The only thing keeping a number of Norwegian salmon farms afloat in Canada is the hundreds of millions of dollars they net from taxpayers when their fish die of disease.
You might think the multi-billion dollar fish farm industry was a licence to print money. You’d be almost right, but not for the reason you might think. Norwegian aquaculture giants Marine Harvest, Cermaq Mainstream and Grieg Seafood comprise 90% of BC’s farmed salmon industry and Marine Harvest operates in 22 countries. What you don’t know is that taxpayers, meaning you and me, pay big money to them when their fish get diseases and have to be slaughtered.
Food safety regulator’s fishy business
Once the Canadian Food Inspection Agency detects a reportable disease, it issues a slaughter order and the fish are destroyed. Then the CFIA sends a very large cheque to the fish farm. This taxpayer cheque compensates them for disposable items like infected nets, cost of transport and offloading, cost of sequestering diseased carcasses in perpetuity, and disinfecting all other items that came in contact with the fish, including the boat that transported them. In addition to all this, the commonly accepted extra payment for each fish is up to $30. This figure really comprises an average payment because of all the other costs mentioned.
You’d think the fish farms would have insurance for losses, but my conversations with a marine insurer tell me they have difficulty getting insurance because they lose so many ‘crops’ to – wait for it – disease. So why are we, the Canadian taxpayer paying these foreign, multi-billion dollar corporations?
Industry loses up to a half of its fish to disease
Fish farms like to say their fish get diseases from wild salmon because the latter don’t get sick, as if that’s a justification for cash. Not so. A recent PHD dissertation from Norway showed that the problem with farmed fish is that they are stressed – the cages are overcrowded. This results in high output of the stress hormone cortisol and that weakens immune systems in farmed fish, thus they get disease. They actually change benign viruses into infectious killers.
How much product is lost to disease? One third to one half of all aquaculture products in the world are lost to disease every year, some $35 – $49 Billion (1). I started a Freedom of Information request to the CFIA and DFO to find out just how much we taxpayers in Canada pay to these billion dollar foreign corporations. I have been waiting 10 months now with no answer, so, let me give you a reasonable estimate.
Some fish farms only make money when their fish die
Overall, my expectation is that the cross-Canada disease total will come in at several hundred million taxpayer dollars over the past decade for BC, NS, NB and recently NL. Here in BC, Cermaq Mainstream’s Dixon Point and Millar Channel 2012 IHN slaughters would have paid them, in my estimate, about $35 Million of our cash. That’s so much money that it moved this boom/bust business into positive earnings before interest and taxes (i.e., EBIT), when it lost money the year before – and only made money this year because of having disease. They’ve had a decade of problems before.
[quote]Mainstream Canada reported an EBIT pre fair value and non-recurring items of NOK 43 million, an improvement from a loss of NOK 26 million the previous year, even though volumes sold declined from 5,600 tons to 4,400 tons. EBIT per kilo was 9.6 NOK. Good prices in the North American market and the IHN outbreak last year are the main factors behind the improved result.(2)[/quote]
So Mainstream lost money when they didn’t have disease and made money when they did have disease – because you and I paid them. And they shipped far less fish, even though a third farm, Bawden Point, posted a weak positive for IHN – they were quickly harvested and sent to humans to eat. This should not be the case. Do complain, as I did, to Gail Shea, Minister of DFO (Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca).
Fish Farms reel in another $400 million in Canadian subsidies
On another aquaculture front, you may be even more unhappy to know Shea announced $400 Million in gifts to the aquaculture sector in Canada last week. That’s a lot of dead, diseased fish. I have asked her for $400 million be given to the commercial, sport and processing sectors in BC that provide 600% more in contribution to gross provincial product than fish farms. I’ll let you know.
Fish, profits turn to mush
And fish farms in BC have been losing money. Mainstream lost money in 2012. Marine Harvest has lost money in the last few years, too, largely due to Kudoa, a fungal disease that cost them $12,000,000 in 2012 – and just prior, in 2011, things were so bad they laid off 60 employees – right before Christmas. Nice guys.
Kudoa results in myoliquifaction that makes farmed fish into mush. Would you buy salmon you had to put in a container with a spoon?
Grieg losing money, drowning sea lions
Oh, and then there is Grieg. They got IHN too, last year, in their Cullodon site in Sechelt. Fortunately, we did not have to pay for that as well. Grieg is also the company that had to pay a fine of $100,000 for drowning 65 – 75 sea lions in their Skuna Bay nets in 2010 – they tarted up that site to sell to the unsuspecting in the USA as environmentally-sustainable, organic farmed salmon. Where is PETA when you need them?
[quote]In Canada, the company cut losses, with a negative ebit [sic] before fair value adjustment of the biomass of NOK 2.71/kg, compared to a loss of NOK 8.22/kg in the same quarter of 2012.[/quote]
And the kicker? Cermaq is owned 59.2% by the government and thus the people of Norway. Why do we give another government our money for their killing our fish in our ocean rather than raising their fish on land in closed containers? This does not make sense.
Ask Shea for BC’s $400 million. We can spend it on habitat restoration, something DFO has been sadly remiss about in BC for decades. This year’s total DFO habitat projects for BC is a measly $900,000, only 2.6% of our own money Ottawa sent to diseased fish farms in BC.
Frackwater pits in Talisman’s Farrell Creek operations in northeast BC – photo taken in March. Pond A, on the far right, suffered a rupture, leaking contaminants into the soil and groundwater (Two Island Films)
by Damien Gillis and Will Koop
A pit storing contaminated fracking water in northeast BC was leaking into the surrounding soil and groundwater for up to six months before owner Talisman formally notified the Oil and Gas Commission and undertook clean-up efforts, The Common Sense Canadian has learned.
One of five lined pits connected to Talisman’s Farrell Creek operations north of Hudson’s Hope, referred to as Pond A, suffered a puncture through both of its protective layers, causing toxic fluids to begin escaping into the environment. The pits are used to store “produced water” from previous fracks to be reused later as part of a program to cut back on freshwater use. Ironically, this practice has now threatened local groundwater due to the ruptured liners.
It has proven difficult to obtain straight answers from the regulator or company, but through a series of recent communications, we have been able to piece together a rough timeline of the incident.
Holes in Talisman’s liner, story
Pond A in Sept 2010. Both protective liners would later fail (Will Koop)
Talisman’s storage pits consist of two liners with a a layer of interstitial webbing in between. As Talisman Community Engagement Advisor Dan Glover explained this past Friday over the phone, that webbing contains sensors which detected a leak in the inside membrane during a routine inspection in “late January” of this year.
“What we didn’t pick up at that time was that there was also an issue with the second liner,” added Glover.
“From what I understand, we started draining the pond in late January when the leak was detected, but it didn’t happen quickly,” he acknowledged.
[quote]That’s a lot of water to truck away.
[/quote]
Indeed, Pond A holds approximately 30,000 cubic metres (30 million litres) of fluids at capacity. With the three neighbouring pits full, the company had to pump out Pond A by tanker truck, removing the toxic liquid waste to the Silverberry industrial waste transfer site, some 70 km away. Each truck can carry just 30-36 cubic metres, meaning almost 1,000 truck loads to empty the pit (and about 120,000-140,000 total km of travel).
That said, the above aerial image of the pits, taken on March 28, conflicts with Mr. Glover’s statement that the company began emptying the pond back in January after the sensors detected a leak in the inner membrane. At least two months later, there is no visible sign that the company has even begun pumping out Pond A.
Getting to the bottom of Pond A leak
It is unclear when Talisman did begin emptying the pit, but Mr. Glover claims it was fully drained by the beginning of June, after which the company removed the liners and discovered the outer layer had failed too, meaning the pit had been leaking for close to 5 months into the soil and groundwater at that point.
In a November 8 email to Hudson’s Hope Mayor Gwen Johansson, responding to questions from a concerned community member, Glover said, “…in June we informed the OGC that we were taking the pond out of service.” Yet, in an advisory emailed to media last week, the regulator stated, “The BC Oil and Gas Commission is investigating a leak in a Talisman frackwater storage pond that was reported by the company on July 22, 2013.”
We asked Mr. Glover to account for the discrepancy between to two conflicting dates when the spill was reported to the OGC. He explained that the first notification, in June, was an informal “heads-up” from Talisman’s regulatory compliance officer. The July date constitutes the company’s “official self-disclosure” to the regulator.
It would take another two and a half months for the OGC to issue a formal order to Talisman “to delineate the extent of soil and groundwater impact in and around Pond A and provide the results to the OGC,” according to Glover. The OGC has declined repeated requests to furnish us with a copy of the order, but has acknowledged the date was October 4 – with a deadline of November 29 for more detailed reporting of remediation and test results on the soil and groundwater.
The above sequence illustrates some serious gaps in the regulatory framework for the industry, with companies left to self-report such incidents, and an apparent lack of urgency on the part of the OGC for mandating and monitoring emergency clean-up measures.
First Nations upset at lack of disclosure
Chief Roland Wilson of West Moberly First Nations, on whose shared territory the leak occurred, is upset at the lack of disclosure by Talisman and the OGC. He says that dialogue with both entities only began once the Nation initiated it, after hearing about learning of the leak through other sources. “They didn’t come forward with anything. That’s a big concern,” says Wilson.
[quote]We have people on the ground – hunters, people practicing their treaty rights. Is this getting into the creeks where they’re camping? Who knows what’s happening? The OGC has the duty to consult. When there is a possible threat to the safety of our members, it’s their duty to inform us.[/quote]
Talisman also neglected to inform West Moberly of the incident, in spite of a memorandum of understanding between the Nation and company which mandates open dialogue. Mr. Glover doesn’t dispute this point. However, when asked why the company didn’t inform First Nations of the leak in January when it was first detected, he suggests it didn’t yet have enough information to share without further investigation.
[quote]We didn’t want to go to them and say, ‘hey guys, we have an issue with one of our ponds,’ then they would ask, ‘what’s the issue?’ and we would have told them we have no idea.[/quote]
That said, there remains the apparent contradiction between the company’s timeline for draining the pit and the above photographic evidence, which suggests Talisman’s response was far less prompt than it has portrayed.
Mr. Glover says that once First Nations contacted Talisman with concerns about the leaking pit, they were invited for a site inspection. He also maintains the company will share its reports on the clean-up with First Nations throughout the region going forward.
Liners punctured by shale
The 12 metre-deep Pond A in Sept. 2010 (Will Koop)
Talisman believes the pit’s liners were punctured by a chunk of shale protruding from the surrounding soil, in the bottom third of the 12 metre-deep cavity.
Following the draining of the pit, Talisman hired Highmark Environmental Services to remove contaminated soil and Matrix Solutions for groundwater monitoring. Results from preliminary testing were supplied to the OGC on September 16, along with an initial remediation plan, which Highmark began to implement. As of last week, an estimated 4,600 cubic metres of soil had been removed and trucked to the Silverberry facility – with approximately 300 cubic metres of contaminated soil remaining to be removed.
The work is ongoing, with follow up meetings being planned in the coming weeks between Talisman and the regulator to review the company’s progress and further testing results.
Chemicals, contamination largely unknown
The company has been unclear about the nature of contaminants in the frackwater, only acknowledging the presence of chlorides, sodium and dissolved solids. In his email to the Hudson’s Hope mayor, Mr. Glover pointed to the province’s “FracFocus” tool, a database where companies operating in BC are now mandated to file chemicals used in their fracks. However, companies are allowed to keep trade secrets and use other tricks to avoid full disclosure.
For instance, we examined the FracFocus list of ingredients used in Well 93-i of the Altares field,directly across the road from the frack fluid storage pits, as an example of the toxics potentially contained in Pond A. While contractor Schlumberger lists most of the chemicals it used in the well, it leaves out some critical details and product information (known as CAS Registry Numbers). And since the FracFocus tool has only been in place since November 2011 in BC, there is data missing for a number of older wells.
For example, Talisman only reports chemicals used in 73 out of 111 of its wells in the Altares field. The company’s total data for the 73 Altares wells indicates it used 993,832 cubic metres (almost a billion litres) of water for fracking purposes – and about 10,000 cubic metres (10 million litres) of toxic additives.
Moreover, the FracFocus tool does not include drilling additives, which, as revealed in a recent peer-reviewed, published paper, can be just as dangerous as fracking fluids.
In any event, here are just a few of the chemicals disclosed by contractor Schlumberger at Talisman’s well (view the full list here):
Hydrochloric Acid
Distillates (petroleum)
Sodium hydroxide (impurity)
2-Methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one
Trisodium nitrilotriacetate (impurity)
We asked Calgary-based Talisman spokesperson Berta Gomez specifically if the water contained the known carcinogen benzene, to which she replied via email, “Yes the produced water does contain low level concentrations of Benzene. Our sampling has shown an average concentration of 0.465 mg/L with a range of 0.211 – 0.824 mg/L,” though she maintains that’s well below the allowable concentration under BC’s Contaminated Sites Regulations.
Finally, neither the OGC nor Talisman have yet to reveal to the public the naturally occurring toxics released within the fracked flow back water – such as mercury, arsenic, barium, strontium, chromium, BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes), radium, uranium, and whatever other dangerous underground substances are being dredged up by fracking (read our recent story about dead cows and radiation connected to fracking near a farm in Alberta).
Volume of leaked frackwater unknown
According to the OGC, “The volume of fluid leaked [from Pond A] at this point has not been determined.”
