Fracking blind by Courtney Howard, board member, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment; Yellowknife, September 15, 2014, The Globe and Mail
Re Nova Scotia Has A Fracking Attitude Problem (Sept. 11)
Konrad Yakabuski correctly writes that “the recent dramatic rise in high-volume fracking has led to legitimate concerns about groundwater contamination, climate-warming methane gas leaks, even earthquakes.” Inexplicably, he then offers the opinion that, “These are, by all accounts, manageable risks.”
Actually, no. The Council of Canadian Academies’ “Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas Extraction in Canada,” the definitive publication to date on the topic in this country, states: “Information concerning the impacts of leakage of natural gas from poor cement seals on fresh groundwater resources is insufficient”; that “not enough is known about the fate of the chemicals in the flowback water to understand potential impacts to human health, the environment, or to develop appropriate remediation”; that the impact of fracking on greenhouse gas emissions is not agreed upon and that, overall, “the health and social impacts of shale gas development have not been well studied.”
A lack of information is not the same thing as a lack of risk. Proceeding with fracking in the absence of an ability to actually know the risks involved would be equivalent to beginning a blind drive down an unknown road during a blizzard, something no sensible Canadian would do. [Emphasis added]
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