In Wednesday’s article “Meet the frackers,” you quote Aaron Miller of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, who claims he is “not sure why the fracking industry has drawn such ire from environmentalists and other critics.”
Nonsense! He knows precisely why.
Fracking has been responsible for earthquakes, land fragmentation, property devaluation, land subsidence and extensive groundwater contamination with methane and other hydrocarbons in rural Alberta, Wyoming, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas and Arkansas. After land and water are contaminated, oil and gas companies pay the victims to be silent.
According to Canada’s auditor general, more than 800 chemicals have been used to frack open more than 200,000 oil and gas wells in recent decades. At least 33 of the substances are known carcinogens.
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has millions to spend on slick media campaigns to whitewash fracking and convince Canadians that anyone opposing fracking is “political” or “ideological.” And of course tub-thumping for the oil and gas industry is neither political nor ideological, just doing what’s good for business.
If Miller is concerned about politics and ideology he should put his attention on the Harper government’s muzzling of scientists, closure of libraries and destruction of scientific data.
Consider that the founding president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum producers, Gerry Protti, was appointed board chairman of the public Alberta Energy Regulator.
A former Encana executive with strong ties to the Harper government, this fox was literally handed the keys to the henhouse, making a mockery of any claim by the Alberta government to balance environmental regulation and sustainability. Under Alberta’s new Responsible Energy Act, the province’s energy regulator no longer has a mandate to protect “the public interest.”
Miller’s smug and smarmy remarks are media manipulation of the worst kind. Protecting the environment from Steven Harper and the oil and gas industry for our children and us is common sense.
Scott Henderson
Whitehorse