For his part, Mr. Glover stated by email:
[quote]At this time we don’t know the extent of the groundwater impact; however, initial results indicate the impact is quite localized (immediate vicinity of our pond) and that the groundwater chloride concentrations do not pose a significant risk to freshwater species. We continue to check our groundwater monitoring wells on an ongoing basis and we have drilled additional wells to enhance our understanding of the groundwater conditions.[/quote]
Of particular concern is the indication on a provincial mapping service, iMap BC, that a stream runs near the four waste pits (shown on the graphic below) – which are perched at the top of a hill. Pond A rests at the eastern edge nearest the downhill slope. The company maintains the penetration of fluids into the soil has been limited to .75 metres in depth and Mr. Glover says there is no visible stream in that location. That said, government data suggests otherwise and the location of the pond at the top of a hill is cause for concern.
Government claims zero water contamination from fracking
BC Minister for Natural Gas Rich Coleman penned an op-ed in The Georgia Straightone week after the story of Talisman’s leak was broken by The Globe and Mail, boldlydeclaring:
[quote]The net result of both our strong regulatory framework and our geology is that B.C.’s water supply is protected and safe. It has never been contaminated as a result of hydraulic fracturing.[/quote]
OGC spokesperson Hardy Friedrich echoed these comments to the media as late as last week, on November 13, stating “Water has never been contaminated as a result of hydraulic fracturing in B.C.”
And yet, both the OGC and Talisman acknowledge there has been groundwater contamination here from the leaking Pond A. The regulator was also quick to defend the industry’s record in its media lines surrounding the leak, stating, “There have been no similar incidents in 2013. There is only one similar instance in the past five years. It occurred in 2011. In that incident the leak was immediately detected, the storage pond drained and the area remediated.”
It is nevertheless incorrect to state that water has never been contaminated from fracking in BC. Moreover, as this incident demonstrates, the regulatory system in place isn’t designed to detect contamination, so we have no real sense of how many other incidents have gone undetected or unreported. As of 2012, the OGC had all of ONE hydrologist on staff.
Talisman’s shale for sale
A Talisman frack pad near Pond A – March 28 (Two Island Films)
This incident also comes amidst the planned sale of most of Talisman’s Montney shale gas assets to Progress Energy – a subsidiary of Malaysian energy giant and would-be BC LNG player Petronas – for $1.5 Billion. The deal involving Talisman’s Farrell Creek and Cypress operations was announced on November 8 and is expected to conclude sometime in the new year.
It would appear the Pond A incident is alreading weighing on prospective owner Progress/Petronas’ mind. Following initial conversations last week about the leaking pond, Talisman spokesperson Berta Gomez told us via email, “Since the Progress/Talisman deal was announced, we need to get approval from them for any media response we provide on any issue that involves them. Can I ask you please to hold the publication of the interview you did to me until I get responses approved by Progress?”
Chief Wilson is worried about the pending handover from Talisman to Progress/Petronas and how that will impact the remediation of Pond A and relations with his community around economic and environmental issues:
[quote]This poses a concern for us because we don’t have any kind of a working relationship with Progress. We don’t know if they’re going to honour our Memorandum of Understanding with Talisman, or the employment opportunities we’ve been working on with them for our members. What’s going to happen now?[/quote]
Mr. Glover says Talisman is aiming to have clean-up completed by year-end, but that doesn’t include any final decision about what to do with the pond beyond that.
Clearly, the Talisman leak has revealed holes in more than just the company’s storage pit liners. These gaps in BC’s regulatory framework need to be addressed with the new Water Sustainability Act. The incident also poses somes tough questions for a government that wants to dramatically ramp up fracking to feed proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants on BC’s coast, yet doesn’t seem prepared to acknowledge the risks the controversial practice poses on the ground.
[quote]The current global trend of coal use is consistent with an emissions pathway above the IEA’s [International Energy Agency] 6°C scenario. That risks an outcome that can only be described as catastrophic, beyond anything that mankind has experienced during its entire existence on earth.[/quote]
There will likely be little talk at the coal summit of just how ridiculous the idea of commercially deployed CCS is becoming.
Carbon capture and storage technology has been a “future” solution for many years now, with governments abandoning experimental projects due to cost overruns and lack of progress. Governments like the United States, at the behest of the coal lobby, have pumped billions into CCS technology experiments, yet it continues to fail as a commercially viable option.
A recent study by the Global CCS Institute found that the number of large scale CCS projects has dropped to 65 from 75 over the last year. If this was the grand solution to the urgent issue of climate change, you would think we would be seeing more projects coming on line, not fewer.
Even if we saw a breakthrough in CCS, huge issues remain. The first hurdle is finance.
As renewable energy technology prices continue to drop and reach parity with fossil fuels like coal (something we are already seeing), CCS begins to make less and less sense from a financial point of view. Coal prices will inevitably go up to cover the costs of CCS development making it uncompetitive with renewable energy.
A second big hurdle is regulation of carbon storage. CCS can only work as a solution to climate change if the captured carbon stays safely in the ground forever. So who is in charge of ensuring that all that carbon stays underground? Coal companies? If a coal company takes on that responsibility, what happens when that company goes under? Who then is responsible? Taxpayers?
What if there’s an earthquake near a carbon storage facility? A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science concludes that even a small earthquake event in the US has the potential to release stored carbon back into the atmosphere, making “large-scale CCS a risky, and likely unsuccessful, strategy for significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”
In the United States, the coal industry argues that the government (read: taxpayers) should take on the responsibility and the liability for stored carbon – a convenient stance for the coal industry.
Finally there are the logistics of capturing carbon and moving it either by pipeline, train or truck to a designated storage facility.
[quote]Vaclav Smil, an energy expert at the University of Manitoba, Canada, argued recently in Nature that ‘carbon sequestration is irresponsibly portrayed as an imminently useful option for solving the challenge [of global warming].’ Smil pointed out that to sequester just 25% of the CO2 emitted by stationary sources (mostly coal plants), we would have to create a system whose annual volume of fluid would be slightly more than twice that of the world’s crude-oil industry.[/quote]
Smil’s own words, to sequester just a fifth of current CO2 emissions:
[quote]… we would have to create an entirely new worldwide absorption-gathering-compression-transportation- storage industry whose annual throughput would have to be about 70 percent larger than the annual volume now handled by the global crude oil industry whose immense infrastructure of wells, pipelines, compressor stations and storages took generations to build.[/quote]
Any practical thinker should by now be asking themselves: Wouldn’t it just be easier to put up a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines?
Unfortunately, the mythical distraction of ‘clean coal’ and still unrealized CCS commercialization remain a shiny penny for the technocentric crowd.
WARSAW, Poland – Japan’s decision to drastically scale back its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions could hurt efforts to craft a global deal to fight climate change, delegates at U.N. talks said Friday.
The new target approved by the Japanese Cabinet calls for reducing emissions by 3.8 per cent from their 2005 level by 2020.
The revision was necessary because the earlier goal of a 25 per cent reduction from the 1990 level was unrealistic, the chief government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters in Tokyo.
The new target represents a 3 per cent increase over 1990 emissions.
Given Japan’s status as the world’s third largest economy and fifth largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, the decision to back away from the more ambitious target could be a significant setback for efforts to reach a new global climate agreement in 2015.
The European Union’s delegates at the climate talks in Warsaw “expressed disappointment,” while U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres summed up the mood by saying there’s “regret” over Japan’s decision.
However, she praised Japan’s advances in increasing energy efficiency and in solar energy investments, and predicted that the Japanese “will soon see that the current target is actually conservative.”
“I don’t have any words to describe my dismay,” China’s official Xinhua News Agency cited Su Wei, deputy chief of the Chinese delegation to the climate talks, as telling reporters in Warsaw.
Japanese delegate Hiroshi Minami acknowledged that “most of the developing countries are very disappointed” with the move.
Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, Japan pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 6 per cent to 1.186 billion tons a year on average over the five years to March 2013.
The resulting shift back toward reliance on coal, oil and gas for power, and use of diesel generators, has hindered further progress.
Emissions in the fiscal year that ended in March were up 2.8 per cent from the year before, and at 1.207 billion tons, the second highest after a record 1.218 billion tons in fiscal 2007.
Climate activists following the talks in Warsaw named Japan “fossil of the day,” a dubious honour meant to tag a country blocking progress on combating climate change. Dressed up in dark suits to look like Cabinet ministers, the activists ate sushi over colleagues pretending to be victims of the typhoon that has killed thousands of people in the Philippines.
Wael Hmaidan, director of Climate Action Network, called Japan’s move “outrageous,” saying in Warsaw that it will have a “serious and negative impact on the negotiations.”
Oxfam spokeswoman Kelly Dent said Japan’s “dramatic U-turn” is a “slap in the face for poor countries” struggling with climate change.
The new goal announced Friday doesn’t take into account possible emissions reductions if Japan restarts some of its nuclear plants, as the government is hoping to do. So it will be revised before the next climate pact is due to be set two years from now, said Masami Tamura, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Climate Change Division.
Tokyo also is planning to provide $16 billion in aid for emissions reductions in developing countries and to commit $110 billion to research on energy and the environment.
Before the Fukushima disaster, Japan’s carbon emissions were on a par with European industrial nations such as France, Germany and Britain.
They will hit 1.227 billion tons this year, the government-affiliated Institute of Energy Economics Japan estimates, up nearly 16 per cent from 1990.
AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo and AP writer Karl Ritter in Stockholm contributed to this report.
The human tragedy playing out in the Philippines deserves a moment of pause to think about how we can help and to reflect on what it must be like to be in the shoes of a mother or a son who has lost everything.
Experts are saying Typhoon Haiyan is the strongest ever recorded. Anyone who thinks that this typhoon is not due to the atmospheric disruption and rising sea levels resulting from our changing climate has their head firmly planted in the comfortable soil of ignorance, ideology or both.
Scientists at esteemed organization like NASA and the Royal Society have been warning us for years that warmer oceans will lead to stronger weather events, like typhoons and hurricanes, and rising sea levels will lead to larger and more devastating storm surges.
Something is definitely up with the weather
Typhoon Haiyan is the latest and most poignant, not to mention the most tragic, example of what is in store for humanity as governments like Canada continue to allow fossil fuel producers to pump carbon pollution into our atmosphere unregulated.
So if we know that the intensity and devastating impacts of Typhoon Haiyan are a result of climate change and record levels of industrial greenhouse gas, what is Canada’s level of responsibility for what happened in the Philippines?
The impacts of climate change are a cruel joke in that it is the poorest most vulnerable countries that are being hit the hardest, but it is the developed nations, countries like the US and Canada, who are responsible for the majority of the climate pollution in the atmosphere.
Canada, who is by far one of the largest producers of greenhouse gas, will likely not see any major impacts of climate change for many decades. The Philippines by comparison is a very minor producer of carbon pollution, but that country is feeling the results of Canada’s unwillingness to act on climate change. Industry in Canada gets to drink Tequila all day long, but it is developing nations that are feeling the nasty hangover.
Canadians want climate leadership
To be clear, I am not blaming individual Canadians for what happened in the Philippines. Canadians want leadership on climate change and they are demanding that the government listen.
I am blaming Typhoon Haiyan on the Canadian government and all those actively involved in blocking moves to reduce carbon emissions and cheerleading the accelerated expansion of carbon-intensive resources like the oil sands.
In a functioning democracy the will of the majority ultimately dictates decisions by lawmakers. Unfortunately our democracy isn’t working too well at the moment, with divided parties, split votes, weak-willed leaders and a majority government not elected by the majority of the people.
As individuals we can switch all our lightbulbs to CFC. drive less and make our houses more efficient etc., but all those actions (while very important) are not going to come close to compensating for a federal government that refuses to put in place the measures needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by industry. This is a government that refuses to listen to the people.
A recent opinion poll found that more than 76% of Canadians want our government to sign on to an international agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions,. The Canadian government not only refuses to do sign a deal, it is considered a laggard at climate negotiations by many in civil society. This weekend there are events planned across the country to put pressure on our government leaders to regulate carbon emissions and halt projects like the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines.
These carbon mega-projects ensure that Canada will continue to grow as a source of greenhouse gas. They will also ensure more destruction and dead children on the other side of the planet. Watch CNN’s coverage of Typhoon Haiyan tonight.
Look at the dead children covered in tarps as their mother sits in the rubble that was once their house, and I dare you not to show up this weekend and demand our country lead on climate change.
Valhalla Wilderness Society is reporting that a pair of proposed natural gas pipelines connected to liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals planned for Prince Rupert will no longer pass through two important grizzly bear sanctuaries. The changes come following public pressure from Valhalla and other conservation groups.
The two pipelines – one to be built by Spectra, the other by TransCanada Corp on behalf of Malaysian energy giant Petronas – were due to pass through the the Kwinimass and Khutzeymateen conservancies, created in 2006 to protect important bear habitat. Illegal survey work in the area by a TransCanada subcontractor drew repeated warnings from BC Parks this summer and provoked criticism in the media.
According to a Thursday newsletter from Valhalla:
[quote]The withdrawal of the proposed pipeline routes was apparently due to prompt action undertaken by VWS coastal campaigner, Wayne McCrory along with the protests of many others. Although we do not have 100% confirmation from the companies, themselves, our information comes from very reliable sources in government, and from our legal representative.[/quote]
The Petronas-owned Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project would be the largest pipeline in Canadian history at 4 feet in diameter, carrying 2-3.6 billion cubic feet per day of gas to a large LNG terminal north of Prince Rupert. The project would require the logging of pristine rainforest for a right-of-way of up to 200 metres wide – plus access roads and compressor stations.
McCrory referred to the plan in the media in September as “a shocking and unconscionable betrayal of the bears, the Park Act, and the Great Bear Rainforest decision of 2006.”
TransCanada had also applied for permits to do geotechnical studies that would involve drilling. According to Valhalla, “The park use permit application has now been withdrawn, as well.”
The other pipeline proposed for the area, belonging to Spectra, would be the same diameter and carry even more gas – up to 4.2 billion cubic feet per day. “Spectra has told people that it will not be going through the protected areas,” says Valahalla. “However, the company’s PR person has stated that the Khutzeymateen routing is not yet fully off the table.”
