No fracking here. We don’t even want to think about it. Except to make it illegal.
It’s curious public policy. Let’s not try. Let’s not learn. And, investors, take your money elsewhere. Later, at higher cost, we’ll import what you produce.
Why are we doing this?
According to the anti-frackers, the consequences of fracking are apocalyptic.
In the event of significant human or technological failure, compounded by failures in backup systems, some groundwater could be affected.
That could happen.
Meanwhile, cancer patients and transplant patients in the Centennial Building of Victoria General Hospital in Halifax can’t drink the water. Nor can they bathe. And we can’t afford to fix the problem.
But no fracking for us. It might affect the groundwater, somewhere.
Our activists, in the absence of any evidence from Western Canada, home to healthier people and widespread fracking, say fracking would harm Nova Scotians’ already poor health. Meanwhile, epidemiologists say good health correlates strongly with good employment.
Unemployment is about four per cent in Saskatchewan’s fracking territory. In Nova Scotia, it’s more than double that — 44,000 Nova Scotians are seeking work. (While 44,000 look for work here, Saskatchewan has safely fracked 44,000 wells over 40 years, according to Premier Brad Wall.)
But no fracking for us. It might make us more unhealthy.
In the event we fracked and developed natural gas, hundreds of additional trucks — heavy trucks — would operate on our roads, large and small. Our roads and bridges would crumble.
Meanwhile, many of our roads and bridges crumble.
Inspection reports obtained by The Canadian Press revealed that 391 bridges in Nova Scotia have serious damage, including, in some cases, missing concrete. And major sections of our 100-series highways remain dangerously untwinned. (Fourteen people have died since 2009 on one 37-kilometre stretch of Highway 104.)
In Kings County, (where, notably, legislators imposed a moratorium on wind turbines) somebody has planted sunflowers in potholes. Truckers say poor roads are damaging their rigs. A protesting parent had a sign that read: “Our children deserve safe roads.”
But no fracking here.
In North Dakota, where shale gas and oil are being rapidly developed, many schools are overcrowded; temporary classrooms are required.
That’s not a problem for us. We have hundreds of thousands of square feet of empty, but heated, classroom space. But no fracking.
And let’s not forget the methane scare. In the event we developed onshore natural gas, methane might leak from the wells into the atmosphere. That’s a fact.
It’s also true that if tomorrow Nova Scotia shut down entirely — no heating, no cars, no trucks, no businesses, no factories, no boats, no people — the world’s most sophisticated equipment could not detect change in the global atmosphere. Methane leaking from shale gas wells in Nova Scotia would be like a wine bottle cork bobbing in the Atlantic: irrelevant.
But no fracking for us.
If we developed shale gas, housing prices might soar. Home ownership might become more difficult. One lesson from North Dakota is that pensioners here might have difficulty paying higher taxes on their more valuable homes.
Meanwhile, in Sydney, an estimated 700 homes had been abandoned; 500 have since been demolished by the city.
But no fracking.
The government’s decision to impose a moratorium on fracking — a moratorium on learning and investment — is a massive, expensive blunder.
Hospitals need major investments, schools are emptying, young people are leaving, homes are being abandoned, roads and bridges are crumbling and our debt exceeds $15 billion.
And in Inverness, a tiny community that’s doing better than many, 10 families with school-aged children have recently, quietly, departed for better opportunities elsewhere.
But we’ve been saved. And Andrew Younger and Maude Barlow are resting more comfortably.
Ian Thompson is Associate Publisher of The Chronicle Herald.