Source: The Guardian// Photograph: Yvette Cardozo/Alamy

Two Wrongs Do Not Make A Right

Source: The Guardian// Photograph: Yvette Cardozo/Alamy

A few years ago, the province of British Columbia decided to place a bounty on wolves. This decision was in response to declining caribou populations, a species which can now only be found in BC as they have completely disappeared from the United States. After all was said and done, the cull estimated to have killed over a thousand wolves.

This week, a study from the University of Alberta shared that the cull did very little to bring back caribou herds, and these apex predators died for nothing.

Reasoning behind the cull was simple; humans have been clearcutting forests and intruding the hinterlands (for snowmobile and ski trails) for years, which have created corridors and open spaces for wolves to stalk the caribou more easily. In fact, the Guardian stated that over the last five years, BC has permitted “more than 900 sq. km of land to be logged, despite the forests being listed as critical caribou habitat. In the last year, 314 logging cut-blocks have been approved in areas where the caribou are most vulnerable.”

Instead of addressing the clearcutting which plagued caribou populations (because that would mean WE would have to make change), we decided to slaughter the wolves that hunt them instead.

Not only did the cull have little effect on saving caribou populations, in regards to “the endangered Wells Grey herd in central British Columbia, which has suffered one of the worst population declines, the researchers found that wolves weren’t even a major predator.”

When are we going to realize that two wrongs do not make a right? The web of life is complicated, and by removing an apex predator like wolves from the food chain, we are triggering complex relationship breakdowns that extend beyond wolves and caribou.  

Ian McAllister, the executive director at Pacific Wild, echoed these sentiments. He stated, “Wolves in every meaning of the word are being used as a scapegoat for government negligence.”

Incredibly sad indeed.

Have you ever heard of an Australian “Bilby”? 

The Australian native Bilby is a marsupial with rabbit-like ears – extremely cute. The Bilby is an important ecosystem engineer with its excellent digging ability allowing other species to reap the rewards of its hard work. Populations of this interesting little animal have been devastated over the past 200 years after being hunted to near extinction by cats and foxes. Last year bilbies were released into the Malle Cliffs National Park in New South Wales as part of a programme for threatened species, which has now resulted in a baby boom. Check out the video of the little creatures here. 

The bilbies released in October of 2019 were protected in a 9,500 nectar, feral predator-free fences area which is designed to keep the cats and foxes out. The bilbies have thrived in this projected environment, and as a result young joeys at various development stages can now be found in the national park. Ecologists capture the bilbies to perform health checks and monitor the population and ensure smooth sailing. 

Australia has one of the highest mammal extinction rates in the world, and this species is no different. Ecologists say that the successful reintroduction gives hope to the threatened species and shows that the population is going in the right direction. 

Source: Bush Heritage Australia citing Minden Pictures | AUSCAPE

New research finds that Beluga Whales can form social networks just like humans  

A new study led by Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute shows that just like humans, beluga whales can also form social networks and connections beyond their close relatives, even with distantly related and completely unrelated whales. 

The researchers used molecular genetic techniques and field studies from 10 locations across the Arctic from Alaska to Canada and Russia to Norway to pull together decades of research about the group dynamics, group behaviour and complex relationships among beluga whales. 

The study found that beluga communities have some similarities to human ones, where social networks, cooperation and culture involve interactions between kin and non-kin. Beluga whales have a lifespan of approximately 70 years, making it possible for them to form long-term affiliations with whales of all ages, and both sexes in migratory and resident populations in numbers of hundreds and even thousands across various habitats. Think of it like having a connection with that person you met 3 years ago while at a friend’s get together. Belugas have similar affiliations for forming long-term connections. 

The researches stated that it may be the belugas highly developed echolocation – clicks of noises that bounce back from the environment which are interpreted to identify objects such as food or to communicate with others –  that enables them to remain in regular acoustic contact with close kin even when not associating for a while. The researchers hope that the new understanding of why individuals may form social groups, even with non-kin, will promote new research on what constitutes species resilience. It could also provide more knowledge on how species like the beluga whale can react and respond to emerging threats such as climate change. 

Source: Oceanographic

The future of carbon neutral infrastructure projects in Canada 

Proposals for new mines, power plants, pipelines and railways in Canada will have to include plans to reach ’net zero’ by 2050 if they want to get approved. ‘Net zero’ means any greenhouse gases emitted are absurd by natural or mechanical means, rather than being left to gather in the atmosphere, which of course contributes to global warming. Environmental Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said this plan will ensure that Canada meets its goal to exceed the Paris climate agreement targets by 2030, then hopefully hit net zero by 2050 – but details are fuzzy. Let me explain. 

The Impact Assessment Act was passed before the last election to overhaul how federal environment assessment are conducted. A long list of projects like mines, power lines, wind farms, airports, pipelines etc. automatically require those assessments. In addition to the existing requirements, the Impact Assessment Act will, for the first time ever, include a project’s effect on climate change as one of the considerations for project approval. The report released Thursday outlines the ‘how will this happen?’ questions. The new consultations process will require project proposals to include the greenhouse gas emissions to be produced from construction and operations and clearly outline what efforts are being made to minimize these emissions. Essentially, a net zero plan will be one of the enforceable conditions put on a project if it is approved – that’s good news, right? The answer is a hesitant yes because there are no such details about how a plan would be measured or enforced. 

Julia Levin, the climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence said she’s disappointed with the new rules. You can read more about Wilkinson’s defence for the new rules here. 

Source: Ottawa Matters

The Great Green Wall of Africa

Expected Pathway of the Great Green Wall in Africa// Source: Standard Bank

The “Great Green Wall” of approximately 7,644 km of trees is being planted by 21 African countries. This chain of trees across the continent aims to create a physical barrier to reduce the movement of the Sahara which has been disrupting livelihoods in the least developed Sahel region for millennia. The UN Environment Programme considers this the world’s largest ecosystem restoration project that runs in the Sahel region in an east-west stretch across the breadth of Africa and is just south of the Sahara Desert. 

This project ensures that the land is being used in a sustainable manner by restoring degraded land and it helps create jobs (planting and maintenance). It is currently 15% underway with an expected completion by 2030. According to the United Nations (UN) Food and Agricultural Organization the area to be planted covers approximately 2 times the size of India with 780 million hectares and 21% consisting of agro-sylvo-pastoral lands that are restorable. This degraded land would be planted with over 110 diverse native species that can easily adapt to the environment. 

The existence of this green wall will fulfill 10 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. These trees will help capture 250 million metric tonnes for carbon yearly which is equivalent to removing cars for more than three years in California. An added benefit is that the presence of trees would encourage rainfall which will help the soil and provide water for communities. 

Carbon may be peaking – But methane’s on the rise

Photo by Leon Ephraïm on Unsplash

It has been found that in 2017 methane levels peaked and reached an all-time high – even more worryingly is that this is the most recent year that all levels are available, meaning they’re probably even higher now. We may have been having some success with decreasing carbon dioxide emissions, however it seems as though we’ve forgotten about a gas that traps 86 times as much as the same mass of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and isn’t even near its peak. 

Where is all this methane coming from you might ask? COWS! Seriously! Agriculture is a high emitter of methane (two-thirds of emissions!) because as cows, as well as other livestock belch, they release methane. Due to our high demand for meat, there are a lot of cows on the planet and as a result, a whole lot of methane. Of course, cows aren’t the only way methane is produced, as methane emissions released when coal mining, and are also released via leaks along pipelines and gas wells constituting the other third of emissions.

While we have made pretty good strides in decreasing our carbon dioxide emissions it appears as though we have ignored an even more important greenhouse gas in methane. If we are to keep the earth from warming by the two-degree Celsius goal, it is apparent that there must be strict agricultural reform as well as gas leaks that need to be plugged.

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On a muggy Autumn night in Toronto last week, award-winning environmental writer (and long-time A/J columnist) Andrew Nikiforuk explained to two dozen people at the Gladstone Hotel the root of his interest in the underdog, the downtrodden and the dispossessed: “I come from a long line of peasants … with their feet on the ground.”

It makes sense. The Calgary-based author has long been at the forefront of writing about this country’s environmental calamities and those affected by them long before mainstream media coverage kicks its slow-moving gears into drive. He’s at it again in Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry in which he tackles the hydraulic fracturing industry in Canada, a country whose citizens, according to Nikiforuk, share “profoundly different” views on the controversial practice.

It’s a point Mark Mattson, the evening’s moderator and head of Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, made several times: our Toronto ballroom was only half full for the book launch, while similar events on Canada’s coasts — both east and west — would be standing room only. Mattson also predicted a much larger crowd would turnout in New York State or Pennsylvania where fracking is a grassroots, hot-button issue akin to wind turbines in this province. With 25,000 oil and gas wells already dug in Ontario, the province doesn’t seem to recognize that fracking is as big a reality for Canada’s most populous province as it is for Alberta — same technology, different scale.

Slick Water sees Nikiforuk turn his attention to the “enormously complicated” Jessica Ernst and her ongoing struggle against Encana, the Alberta government and the Energy Resources Conservation Board, an oil and gas industry “regulator.” Beginning in 2004, Ernst, a stubborn but “brilliant scientific researcher,” to Nikiforuk’s telling, began investigating oil company Encana’s fracking practices when she discovered methane in the drinking water of her rural community northeast of Calgary.

Rather than taking a payment from Encana and signing a document ensuring her silence on the matter as so many others have, Ernst fought on, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. (Nikiforuk told the launch party, to much applause, that 15 percent of the proceeds from Slick Water will help Ernst pay her lawyers; though even if she’s successful, Ernst may still be in debt for taking on the energy sector.) Her case will be heard at the Supreme Court of Canada beginning in January 2016.

Ernst’s case highlights the “modern agenda for corporate fraud,” Nikiforuk told the crowd. This is what happens when the industry regulator is funded by industry, he said, and staffed by people once employed in the oil and gas sector and those looking to use a brief stint with the Energy Resources Conservation Board as a springboard to more lucrative work in the industry. It creates a regulatory framework without transparency. It’s the same pattern of denial, prove it, silence and blame employed by the Catholic Church in covering up sexual abuse allegations made against high-ranking members of the clergy, Nikiforuk said. It’s an allegory he returned to repeatedly to explain how people ignore situations known to be troubling until the weight of evidence forces society to acknowledge the danger in its midst.

Slick Water is Nikiforuk sticking to what he does best — rousing us rabble to care about groundwater contamination and corporate fraud. Pipelines may get all the attention in Central Canada, but we can’t be blind to the plethora of other environmental evils ravaging the country. The book that began as a story about groundwater contamination quickly became a story about fracking technology: but even this soon evolved into a story of how corporate fraud and government acquiescence are threatening public health and safety. There are 4.3 million oil and gas wells in North America, 500,000 in Western Canada alone, and almost all of them leak methane into water or the atmosphere. Canada has been home to some of the largest fracking-related earthquakes in Earth’s history, Nikiforuk said. The 12 year trial of Jessica Ernst to confront the companies and government agencies who looked away while her water was poisoned warns that hydraulic fracturing and its associate dangers are no uniquely American phenomenon. Once again, Nikiforuk is right to wake us from our slumber.

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EACH WEEK, A\J staffers share our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week!

Things from the Internet!

Researchers have developed a paper that can filter 99.9% of bacteria from water, making it safe to drink. It has been designed into book form, and each sheet of paper is capable of giving someone up to 30 days of clean water, with each book able to provide clean water for four years.
Source: pagedrinkingpaper.com \ Found by nik

Dutch scientists have successfully tested a smog-eating concrete that can cut certain kinds of air pollution by as much as 45%.
Source: True Activist \ Found by Rachel

What do plants know? Recent research has found that plants possess remarkable abilities of sensation, perception and awareness. They have short- and long-term memory forms, and can communicate and network with other organisms and species.
Source: HastenTheDownfall \ Found by nik

Researchers in Argentina have developed a way to capture the methane gas passed by cows, using backpacks that are strapped to their backs, and convert it into green energy.
Source: Interesting Engineering \ Found by Rachel

The Ocean Cleanup, founded by 20-year-old Boyan Slat, will deploy the world’s first system to passively remove plastic waste from oceans using a series of floating barriers that span over a mile long.
Source: Discovery News \ Found by Rachel

Things from Videos!

Sayonara by Eric Bates is a short story about two unlikely friends saying goodbye. A young man named Charles just lost his home to climate change. He spends one last day with his best friend, a sea turtle, before moving on.
Source: VIMEO \ Found by nik

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Some people, when handed lemons, make lemonade. Other people, like family farmer Bern Kotelko of Alberta, redefine what it means to get lemons, reframe the challenge of making juice from them, and create something far more useful and self-sustaining than lemonade. At least, that’s what Kotelko did when life handed him 500 tonnes of cow poop per day.

Kotelko didn’t just see a mountain of manure – he saw an opportunity to turn “shit into Shinola.” Or more specifically, turn it into biogas, electricity, heat and fertilizer. “I always think of my grandfather and what he taught us about agriculture,” says Kotelko. “He did things in a sustainable way. He grew his own energy to produce food because he had a team of horses and so now we’re doing it at just a little different scale and using some different technology. But what we’re doing is producing our own energy so we can produce food.”

The virtuous loop: Manure from livestock – fed with grain by-product from the ethanol plant – provides the methane used to power the plant and provide surplus electricity to the community \ nik harron.

Canada’s first Integrated Bio Refinery, Growing Power Hairy Hill, uses a “virtuous circle” of technology to link a cattle feedlot, an anaerobic digester and an ethanol plant. The ethanol plant produces wet distiller’s grain as a by-product, which gets fed back to the cattle, completing the virtuous loop.

The anaerobic digester, as well as consuming all of the cow poop, takes another 200 tonnes of organic waste each day from several area municipalities. The organic waste has three times the energy by volume as the manure. The business partners conceptualize this as adding value to both streams of waste by “mining” them for their energy. The methane produced by the digester is burned in a 2.5-megawatt electricity generator, creating sufficient electricity for the 2,500 homes in the local community of Vegreville. The generator produces what lesser thinkers might imagine as surplus – wasted – heat. But Kotelko added a fuel-grade ethanol plant to soak up this extra heat, because nothing is waste when you look at it the right way. The plant is responsible for creating 40 million litres of ethanol per year that is sold to refineries in Edmonton.

Trever Nickel is the general manager of Himark Biogas, the company that designs the technology used at Growing Power. He says that if Alberta’s “very low” carbon price of $15 per tonne were to increase to $35 or $40, there would be an opportunity to finance many more of these plants in the province. For instance, Germany offers a feed-in-tariff to producers and has over 6,000 digestors. By contrast, Alberta’s two biogas and co-generation plants (the other one is in Lethbridge) make only a fraction of the 265 million litres of fuel-grade ethanol mandated to be used in the province.

A slightly different configuration with the same creative mindset is operating in Chatham, Ontario. The Devries family farm sells corn to GreenField Specialty Alcohols, a biorefinery that produces 200,000 million litres of ethanol per year. Not only do they buy back distiller’s grain to feed their cattle, but they are planning to take the heat and CO2 created by the ethanol plant – from their corn – to heat their greenhouse and grow up to 5.85 million kilograms of tomatoes per year. Sustainability can be as simple as seeing the lemons around you in an entirely new way.

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The oil and gas industry has a pernicious engineering problem: leaky wells. When industry cements or seals a wellbore, stray gas from shallow or intermediate zones can migrate along the casing to the surface or into aquifers. So too can brine and other hydrocarbons. And with the advent of hydraulic fracturing, the scale of this largely unacknowledged liability to groundwater and climate change is growing dramatically.

In fact, a new University of Waterloo study warns that the leaky wellbore crisis in both active and abandoned energy wells has already contributed “to the erosion of the social license that permits the functioning of the upstream hydrocarbon industry.” Maurice Dusseault, one of the nation’s top petroleum geologists, contributed to the big study.

The subterranean problem, which effectively dogs the oil patch from Texas to British Columbia, has been simmering for a long time. Each and every well drilled into the ground can potentially become a superhighway for methane and other gases such as radon, which might otherwise take millions of years to migrate to the surface.

Methane, a gas lighter than air, can also migrate as far as 14 kilometres from its source. It can travel along a wellbore and then connect to pre-existing faults or natural fractures and then pop up into basements or groundwater sources. It can even exit rural kitchen taps in a milky, flammable, bubbling brew.

The scale of the largely invisible problem remains unsettling. In Norway, 24 per cent of offshore wells leak, and in the Gulf of Mexico more than half of aging oil wells have sprung leaks. Ten per cent of all active and suspended gas wells in British Columbia spew methane. In addition, some hydraulically fractured shale gas wells in the province have become “super emitters” that spew as much as 3,000 cubic metres of methane a year.

About 20 per cent of Saskatchewan’s more than 87,000 wells leak. Alberta regulators report that some 27,000 out of about 315,000 wells are chronic seepers. But that’s a mammoth underestimate. Heavy oil fields in Lloydminster, for example, have reported leakage rates as high as 45 per cent.

Hydraulic fracturing has magnified the problem. Unlike conventional drilling, the brute force of the technology exerts high pressures on wellbores. Horizontal wells that are greater in length than depth also tend to leak more. During oil and gas booms the quality of cement jobs deteriorates as companies cut corners to drill more wells. 

Abandoned wells present another conundrum. Alberta has abandoned 150,000 oil and gas wells, but neither government nor industry monitors these wellbores for cracked cement seals or methane leaks.

A 2014 PhD thesis tells the bad news story. For the first time ever, Mary Kang, a civil engineer grad student at Princeton, directly measured leaks at 19 abandoned wells in a northern area of Pennsylvania. (The state pioneered US oil production in the 1850s and has between 280,000 and 970,000 abandoned wells.) All 19 seeped like hell. Moreover, the best-plugged wells leaked as badly as the unplugged ones. The methane emissions ebbed and flowed with the weather and seasons too.

But the startling finding was this: three of the wells were methane super emitters. That meant leaky abandoned wellbores – infrastructure that is ignored in climate change assessments – accounted for anywhere between 4 and 7 per cent of the state’s total man-made methane pollution.

If that sort of uncomfortable math were done in Alberta, or Texas, then shale gas might be outlawed. Whenever methane leaks account for more than 3.2 per cent of industry production, natural gas has a bigger climate footprint than coal-fired electricity, according to collaborative research by US scientists.

Fixing a leaky wellbore is not easy or cheap. Costs can range from $150,000 to $600,000 per well. More importantly, repair jobs have a poor track record, characterized by what the Waterloo study called “persistent underreporting of negative results.” (Dig deeper into the study here.)

So, Houston, we have an ugly methane problem. Every oil and gas well drilled in the ground will leak and become a methane pathway for eternity. To date, neither industry nor government has a cleanup plan. 

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The month of May 2014 was packed with stark realizations about the state of our polar ice caps. The collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is unstoppable, according to a paper published by Geophysical Research Letters. The estimated time frame for its disappearance is two centuries – or possibly much faster. Combined with another study in Science, the latest information about glaciers and ice sheets concludes that we are losing ice faster than anticipated. Global sea levels will rise by three to four metres from the loss of the West Antarctic alone.

Approximately 100 million people globally live within less than a metre of current sea level. The rise from the West Antarctic will displace millions more. Additionally, NASA scientists recently discovered more than 100 ice-filled canyons under Greenland’s ocean-feeding glaciers. More ice means more melt than previously believed and this will cause an even greater rise in sea level.

Albedo is the technical term for the surface quality that reflects solar radiation. Snow and ice are highly reflective and have a high albedo. By contrast, dark surfaces like open water have low albedo and absorb solar rays, increasing temperature. Forest fires in North America and Siberia are increasing; the soot settles on the ice and snow in Greenland, darkening it and decreasing albedo. In 2012, 97 per cent of Greenland’s surface ice melted over a period of less than a week due to this phenomenon. As the number and intensity of forest fires continue to grow, this loss of albedo will happen more frequently and consistently.

Another paper published in May by Nature focused on the impact of waves greater than 3 metres in height on Antarctic ice volumes. Such waves are strong enough to push past the continent’s ring of ice floes, breaking up sea ice hundreds of kilometers inland from the frozen coastline. There is a strong correlation between wave height and the retreat and thinning of ice in Antarctica, yet these effects have not been taken into account in climate change models that predict a sea level rise of 1m by 2100.

Since 2007 the Arctic has lost more than 480,000 square kilometres of ice. As trapped methane is released, a positive feedback loop occurs – one change sparks another that reinforces the initial action. Increasing atmospheric temperatures are melting the ice and methane is being released. Methane increases the temperature, melting more ice. A commentary in Nature on July 25, 2013, speculated the cost of climate damage from the release of 50 gigatonnes of methane over the next decade at about US$60-trillion dollars worldwide – nearly equal to the value of the entire world economy in 2012.

Finally, new research published in July’s Earth and Planetary Science Letters shows that ice sheet melt is impacting the Earth’s crust. Recently uncovered ground in the Antarctic has uplifted so fast – five centimetres per year – that scientists are worried about movement in Earth’s mantle triggering the creation of volcanoes. In Alaska, melting glaciers have scientists on the watch for earthquakes as tectonic plates move in response to the shifting ice.  

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Last year, we posted 9 Simple Ways to Save the Planet in our Green Living blog. The post suggested eating less meat, stating that “an estimated 18 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to livestock production.” We’ve since learned that the impacts of meat are much worse than we thought.

In her 2009 TED Talk, architect and author Carolyn Steel explains that cities and agriculture are deeply intertwined; in fact, city dwellers were once well aware of where their food came from because their ancient cities were literally carved by food routes. As time and technology progressed and modern transportation systems emerged, cities became detached from food processes, particularly from how livestock was raised, slaughtered and processed.

Modern cities may not be built around food routes as they once were, but our lives and our natural environment are still greatly impacted by the types of food systems we participate in and support. The relationship between our food choices and our environment becomes prevalent when we acknowledge how modern agriculture, especially livestock, is contributing to climate change.

Climate scientists now agree that human activities – including the way we grow and consume food – are contributing to the warming trends that the earth has been experiencing since the Industrial Revolution. All kinds of actions to help mitigate climate change are being discussed, and the most effective action individuals can take may be reconsidering what we put on our plates. In fact, climate experts are now suggesting that the best way to be green is to eat green.

According to a report by UNESCO, the demand for meat is continuing to increase and this is resulting in serious implications for our environment. According to the calculations of former and current environmental specialists from the World Bank Group, livestock is currently responsible for at least an astounding 51 per cent of annual worldwide GHG emissions – much higher than the 18 per cent previously reported!

This incredible statistic is based on the fact that current industrial livestock management practices are heavily reliant on large scale deforestation and forest-burning to create pastureland, which has seriously undermined the Earth’s ability to maintain a balanced carbon cycle through photosynthesis. In other words, there are fewer and fewer trees left to capture carbon, leaving it to enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and contribute to the greenhouse effect. And that’s not even considering the methane produced by the livestock, which is over 20 times more potent than CO₂!

Industrialized livestock production includes externalities as well, including water consumption and pollution. Biodiversity is also being threatened due to habitat loss and the proliferation of monoculture. Commercial livestock practices also tend to favour larger companies, undermining smallholder farmers and input from local communities.  

On the bright side, this 51 per cent also means that there is a huge opportunity to mitigate climate change through changing the way we eat. By shifting away from livestock and adopting more plant-based diets, we can significantly reduce the amount of GHGs entering our atmosphere. This shift is so important that in 2009 the Nutrition Department at the Swedish National Food Administration in Sweden tested out a labelling system that provided information about a food item’s associated carbon emissions to help citizens make more informed and conscious food choices.

Even if adopting a permanent vegetarian or vegan diet is not for you, you can still do you part to reduce your GHG emissions significantly, and easily, by having one meat-free day a week. Your vegetarian meal is giving the earth a chance to regenerate its carbon-sequestering forests so that it can continue to supply us with the foods we love.

We also explored this topic in To Meat or Not To Meat? in The Green Student blog. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

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Imagine going to your favourite bar year after year and ordering beer on tap. Then, one day, the tap runs dry. All that’s left are the drops that have fallen on the bar floor after decades of beer-thirsty customers. The only way to get more beer is to squeeze droplets out of the rug and into your mug.

As the former climate and energy coordinator with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick (CCNB), Raphael Shay often used this analogy to explain how the oil and gas industry feeds our addiction to fossil fuels. The growing scarcity of conventional oil and gas has forced the industry to mine the stains in the rug – dirty, difficult-to-extract resources like tar sands bitumen and shale gas.

Shale gas mining by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, requires brute force and causes substantial problems that are hard to measure. Shale gas, which is mostly methane, is imprisoned in deep sedimentary rock. For each frack, water mixed with sand and a toxic brew of chemicals is pumped downward and then horizontally into an L-shaped borehole at a high enough pressure to fracture the rock, allowing the trapped methane to escape and be drawn to the surface. The amount of water used to frack a single well is equivalent to seven Olympic-sized swimming pools. More than two-thirds of it stays down, but what comes up after the pressure is released is untreatable toxic waste. There have been more than 1,000 allegations in the US of ground or surface water contamination caused by escaped fracking fluid, either above or below ground.

American endocrinologist Theo Colborn says 75 per cent of the chemicals used in fracking disrupt sensory organs and respiratory gastrointestinal system. In September, Colborn and her colleagues at the Colorado-based Endocrine Disruption Exchange published a paper in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment arguing that air pollution in areas where residents and gas wells coexist is also a source of major concern. Other concerns include damage to property values, roads and infrastructure, tourism and agricultural industries, as well as increased noise pollution, health care costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

More fracking to come

Jessica Ernst, the environmental scientist who is currently suing oil giant Encana because she alleges that fracking operations contaminated her water well in Rosebud, Alberta, warns that the number of water contamination cases in Canada is rising. Fracking is currently taking place in rural British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick. Some form of moratorium has been imposed in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and parts of Québec. According to the 2012 Report of the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development, Canada will see a 50-per-cent increase in unconventional gas production over the next 20 years.

New Brunswick has become a cauldron of public pushback against fracking operations. Mark D’Arcy of the Fredericton chapter of the Council of Canadians estimates that there could be as many as 60,000 active wells in the licensed area held by SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of Texas-based Southwestern Energy Company. In 2010, the company pledged to spend almost $47-million to explore for the commercial viability of shale gas on more than a million hectares of land stretching the entire width of the province. Furious that the provincial government had not engaged them prior to issuing exploratory licenses to this and other companies, grandmothers, taxi drivers, hairdressers, university professors and New Brunswickers from all walks of life – hailing from Indigenous, Acadian and Anglophone communities alike – have reorganized their lives and become activists to halt the development of shale gas mining in the province.

The conflicts in New Brunswick reflect what’s happening in communities across Canada and beyond our borders. Cash-strapped governments are promoting economic growth and responsible development, while activists are calling for a permanent halt to exploration for the sake of ecosystem vitality and human safety. But this struggle is not just about shale gas, which is but a symptom of a much larger problem. Many rural New Brunswickers initially heard about this invasion of their lands not from the officials they elected to represent their interests, but from the oil and gas industry.

We can no longer afford to be complacent.

According to Henry David Thoreau, complacency is one of democracy’s greatest weaknesses. We can no longer afford to be complacent. The mounting resistance in New Brunswick, which has required unflinching determination and countless hours of unpaid work, shows that we can reclaim a stake in our faltering democracy. These are some of the tools and strategies we’ve used to push back against seismic testing operations and exploratory thumper trucks.

#1: Design a Counter Campaign

In New Brunswick, there are currently nine oil and gas companies holding shale gas exploration licenses. Starting in 2010, two companies, Corridor Resources and SWN Resources Canada, started hosting town hall meetings to discuss their plans with residents. It was news to us.

To ensure people understood what was happening, members of existing groups like the Taymouth Community Association and Sackville’s Tantramar Alliance Against Hydrofracking organized their own meetings to raise awareness about shale gas mining. Stephanie Merrill of CCNB Action spent the better part of two years travelling across the province giving presentations and telling mainstream media about the risks and impacts of fracking. Others like Jim emberger and Patricia leger were inspired to follow her example. Merrill was also instrumental in distributing the film Gasland – Josh Fox’s 2010 documentary about the devastation caused by the US fracking industry – in New Brunswick.

This evolving public education campaign is now the mainstay of the newly created New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA), established in fall 2013.

#2: Build a Resistance Network

To protest closed-door meetings about shale gas mining organized by David Alward’s provincial government in June 2011. a range of NB-based NGOs established a province-wide network to stop development. The New Brunswick Environmental Network (NBEN) now provides a forum for more than two dozen community associations to talk strategy during monthly teleconferences. Each member of the NBEN shale gas caucus has one representative, and a new chair is elected every six months. Causus proposals are vetted by members of each community association, which are free to choose strategies to partake in and support.

This headless organizational system (which also includes members of the NBASGA) makes it difficult for government or industry to target specific protesters or resistance groups. But as we shall see below, resistors can still become targets.

It stands to reason that the more people and diversity of groups we can represent, the more powerful and credible we become. Many allies have either passed resolutions advocating a moratorium or become active in the anti-shale campaign: the New Brunswick chapter of the National Farmers Union; New Brunswick Nurses Union; New Brunswick College of Family Physicians; Association francophone des municipalités du Nouveau Brunswick; Maritime Conference of the United Church of Canada; the medical doctors of both the George Dumont Hospital and the Moncton Hospital; The Federation of Rural New Brunswickers; New Brunswick Lung Association; Wolastoqiyik First Nations Chiefs and Band Councils of New Brunswick; the Maliseet Grand Council; the New Brunswick division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees; Fredericton District Labour Council; Unifor; and more.

The collaboration of New Brunswick’s Aboriginal Peoples deserves particular attention. Many First Nations communities have asked for help to ensure their treaty rights are protected. Harper’s gutting of environmental protection laws is well known, but few Canadians know about the Alward government’s behaviour. In 2011, it decreed that any wooded wetland that doesn’t appear on provincial maps was not a wetland. In 2012, Alward began neglecting a watercourse classification regulation meant to establish legally binding quality standards for lakes, rivers and streams. What little protection we have left stems from treaties. In order for Aboriginals to be guaranteed the right to hunt, fish and gather in perpetuity, the air, water and habitat required to sustain the plants and animals that feed them need to be protected from industrial development.

#3. Call in Reinforcements

There is no doubt that the election of the Parti Québécois government helped Québec citizens get a fracking moratorium in 2013. A YouTube video called “Gaz de schiste: Wo!” featuring well-known Québec artists also generated momentum.

Unaware of New Brunswick celebrities interested in taking on a similar video project, the NBEN shale gas caucus sought celebrities of another kind to enlighten locals: smart, relatively unknown people who had experienced fracking. The first, in 2011, was Calvin Tillman. The former mayor of Dish, Texas, felt compelled to move his family after his children developed severe nosebleeds, ostensibly caused by air pollutants from shale gas wells. According to a 2013 paper in the American Journal of Nursing by Ruth McDermott-Levy and colleagues, nosebleeds among children are common in areas subjected to shale gas development.

Other speakers brought to counter government and industry ideology included Jessica Ernst, shale gas economics lecturer Deborah Rogers and Anthony Ingraeffea, a Cornell University professor with 30 years of experience in hydrofracking.

Tillman’s take-home message was that folks need to be just as concerned about air pollution as water pollution. Ingraeffea warned about the many myths industry will peddle to try and convince opponents. Rogers said the only way to win this fight is by poking holes in economic arguments.

#4. Fine-Tune Your Message

Community associations have sold thousands of signs and T-shirts depicting an anti-shale gas message for a buck or two above cost, providing an important means of fundraising. These messages also help build solidarity. Earlier this fall, I drove to a NBASGA meeting in St. Ignace along Highway 11, where SWN Resources Canada had set up the final stages of its seismic testing operations for the season. Strewn alongside the highway for many kilometres were SWN’s geophones, detectors that record echoes of sounds made on the Earth’s surface by thumper trucks. Paradoxically, there was a “No shale gas” sign in almost every driveway!

Messages on signs and T-shirts have also evolved over the past three years to become more positive and practical. The Fredericton chapter of the Council of Canadians recently issued a challenge on bright yellow signs and T-shirts that read “Jobs: You do the math.” These show that the number of jobs created for every million-dollar investment in clean energy production is up to seven times greater than those created by the same investment in the oil and gas industry.

