Anyone who reads my blog or is a friend on Facebook most likely realizes how I feel about fracking. To put it in a nutshell; I feel that fracking should be immediately abolished even though I know the hardships that would follow, if such a decision occurred, would be considerably drastic. But what's the alternative? The destruction and death of our planet means our own demise and every other creature's as well. In this time in history like no other time before, not even the terrible and horrendous two World Wars, everyone, and I mean everyone, is tied with their hands behind their backs to a post, a blindfold tied tightly across their eyes and a firing squad is aiming their guns at our hearts, awaiting the command, "Fire!" I'm not an expertise on fracking, no scientific background of any kind, nor do I know exactly how this method works but I'd have to be a blind man not to see the detrimental downside of extracting fossil fuels in this manner - poisoned earth, air and water, and not on a small scale - means the destruction of civilization, not just to us but the deaths of our children and their children as well. We all know what's lurking on the horizon and sooner or later, perhaps not the older people, not much time left to live, who have their heads stuck so far up their asses saying, "Well I won't be here when it all comes to an end;" someone has to be and many will be here. I cannot even imagine how terrible it will be; not to be able to breath the air, drink the water and eat the food; Hitler's Holocaust will seem like mere child's play.
Well enough of my ranting; I'd like you to read what my friend Keith had published in the Telegraph Journal, St. John NB, a few days ago. He gave me permission to include his commentary and I'm not sure how he will feel about mine, but standing on the edge of a jet plane, 30,000 feet in the air without a parachute scares the living shit out of me and that's the position I feel I'm in at the moment, so I'm speaking my mind He knows more about this problem than I do. However, if you feel as strongly as me about bringing fracking to an end, please feel free to share this blog - we can't leave the natives alone to stand up to the people who are trying to shove this dastardly policy down everyone's throats. I don't know about you but there's nothing more important than having good water to drink, pollution free air to breath and naturally grown food to eat - cheers, eh!
Let’s Make an Energy Transition Now
Keith Helmuth
In all the media reports about the US becoming the world’s second largest producer of
hydrocarbons thanks to fracking, an inescapable factor is being ignored: No matter how we calculate it,
fossil fuels are a sunset industry. The same thing goes for the Alberta oil sands, which are touted as having
the potential for making Canada a big league hydrocarbon producer.
The new technologies and the newly accessible hydrocarbon deposits only move the sunset
horizon a little further down the road. The logic of this scenario could not be clearer, but we continue to
act as if it were not the case despite the potentially catastrophic consequences for the habitability of the
planet. If we open up and pump out all the oil and shale gas we can find, the deposits will eventually play
out and we will likely cook the planet in the process.
The fact that most of us presently alive will not be around for the full effect of the fossil fuel
burnout, places an unprecedented moral responsibility squarely in our laps. We now live on a unique and
temporary subsidy of hydrocarbon energy that has produced a unique and temporary economy of
affluence and convenience.
Nothing like this has happened before. When it is over, civilization will have moved to a
renewable energy platform. Renewable energy is the only platform that makes sense for the long run and
the faster we move to it the better off our descendants will be. We are in the middle of a momentous
moral decision about energy use and the future of the planet.
Civic and political leadership, by definition, is morally responsible for the consequences of present
societal action on future human wellbeing. Governments have an “in trust” responsibility to safeguard the
environmental assets on which we all depend, and that means especially Earth’s atmosphere.
On the one hand, substantial evidence from earthsystem science shows that pushing the fossil fuel
economy for all its worth will decrease the planet’s overall habitability and severely compromise the future
wellbeing of human communities.
On the other hand, business leaders in the fossil fuel industry, along with their political allies, are
pushing back against the science by pointing out that curtailing the exploitation of fossil fuels would result
in a subsidence of the consumer economy. So what are civic and political leaders supposed to do? What
are we supposed to do?
It depends on whether you think the primary moral responsibility is to keep the consumer
economy going as long as we can, even if it shortens the future; or whether you think a higher moral
responsibility is to change course in order to give our descendants a better chance of having an
environment in which they can live in a secure and reasonably prosperous way. This divide in moral vision
is at the heart of the shale gas and land use battle now erupting in NB.
The current federal government is squarely in the first camp, and is determined to make Canada a
hydrocarbon cornucopia. The current NB government sees things the same way. But it is clear from the
opposition to shale gas mining in NB that a large number of citizens do not support this approach to thefuture. And much to the consternation of shale gas proponents, an increasing number of jurisdictions are
putting the brakes on the rush to shale gas fracking.
If we change course, and muster up the moral leadership to deliberately and systematically gear
down the fossil fuel economy, leaving most remaining oil, gas, and coal in the ground, we have a different
kind of problem the consumer economy will go into subsidence, and we all know that means recession
or even depression.
What terrible options. It makes you think of Woody Allen’s quip; “More than any other time in
history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total
extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” Humour has a way of putting things in a
nutshell.
But there is a clear middle ground for a way out: As the fossil fuel industry is systematically geared
down, all forms of renewable energy can be ramped up as rapidly as possible. Will there be an “energy
gap?” Probably. The transition may well require a controlled subsidence of the consumer economy, but
that hardship can be managed.
What likely cannot be managed will be the severe ecological repercussions, climate chaos, and
economic breakdown that can be foreseen as the consequence of pushing the hydrocarbon economy for
all its worth for as long as we can.
We have everything we need to make the transition to a conserver economy based on renewable
energy. We already know from the evidence that investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy
creates far more jobs than investment in fossil fuels. It may take 30 years to make the transition, but the
growth of renewable energy can help create a sustainable and prosperous conserver economy. Moral
leadership invested in this transition will pay longterm dividends.
Keith Helmuth is a member of the Woodstock Sustainable Energy Group
Published in the Telegraph Journal, St. John NB, November 26, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment