start sobbing in church and no one needs to ask why—here in the crosshairs of Chesapeake Energy, Michael Brune’s announcement was met with a kind of stunned confusion.
Listen to this interview by Sean Holman of documentary filmmaker Damien Gillis on his recent trip to Northeastern BC to learn about some of the effects of the unconventional gas industry on farming families around the Dawson Creek area. Gillis followed independent BC MLAs Bob Simpson and Vicki Huntington last week to the community of Farmington to engage with local landowners on the issue. The pair have worked hard to raise in the Legislature issues surrounding the regulation of the industry and its impacts on water, health, and the province's economy. (March 24 - 20 min)
Even without considering the environmental costs and risks of producing and transporting oil and gas, opening our markets to Asia and elsewhere is an unwise strategy for British Columbians and Canadians. The oil and gas industry should be jubilant at the prospects of pipelines and tankers. But everyone else in this country should be worried. The social and economic costs of a few closed salmon farms in BC would pale beside the damage inflicted by higher energy prices.
Read this update from CBC.ca on a week-long rig fire at a Suncor fracking operation in Northeast BC. (March 14, 2012)
A fire at a drilling rig near Hudson's Hope in northeastern B.C. has been burning for six days, following a blowout Friday night.
Suncor spokesperson Sneh Seetal said while the fire continues to burn, the situation is under control.
"We've brought in well control specialists. We're conducting daily aerial fly-overs by helicopter. The fire has been contained to the site and the site is secure," she said.
Seetal said "a handful" of employees were working at the site at the time of the explosion, but no one was injured. She also said air quality is being monitored and is not a concern at this time.
Rafe Mair pulls no punches in this, the second of a two-part interview with BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix - grilling the potential future premier of BC on Liquid Natural Gas, fracking, the proposed Enbridge pipeline and salmon farms.
Written by Administrator
- Thursday, 16 February 2012
Listen to this highly informative 8 min radio interview from CBC's Daybreak North show - featuring Andrea Morison of the Peace Valley Environment Association discussing the proposed Site C Dam and its connection to the planned Liquid Natural Gas boom on BC's coast. (Feb. 14, 2012)
Written by Administrator
- Tuesday, 14 February 2012
Read this story from Fort St. John's EnergeticCity.ca on BC Premier Christy Clark's recent comments that the controversial proposed Site C Dam is essential to building liquid natural gas plants on BC's west coast. (Feb 10, 2012)
Site C and B.C.'s proposed LNG development go hand in hand, according to Premier Christy Clark. In an interview with Moose FM/energeticcity.ca, Clark explained that the newly approved licence for Shell to export liquefied natural gas out of Kitimat will use 100 per cent of the power Site C would create.
"We cannot create this new industry in British Columbia, by adding value to natural gas, without the power that would come from Site C. It's an essential part of the plan in the long-term, to make sure that we're putting British Columbians to work."
She adds the province's power needs are going to grow substantially, so "we're going to need the power from Site C and we're also going to need the power from lots of independent power producers from across the province: wind energy, run of river, you name it." In saying so, she also criticized B.C.NDP leader Adrian Dix for supporting LNG development and not supporting Site C, saying he "can't have it both ways."
Clark says she is completely comfortable with the science behind fracking, and its possible associated health risks, and believes Northeast B.C. has the safest shale gas industry in the world. As she says, it can always get better, and the province has been pushing new practices, like publishing ingredients used in hydraulic fracturing on an online database.
"That will do two things: first, it will push companies to be even cleaner and greener all the time… I think it will drive innovation because we're open about it; but second, I think it builds confidence in what we do."
She points to instances where fracking has been done very badly elsewhere, like the U.S., and wants people to see what's been done in B.C. to set an example. The hope is that oil and gas companies will take it upon themselves to get the word out about how safe practices are in the province.
"We set the highest bar anywhere in the world for fracking, and people need to see what we're doing and need to understand it so they can too."
30 year-old William Housty's powerhouse presentation to the National Energy Board's Enbridge hearings in his community of Bella Bella. William describes the history, language and culture of his people in fascinating detail - and how the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline and Tar Sands supertankers transiting the waters of his people's territory would destroy their traditional way of life.
Highlights from this week's National Energy Board hearings in Bella Bella on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and supertankers on BC's coast. Powerful testimony from three members of the Heiltsuk First Nation, sharing their experiences with the sea.rn
The Heiltsuk First Nation learned late Monday that scheduled National Energy Board hearings on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline will resume Tuesday in Bella Bella, following their cancellation Monday in the wake of a peaceful demonstration to which the Joint Review Panel overreacted.
Close to 2,000 people turned out on a rainy Monday afternoon in Vancouver last week to speak out against Tar Sands oil tankers on BC's coast. The occasion marked the 23rd anniversary of the disastrous Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. The crowd gathered at the Art Gallery to hear from guest speakers like 350.org's Bill McKibben and members of the Heiltsuk First Nation of Bella Bella, who coorganized the rally, along with ForestEthics and Greenpeace.
Rueben George of the Tsleil-Waututh (Burrard) First Nation and Ben West of the Wilderness Committee discuss Kinder Morgan's quiet plan to twin its existing Trans Mountain Pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Vancouver - which would result in up to 300 supertankers a year plying the waters of the Burrard Inlet and South Coast.
Eleven year-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon First Nation sings her hit song "Shallow Waters" to some 2,000 people outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. She tells the audience one year ago on this day she was chased from Enbridge's Vancouver office when she tried to present her song to company officials.
World renowned climate activist Bill McKibben of 350.org lent his voice to the "Our Coast, Our Decision" rally in Vancouver Monday. McKibben told the crowd of close to 2,000 outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, "This is one of these great moments in human history and you guys are absolutely at the white, hot centre of it."
Rafe Mair pulls no punches in this, the second of a two-part interview with BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix - grilling the potential future premier of BC on Liquid Natural Gas, fracking, the proposed Enbridge pipeline and salmon farms.
Marven Robinson, a spirit bear guide from the Gitga'at Nation of Hartley Bay, speaks to Damien Gillis in Prince Rupert the day after the big rally he helped organize against Enbridge on Feb. 4, 2012.
In the first of a two-part interview, Rafe Mair grills BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix on private power, Site C Dam and BC's flawed environmental assessment process. What will the NDP do with existing and future private river power projects (a.k.a. IPPs) if they form the next government - and where do they stand on Site C Dam?
The beating of drums echoed throughout the seaside community of Prince Rupert, BC, on February 4 as thousands of First Nations and BC citizens banded together to express their opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway twin pipelines from the Alberta Tar Sands to nearby Kitimat on BC's central coast.
The various spokespeople for supposed "grassroots" pro-Tar Sands and pipeline organization EthicalOil.org have steadfastly maintained their campaign has no connection to the oil and gas industry or the Harper Government. But as the links between these groups continue to pile up, that contention becomes harder and harder to swallow.
In the wake of the bogus deal Enbridge attempted to foist on the Gitxsan people of Northwest BC last month to help pave the way for its controversial proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the community has banded together in inspiring fashion - with camcorders and the Web as their weapons of choice.
Watch this series of clips by independent filmmaker Craig Delahunt from the Cohen Commission, including a key hour of testimony from the final day of ISAv hearings and interviews with experts outside the Commission.
See how the Gitxsan are banding together in a moment of crisis, following the unauthorized deal with Enbridge signed by rogue treaty negotiator Elmer Derrick.