The past three years have witnessed two public rallies in Moncton and five in Fredericton. Thousands of people have walked the streets carrying signs or banners, chanting lyrics and beating drums. We are now able to pull off demonstrations in a matter of days. (The key is to inform local police of your route and request their presence during the march, especially to stop or divert traffic at busy intersections.)

In November 2013, instead of marching to the Legislative Assembly, we started with a symbolic gesture of “turning our backs” to the building and then marching to a traditional longhouse built by six Maliseet and two Mi’kmaq communities. Using a pick-up truck bed as our stage and a borrowed microphone and speaker system, representatives from the Aboriginal, Acadian and Anglophone communities each addressed the demonstrators. Even though marches and rallies have done little to deter the Alward government’s hard line on the shale gas file, they have proven indispensable to keeping spirits high and building solidarity during a long and difficult campaign. They have also made it clear to Alward and SWN that New Brunswickers will not be excluded from these decisions.

#5. Create Conversation-Starters

A petition containing 20,000 signatures was delivered to the Legislative Assembly in 2011 asking the government for a ban. A letter-writing campaign was designed so that citizens could easily send all 55 Members of the Legislative Assembly a note denouncing shale gas development. A satirical newspaper called the Daily Glove Puppet has brought a sharp tongue to the discussion. Because a relatively high percentage of New Brunswickers have low literacy (53 per cent), more emphasis is now being placed on YouTube videos and skits such as Dame Rita’s “I am ‘ear’ for you.”

Fredericton’s Council of Canadians members have designed and used “Frack-fry” costumes to demonstrate the increased risks of contamination in food grown in soil where shale gas mining occurs. The decorated appliance-sized cardboard boxes list many common ingredients found in fracking fluids on the back and are easy to make and wear. They’re a great way to draw attention in communities less familiar with shale gas.

In December 2013, Council members constructed a pillory and used it to depict how the courts have put citizens in stocks, unable to live in a clean and healthy environment.

#6. Go to Court with Caution

Hampton Water First, a member of the NBEN shale gas caucus, is currently trying to raise $100,000 to take the government to court on the basis that shale gas mining is detrimental to people’s health.

This issue has already been before the courts on four different occasions in late 2013. On October 3, SWN Resources Canada initially succeeded in getting a Moncton judge to grant an injunction against activists in Kings County who had prevented its thumper trucks from leaving a compound located off Highway 134. Although SWN failed to have that injunction extended, it did sue 13 activists for $650,000 in damages it claimed to have incurred because of summertime protests in Kent County. Despite the lack of anti-SLAPP legislation in New Brunswick, few anticipated these particular protesters would be targeted. (The lesson: lobby for your province to introduce anti-SLAPP protection if none is available.)

On November 15, Elsipogtog First Nation asked a Fredericton judge for an injunction against the Alward government for not adhering to its duty to consult them prior to issuing exploratory licenses. The judge denied their request. (Note that in other jurisdictions, the courts have honoured similar requests – an Inuit group in Nunavut contested seismic testing in Lancaster Sound in 2010, and the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation in Ontario prohibited exploration by Platinex Inc. in 2006.)

When SWN presented its case before the same judge who denied Elispogtog’s motion on November 22, the company’s request that no person be allowed within 20 meters of the side of the road or 250 meters from the front or back of its thumper trucks was granted. SWN reappeared in court on December 2 asking for an extension to its previous injunction, which was also granted.

From our experience, the courts have so far proven unsatisfactory and prohibitively expensive, and they are structured to give preference to large businesses. The lesson learned is to approach the bench with irrefutable evidence.

#7. Document the Conflict

Irving Oil, a family-owned company worth billions, controls every English-language daily in New Brunswick and all the community weeklies except two. Naturally, this has led to a very biased approach to news coverage of shale gas development. It has been difficult to get a pro-industry conglomerate to give equal treatment to both sides of this controversy. It calls to mind what Mount Allison professor Erin Steuter said when the Liberals under Shawn Graham tried selling NB Power to Québec: “The papers are presenting the view that what’s good for the Irving company is good for the province.”

Even the CBC has fallen into disfavour among activists for often undermining the NBASGA’s message and for continuously underreporting the number of people participating in marches and rallies.

During the summer and fall of 2013, an independent journalist affiliated with the Halifax Media Co-op named Miles Howe lived among activists staging a blockade in Kent County. Whereas other journalists had to drive up to wherever the blockades were being set up, which was a moving target in and of itself, Howe was able to provide up-to-the minute accounts of everything that was happening. Much to his dismay and surprise, he was arrested three times for doing his job.

Many activists used their digital devices to capture videos of tense moments between the RCMP and activists. Blogger Charles LeBlanc was present with his camera phone, recording every aspect of how the arrests on Highway 126 unfolded on June 14, 2013. LeBlanc’s short video of friends and allies being physically manhandled by the RCMP was heart-wrenching and impossible to capture in print media. Without his perspective, we wouldn’t know the ferocity with which the Alward government was prepared to quash any form of resistance to shale gas exploration.

#8. Reclaim Power

New Brunswickers are not used to being arrested for blocking thumper trucks in the middle of a public highway. Acts of civil disobedience require training. Philippe Duhamel, a non-violent activist and educator for social change from Québec City, delivered a weeklong training session on civil disobedience in Elsipogtog last fall. Duhamel talked about the importance of preplanning acts of disobedience, having a contingency plan and always keeping a watchful eye for agents provocateurs, such as those alleged to have torched six RCMP vehicles in Rexton on October 17, 2013.