These two mammoth pipelines represent only a portion of those currently proposed to criss-cross the wilderness of northern BC, as this new map illustrates. There are five serious gas pipeline proposals, six more that have been floated, plus the Enbridge Northern Gateway twin bitumen and condensate lines – all part of the “gold rush mentality surrounding the BC government’s LNG promotion efforts in Asia,” says Valhalla.
First Nations and supporters protest fracking in Vancouver last month (Damien Gillis)
Canada’s largest private sector union, Unifor, has joined the growing chorus of concern over controversial shale gas development. The labour organization representing over 300,000 members in a wide range of economic sectors, including energy, is calling for a national fracking moratorium.
Unifor issued a statement from its 25-member National Executive Board Thursday raising concerns about the impacts of shale gas development on the environment and on First Nations’ rights.
“Unconventional gas fracking has the potential to have catastrophic effects on our environment and economy. The safety risks are also a major concern for our union,” said Unifor National President Jerry Dias.
[quote]Just because we can carry out this activity does not mean we should. We must enact a national moratorium on fracking activity.[/quote]
That last point was a key factor in Unifor’s decision to come out against fracking – as the union noted in its statement:
[quote]Any resource extraction industry in Canada must confront the problem of unresolved aboriginal land claims, and the inadequate economic benefits (including employment opportunities) which have been offered to First Nations communities from resource developments. [/quote]
Despite the potential job benefits to its, members, Unifor remains highly critical of the shale gas industry, concluding:
[quote]Instead of being guided by short-term swings in prices and profits for private energy producers, Canada’s federal and provincial governments must develop and implement (in cooperation with other stakeholders) a national plan for a stable, sustainable energy industry that respects our social and environmental commitments, and generates lasting wealth for all who live here.[/quote]
Council of Canadians calls for national fracking moratorium
Unifor’s call for a national moratorium echoes recent statements by public interest group The Council of Canadians.
Canada’s big energy workers’ unions are increasingly taking a critical look at the job promises from fossil fuel development. Watch this speech by president of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, Dave Coles, at last year’s Defend Our Coast rally in Victoria, explaining why his members are “diametrically opposed” to Tar Sands pipelines to BC’s coast:
Controversial natural gas fracking operations in BC (Damien Gillis)
CALGARY – With the Northwest Territories preparing to take control of its resource development next spring, its industry minister has been busy looking at the best way to regulate its nascent shale oil industry.
A devolution agreement kicks in on April 1, at which point oversight of most oil, natural gas and mining activities will move from the federal to the territorial government.
That means David Ramsay — who manages the industry, tourism, investment, public utilities and justice cabinet portfolios — has a busy five months ahead of him.
The minister is in Calgary this week to speak to energy companies active in the north about what changes may be in store and get their feedback. He’s also been meeting with regulatory and Alberta government officials.
“We really just to let them know that it’s going to be as seamless a transition as possible,” he told reporters Wednesday.
Ramsay is looking at which regulatory model would best serve the territory, and a decision is expected to be made soon. Says Ramsay:
[quote]We need to be ready. We can’t afford not to be.
[/quote]
Ramsay said he likes how the Alberta Energy Regulator works. The recently created AER combines the functions of its predecessor, the Energy Resources Conservation Board, with those of other government departments, leading to less duplication.
He said the Northwest Territories has a “tremendous” opportunity in the Central Mackenzie Valley, where companies such as Husky Energy Inc. (TSX:HSE), ConocoPhillips and others are in the early stages of exploring for oil in the Canol shale.
Getting oil out of the Canol requires hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — a method that entails breaking the rock with a high-pressure mixture of water, chemicals and sand.
While fracking has been controversial and many jurisdictions have declared moratoriums on the practice, Ramsay said he’s convinced that extraction method is safe.
One of the biggest challenges ahead will be staffing the new regulator to ensure it has the right expertise to oversee the type of energy development that’s new to the territory.
The devolution agreement does not cover the offshore and the National Energy Board will continue to oversee drilling in the Beaufort Sea.
However, Ramsay said the Northwest Territories government is in talks with Ottawa about sharing some of that responsibility — perhaps under a model similar to offshore petroleum boards in Newfoundland and Labrador and in Nova Scotia.
Most of the Northwest Territory’s royalty take will be used for much-needed infrastructure projects such as roads. But a yet-to-be determined portion will be set aside in a savings fund, he said.
A new map (scroll down to view) reveals the full scope of oil and gas pipelines proposed to criss-cross BC. Compiled by Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition and Skeena Wild, the graphic depicts the planned routes for a staggering six new pipelines – five designed to carry natural gas to proposed liquefaction (LNG) plants in Kitimat and Prince Rupert, plus the twin bitumen and condensate Northern Gateway pipeline proposed by Enbridge.
