Clean Energy

Reliance on fossil fuels is dangerously short-sighted

Date: December 16, 2020
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change

Commentary by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal, Dec. 16, 2020

“Distant hypothetical targets are being set, and big speeches are being given. Yet, when it comes to the immediate action we need, we are still in a state of complete denial.”

These are the recent words of young climate activist, Greta Thunberg, concerning progress toward dealing with the climate emergency. Unfortunately, she could be talking about NB Power’s recent release of its 20-year Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). While claiming to pay attention to the climate crisis, the utility’s plans belie those claims.

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Small nuclear reactors not the solution to the climate crisis

Date: August 31, 2020
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change

Commentary by Sam Arnold, Fredericton Gleaner 31 August 2020

Mr. Kevin Vickers has joined Blaine Higgs in singing their praise of unproven small modular nuclear reactors even though they are at least fifteen years away from going into service. More likely, they never will go into service.

For the sake of present and future generations, already proven means to curb the climate crisis must be launched quickly. Fifteen years is much too long to wait for so-called small modular reactors to come online. They will cost untold millions of dollars to produce and will create additional costs from the radioactive waste that future generations will inherit from us.

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Alberta must diversify, not return to the past

Date: April 14, 2020
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change

Commentary by Sam Arnold, Times & Transcript, 14 April 2020

In the April 6th Daily Gleaner (A6) Mr. Srebrnik asked why Alberta seems to stagger from one disaster to another. He included COVID-19 to the list of thieves who are out to destroy the oil and gas industry and the province.

Mr. Srebrnik’s arguments fail to evoke the sympathy he is seeking for Alberta’s current economic plight for a number of reasons. Among them, Canada’s transfer payment system has been very successful in distributing Canada’s wealth to all provinces, as intended. As well, it must be noted, Alberta did not continue to build up its rainy-day fund that former Premier Lougheed started, and that subsequent premiers have dipped into when they shouldn’t have. How was it that Alberta’s Heritage Savings Trust Fund amassed $17-Billion in assets by 2014, but now has replaced it with a $15-Billion deficit? Is not the provincial government responsible for the decisions that it makes?

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Beware NB’s next big energy gamble

Date: November 20, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy

By Sam Arnold, Telegraph Journal, Monday, November 18, 2019

We recently learned that the $13 million investment by NB Power and the Regional Development Corporation in Joi Scientific for the production of hydrogen from seawater may be a gamble that is unlikely to pay off.

New Brunswick residents should also be aware that the NB government and NB Power have committed to take taxpayers and ratepayers on another multi-million dollar energy gamble attempting to revive nuclear power. This has all the markings of another fiasco. As well, the Government of Canada has designated billions of dollars for a similar attempt to save the nuclear industry. We are wondering – as you may be – why this did not go public prior to, or during, the federal election.

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“Courts ‘Recognizing the Obvious on Climate”

Date: March 11, 2019
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking News

By Jim Emberger. Telegraph Journal, Daily Gleaner, Times Transcript – March 11, 2019

The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance was an intervener in the recent Saskatchewan Court of Appeals reference case on the federal carbon pricing “backstop.” Those opposing carbon pricing portrayed the case as strictly a constitutional matter of jurisdiction, and chose not to discuss the issue of climate change. However, one of the first questions the Chief Justice asked Saskatchewan’s lawyer was: “If (climate change) literally imperils the future of the planet, should it be taken into account?” 

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End ‘profligate use of fossil fuels’

Date: December 7, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking & Health, Fracking News
Commentary by Jim Emberger,Telegraph Journal, 7 December 2018

The New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance initially gave Premier Blaine Higgs’s throne speech a decent review. We’re now having second thoughts. In the speech, the new government made a strong statement against “inter-generational theft,” which it defined as stealing the future from our children by creating debt today that they would have to pay back.

That being a moral principle, we assumed it would be applied universally. The most poignant example of “inter-generational theft” is the failure to address climate change and environmental degradation by continuing our profligate use of fossil fuels.

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Focus on Clean Energy

Date: December 5, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy

By Liane Thibodeau, LTE, Telegraph Journal, 5 December 2018

Speaking as a retired New Brunswick business owner, one of my concerns about our government’s renewed interest in shale gas development is the cost of lost opportunities in the clean energy sector that will result.

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NBASGA Reaction to the Higgs’ Government Throne Speech

Date: November 22, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change, Fracking & Health

(Press Statement 21 November 2018)
(le français suit)

FREDERICTON — After reviewing Premier Higgs’ throne speech, Jim Emberger, Spokesperson for the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA), stated that the organization is “cautiously optimistic about the willingness and ability of the minority government to act sensibly in its approach to our mandates of preventing unconventional oil and gas in the province and slowing climate change by developing a green economy.”

The speech made a strong statement against ‘inter-generational theft’, or stealing the future from our children.

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New Brunswick position unclear as clock ticks down on carbon plan

Date: October 24, 2018
Author: NBASGA
Categories: Clean Energy, climate change

CHRIS MORRIS   Telegraph Journal,  Daily Gleaner,  Oct.20, 2018.

The clock is ticking towards the Jan. 1, 2019, deadline for Ottawa to impose carbon taxes on provinces without their own plans, and it remains unclear what will happen in New Brunswick.

It’s an important issue and probably played a bigger role in the outcome of the Sept. 24 election than most realize. The Liberals studiously avoid calling the price on pollution a tax, but that is how many view the extra costs it is expected to add to already-stretched household budgets.

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