Inverness County in Nova Scotia is believed to be the first community in Canada to pass a bylaw prohibiting fracking within community boundaries (read about it in “First Places“). Two years in the making, the bylaw came about because of residents’ fears about the fracking of an exploratory well drilled by Petroworth Resources next to Lake Ainslie.

Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund doesn’t think Inverness has gone far enough. “Community rights will not be won by banning fracking, but by empowering every community to govern corporate behavior within their jurisdiction, including but certainly not limited by the prohibition of rights-violating fracking,” he says. “Corporate privileges must be subordinated to the right of communities to protect their health, safety and welfare by legislating against the local siting of factory farms, GMOs, toxic landfills, sewage-sludge dumping, huge water withdrawals, long-wall and mountain top removal ‘mining’ – you name it.”

#9. Get Out the Vote

The Alward government has consistently maintained that it was given a majority mandate to pursue shale gas development in the 2010 provincial elections. We disagree, as there was no mention of shale gas or hydraulic fracturing in his party’s election platform. Many New Brunswickers are now focused on ousting Alward from office on September 22, 2014. The true challenge will be to elect a trustworthy coalition government to repair the cumulative impact of decades of majority governments that have led to shale gas exploration and mining operations.

Town hall meetings are being held across the province in early 2014 to mobilize and empower New Brunswickers to take charge of their futures and financial challenges by using the voting process. Get tools for organizing a community awareness campaign and other activities. See where there’s fracking activity or shale basins near you in our Fracking Hotspots map.

The post 9 Ways to Fight Fracking appeared first on A\J.

Just kidding.

But seriously, those tiny sausages looked weird.

I remember the day I decided to start eliminating animal products from my diet. I was 13 years old, sitting in Pizza Hut with my family. I stared down at my personal pizza and thought, “What part of the animal is the mini sausage?”

Just kidding.

But seriously, those tiny sausages looked weird.

I turned to my family and said, “I don’t think I want to eat meat anymore.” Of course, that was not enough for my mother to allow me to completely change my diet. After I spent hours researching animal rights and factory farms, I finally got my way. Anyway, my mom was sure it was just a phase.

Although I’m not sure what had originally caused me to see eating meat as strange, within five minutes of research, I knew I wouldn’t look back. Images of de-beaked chickens and screaming pigs flooded my thoughts for months, and continue to haunt me to this day.

A few weeks ago I decided that cutting out meat was simply not enough, and I would cut out all animal by-products. After all, factory farming doesn’t stop at meat. Dairy cows and laying hens receive the same troubling treatment as the animals that become barbeque ribs and honey mustard chicken wings. And after looking at the enormous environmental impact of animal farming, I knew I had to go vegan.

Land Use

It is unrealistic to think that all meat-eaters on Earth, or even in North America, could sustain their current meat-eating habits on free range, non-industrialized meat.

In the United States alone, there are about 100 million head of cattle. Each cow requires about 2 to 20 acres of grazing space. That would mean at least 200 million acres would have to be devoted to cows alone. Once you factor in pigs and chickens, there wouldn’t even be space for people.

The argument is that if we all cut down no one has to cut out meat entirely. But too many of us are not cutting down at all. In fact, according to Mark Bittman, author of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, world-wide meat consumption per capita has more than doubled since 1961, when global meat supply was at 71 million tons. By 2007, it was around 284 million tons, and it is expected to double again by 2050.

Climate

Farmed animals are methane machines. Proportionally, the impact of methane (CH₄) is over 20 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO₂) on climate change. In other words, one pound of methane has 20 times the effect of one pound of carbon dioxide.

One pig produces 1.5 kilograms of methane per year, one sheep produces about 8 kilograms and one cow produces 120 kilograms of methane. To put this into perspective, a human only produces 0.12 kilos of methane per year. That means cows produce 1000 times more methane than humans. A victory in the current battle against climate change might be to eliminate what I consider to be “methane factories.”

Water

Like all animals, farmed animals poop. Although a bit of fertilizer for agricultural purposes can be useful, there is too much to go around.  There are farms where thousands of cattle or pigs are kept and all that manure has to go somewhere. One dairy cow can produce 120 pounds of manure per day, which is the same amount produced by 20 to 40 people.

Manure is collected into “lagoons” or massive tanks that can hold millions of gallons of excrement. Lagoons are prone to leaking, overflowing or even rupturing during storms. Leaking farm sewage can seep into waterways, creating algal blooms which produce dead zones, aquatic areas where there is not enough oxygen to support life.

In 1995, a hog farm in North Carolina spilled 25 million gallons of excrement into the New River. This came from an eight-acre lagoon. In 2011, an Illinois hog farm killed over 110,000 fish by spilling 200,000 gallons of manure into a creek.

Manure and urine can also be collected in drinking water. Not only will it become runoff in streams and rivers, but it can also seep into groundwater, an important source of potable water.

If you still want to eat meat, make it a treat. Allow yourself to eat steak once a month, turkey on Thanksgiving or eggs once a week. But make the effort to understand where your animal products come from. Eliminating or reducing our consumption of animal products and by-products is a straightforward yet significant way we can curb the negative impact of our diets on the planet. 

In part one of To Meat or Not to Meat? Dana Decent chose to eat organic free-range beef to support her local economy. Learn more about reducing your food footprint in Nine Simple Ways to Save the Planet, Can Vegetarians Slow Climate Change?, 10 Ways to Waste Less Food and Eating Insects.

The post To Meat or Not to Meat? Part 2 appeared first on A\J.