by Jim Emberger, Telegraph Journal and Daily Gleaner, Aug. 7, 2019
The rapidly unfolding climate crisis, as recently reported in Brunswick News publications has climatologists describing the speed and extent of recent record-shattering climate events as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘insane’. Given this frightening new reality, Canadians can be thankful that at least one governing institution understands the seriousness and immediacy of the climate emergency.
by Sam Arnold, Daily Gleaner, 18 July 2019
Climate change is now widely recognized as a planetary emergency that is having both health impacts and economic costs caused by extreme weather events. These events, linked to global warming, now include prolonged droughts, increased forest fires, massive rainfalls, floods, polar ice melting, sea level rise, and severe storms around the world. This is an emergency that if not checked, is on track to severely impact human health and economic life. The effects of this emergency are already being felt in New Brunswick.
These are the comments of the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance on the province’s proposed Output-Based Pricing System (OBPS).
Our organization recently intervened in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal reference case on carbon pricing (as a member of the umbrella group, ‘Climate Justice, et al.’). We intervened on the side of the federal government. We did so, not because we were thrilled with the federal plan, which is far from perfect, but because it had become obvious that provincial governments appeared to not comprehend the immediacy or seriousness of the approaching climate crisis.
Unfortunately, we are sad to say that New Brunswick’s proposed OBPS validates our observations and concerns.
Council of Canadians votes unanimously to call for RCMP Civilian Complaint Report to be released immediately.
Monday, June 24, 2019
On the desk of Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale is an interim report that Council of Canadians members, Mi’kmaq water protectors, and other anti-fracking activists from New Brunswick, have been waiting 6 years to see. It addresses community complaints about policing issues experienced on the front lines of the 2013 shale gas protest in Kent County, New Brunswick, which was also called “Elsipogtog” and “Rexton” in media accounts.
Within a week of Premier Blaine Higgs’ “Big Reveal” to the press that they have put necessary exemptions in place to lift the moratorium on fracking in Penobsquis, First Nations Chiefs, feeling blindsided by the move, are clear that any change in the status of the moratorium does not have their consent. As well, the New Brunswick Lung Association and the New Brunswick Federation of Labour have issued clear statements of their support for maintaining the moratorium.
We thank them all for their leadership and support. Read their reasons below:
Commentary by Jim Emberger
[A slightly edited version of this appeared in “The Telegraph-Journal” and ”The Daily Gleaner” on May 17, 2019, under the the title ‘Public not well-informed on climate change’.]
I recently met a crew from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who were installing a new structure to count salmon smolt on the Tay River. In recent years the count has been disappointingly small, so new and better information is needed.
It’s always heartening to see dedicated people working to save our environment, but this morning I was left feeling that their task was like trying to hold back the tide. I had just read the United Nations report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. It concluded that human activities have pushed one million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Fredericton, NB (May 3, 2019) – As interveners supporting the federal government in the reference case on the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA) welcomes today’s decision by the Justices that carbon pollution pricing is constitutional.
written by Rod Hill, Telegraph-Journal Wed Mar 27 2019
Premier Blaine Higgs’s government is four months old and already there is, in my opinion, good news: the idea of an Energy East pipeline is surely dead. Yet since plans for the pipeline were abandoned by TransCanada in 2017, Energy East has lived a zombie-like existence, failing to die in the minds of many people.
They refuse to recognize the reality that, given long-term projections of oil sands production, such a pipeline was redundant after the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline by President Trump and other pipeline expansions. Yet despite this, Premier Higgs remained steadfast, demanding that Quebec accept Energy East if it wanted to use New Brunswick as a corridor for its hydroelectricity exports to New England.
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?”
ADAM HURAS, Telegraph Journal, 7 February 2019
The Trudeau government’s carbon tax “overreaches and invades” provincial jurisdiction, according to New Brunswick’s legal argument filed in a Saskatchewan court that aims to challenge Ottawa’s looming price on carbon. The province’s attorney general’s office has filed a factum ahead of the prairie province’s carbon tax court challenge set to be heard next week.
New Brunswick sought to intervene in the case as the Higgs government attempts to fight the carbon tax slated to be handed down by Ottawa beginning in April.