Dear Alberta Premier Danielle Smith,
Stop with your cruel rage farming lies and conspiracy crap blaming arsonists for the fires, notably after the gov’t you lead, the UCP, cut fire prevention funding and your recent announcement of another massive gift from taxpayers to $billion profit-raping oil and gas companies, this time giving the polluters $20billion for nothing. As with the past gifts, the law-violating polluters will not use the money to clean up.
The map below shows abandoned oil and gas wells in North America in a 2021 study on methane emissions, with Alberta, as usual, the worst polluter. Imagine the map with all oil and gas industry wells, operating, suspended and abandoned. New wells have been found to leak worse than old ones.
Industry and its enablers, including Alberta’s AER, underestimate methane leakage, I expect intentionally to let corporations, largely foreign-owned, keep freely polluting and rape out higher profits while causing massive harm to Albertans and the world.
A high percentage of wells and facilities – new and old – leak methane. Companies and regulators have known this for decades. Instead of regulators refusing new wells until all leakers are fixed, regulators enable ever more wells to be drilled and frac’d and refrac’d causing more and more leakage.
Methane is a flammable gas.
Premier Smith, rather than rage farming by publicly blaming imaginary arsonists and the federal gov’t for starting the fires (which puts innocent citizens and politicians at risk, notably those speaking out about the oil and gas industry’s harms to the world), it is more likely that Alberta’s widespread leaking oil and gas industry wells/facilities and millions of “brute force and ignorant” fracs start and fuel fires.
The purpose of frac’ing is to intentionally force gas and oil to let go from “tight” underground formations, which do not naturally release them. Much of the gases released by frac’ing (for both oil and gas) is not captured by wells and leaks to the surface.
For many decades, industry’s deadly leaks are irresponsibly unmitigated and our laws not enforced because AER and Alberta gov’ts are too corrupt and cowardly to order industry to fix them, and worse, continue to enable more and more wells with more and more frequent and ever larger high risk frac’s leading to ever worsening leakage.
You want to bring the fires under control? Bring the oil, gas and frac industry under control.
Want the best solution? Criminalize frac’ing.
Scott Duncan@ScottDuncanWX:
Extreme and prolonged hot and dry conditions in Canada are setting records and making it effortless for wildfires to rage.
Canada was at the epicenter of the most significant heat anomaly on the planet in May.
Amanda Hu@amandalhu:
The people starting the fires are
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The oil and gas industry executives that have known it was causing anthropogenic climate change for 50 years
South Okanagan-West Kootenay MP calls for national firefighting service, Call for national firefighters by Casey Richardson, Jun 7, 2023, Kastanet Kamloops.net
South Okanagan-West Kootenay MP Richard Cannings is calling on the federal government to change how it responds to wildfires.
Cannings successfully asked for an emergency debate on the wildfires in the House of Commons late Monday, saying there needed to be a re-evaluation of the federal role in wildfire protection and response to develop a more proactive process, instead of the present reactive one.
“We must do as much of this as possible as quickly as possible in the next few weeks before summer truly arrives,” he said.”
“Today, for the first time in my eight years as an MP, I woke to smoky skies in Ottawa, a sight I know only too well from my home in British Columbia, but it was a first for me here, and it is only the first week of June. We have a long and hot fire season ahead of us.”It’s propaganda to call it fire season. There’s no such thing. Earth has, or used to have, four seasons: spring, summer, fall and winter. It’s human greed, selfishness and pollution-induced climate change/global warming causing extreme conditions leading to extreme fires. Propagandizers tooting to escalate fossil fuel pollution and harms are pushing “fire season” to make citizens globally accept abnormal fires as normal, as lovely and normal as spring.
Cannings said with more than 400 fires burning currently across the country from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia and more than 3.6 million hectares of forest have been torched, it’s clear that there needs to be a re-evaluation of the federal role in wildfire protection and response.
“This has been a wildfire season like no other. The area burned so far is 10 times the annual average. How many times have we heard that over the last decade? How many summers have been described as the ‘worst ever’ for forest fires?” he added.
“I was listening to Dr. Mike Flannigan, a wildfire expert from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops on the radio a couple of days ago, and he made some important comments that I will be repeating here tonight. One of the most important was his comment that this weather, these fire[s] seasons, are not the new normal. He said that we are in a downward spiral when it comes to climate change and wildfire behaviour and that our fight against climate change is a fight to keep things from getting worse and worse.”
Looking forward, Cannings said the federal government needs to train and maintain crews of firefighters, along with a national stockpile of equipment that could be quickly sent to affected provinces.
He added that they need to consider the idea of creating a national firefighting service.
“This could also include a squadron of water bombers that could be deployed quickly wherever they are needed.”
He said there needs to be better coordination of both resources and manpower and work between fire[s] seasons to reshape the forest surrounding the communities so interface fires will not have the same destructive effects they have today.
“It will take a lot of effort and, quite frankly, a lot of money. The federal government can and should play a big role there,” Cannings added.
“The federal government must step up to provide necessary leadership for the future.”
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Excellent interviews here with Cree/Iroquois/French journalist Brandi Morin and David Wallace-Wells, author and science journalist:
“Airpocalypse”: David Wallace-Wells on Red Skies, Raging Wildfires & Pollution Link to Climate Crisis by Democracy Now, June 8, 2023
Jen Gerson@jengerson:
A lot of Americans seem to be angry at Canada’s inability to get on top of the historic wildfires now pumping smoke south of the border. Very few seem to be angry that their own decades-long neglect of climate change is burning Canada’s forests down.
Emily MacKinnon@emcmack May 29:
Not knowing if we have a house or not is kinda rough.
Refer also to:
Photo above of the 2023 Fox Creek Fire by Kyle Brittain