Plans for an additional six gas pipelines have yet to be formalized.
These pipelines have sparked a variety of concerns for local residents and conservationists – including impacts on an important grizzly sanctuary from the proposed line to supply Malaysian energy giant Petronas’ LNG terminal near Prince Rupert. The Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project, which TransCanada Corp has been hired to build, is slated to run through the Khutzeymateen Inlet Conservancy. Preliminary work has already drawn multiple warnings from BC Parks over unpermitted helicopters and work crews in the area.
In other communities like Hazelton and the Kispiox Valley, residents are concerned about a flurry of invasive industrial activity by Spectra – looking to build its own pipeline to Prince Rupert – and TransCanada, long before permits have been obtained. “They are all over the place here,” resident and founder of the citizen information website NoMorePipelines.ca, Graeme Pole told the Globe and Mail in September.
[quote]There are literally armadas of trucks going up these roads with ATVs in the back. And they are flying helicopters overhead, going to places we can’t reach.[/quote]
The Northwest Institue’s Pat Moss echoed these concerns, exclaiming, “At this point, it’s a free for all…it’s a gold rush mentality.”
The companies have defended their practices, but it’s easy to see how concerns on the ground are mounting. Given the scope and potential impact of all these different pipelines across BC’s northern wilderness and related LNG plants, a key criticism of the review process has been the lack of any consideration of the cumulative impacts or big-picture planning and public engagement. More details on the individual pipelines and LNG plants below.
As people in the Philippines struggle with the devastation and death from the worst storm to hit land in recorded history – Typhoon Haiyan – world leaders are meeting in Warsaw, Poland, to discuss the climate crisis. “What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness,” Yeb Sano, lead negotiator for the Philippines, told the opening session of the UN climate summit, which runs until November 22. “We can stop this madness. Right here in Warsaw.”
[quote]The only hindrance to developing a fair, ambitious and legally binding climate plan for the world is lack of political will.[/quote]
Lack of political will is main challenge to tackling climate change
But as scientific evidence continues to build, and impacts – from extreme weather to melting Arctic ice – continue to worsen, with costs mounting daily, the impetus to resolve the problem is growing. We’re exhausting Earth’s finite resources and pushing global ecosystems to tipping points, beyond which addressing pollution and climate issues will become increasingly difficult and costly. The only hindrance to developing a fair, ambitious and legally binding climate plan for the world is lack of political will.
Part of the problem is that much of the world is tied to the fossil fuel economy, and the rush is on to get as much oil, coal and gas out of the ground and to market while people are still willing to pay for it and burn it up. We’re wasting precious resources in the name of quick profits, instead of putting them to better use than propelling often solo occupants in large metal vehicles, and instead of making them last while we shift to cleaner energy sources.
Solutions to climate change are real and available
For example, a recent report by energy consulting firm ECOFYS, “Feasibility of GHG emissions phase-out by mid-century”, shows it’s technically and economically feasible to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to zero from 90 per cent of current sources with readily available technology. It shows we could phase out almost all net emissions by 2050 by innovating further. In doing so, we could likely meet the agreed-upon goal of limiting global average temperature increases to below 2 C, and we’d stand a 50 per cent chance of staying below 1.5 C by the end of the century. All of this would have the added benefit of reducing “water, air and soil pollution associated with traditional energy generation.”
The report echoes the David Suzuki Foundation’s findings regarding Canada’s potential to meet its current and forecasted demand for fuel and electricity with existing supplies of solar, wind, hydroelectric and biomass energy.
Whether or not any of this is politically feasible is another question. But the longer we delay the more difficult and expensive it will get.
Poll: climate change a top political priority for Canadians
Polling research also shows Canadians expect our government to be a constructive global citizen on climate action. A recent Leger Marketing survey sponsored by Canada 2020 and the University of Montreal found the majority of Canadians understand that human activity is contributing to climate change and believe the federal government should make addressing the issue a high priority. Of those polled, 76 per cent said Canada should sign an international treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, with most supporting this even if China does not sign.
The poll also found majority support for a carbon tax as one way to combat climate change, especially if the money generated is used to support renewable energy development. Although B.C. has recently stepped back from previous leadership on climate change, its carbon tax is one example among many of local governments doing more than the federal government to address climate change.
Typhoon Haiyan a wake-up call for climate summit
We and our leaders at all political levels – local, national and international – must do everything we can to confront the crisis. As Mr. Sano told delegates in Warsaw, “We cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate. It is now time to take action. We need an emergency climate pathway.”
With contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.
