Going Green!
From the editor…
By Stephanie Kelley
The Autumn Equinox arrived over this past weekend, Fall is officially here! This is my favourite time of year….cool nights, glorious colours and, hopefully, lots of clear and sunny days.
It’s been an interesting week around here. I attended several different events, some of which are covered in this issue.
The Shale Gas Presentation that was held on September 18 at the Perth Legion was eye opening. I was already convinced that hydro-fracking is destroying lives and communities wherever it is practiced, and it turns out it’s even worse than I thought, and much worse than the mainstream media would lead us to believe.
We’ve got many issues facing us in New Brunswick today, and we surely need to improve the economy. But hydro-fracking is not going to rebuild our province.
The promised jobs are not going to be there, as the gas companies already have trained field workers that will come from out of province to work on the gas fields and rigs.
Locals will get some menial jobs, and like with any boom town economies, local communities will get a cash injection from the highly paid rig workers who will need food, lodging and entertainment.
But you can just look west to see what happens in any oil boom town…crime rates rise, young men with lots of money want to party, so drinking and drug use escalates, and prostitution comes to town.
No one knows yet just how much natural gas is buried in our Marcellus shale deposits. The gas companies won’t know until they begin drilling, as the only way to find out is to drill!
Once the deposits are extracted, which typically only takes a few years, the gas companies move out of town.
I imagine it as being like the party from hell…you know, where it’s one big drunken revel all night long but when you wake up in the morning you find that your home has been utterly destroyed and you are the one left to clean up the puke and broken glasses.
It blows my mind that our government has such a one track mind that they cannot see how shale gas extraction, and the pipeline project, will enrich a few at the top, but cost the province plenty. Or….what is more likely they do see, but choose to go for the gold, instead of the good….
The fossil fuel industry tends to get its way because these corporations are extremely wealthy, and know how to grease the system.
There are plenty of ways to create jobs and prosperity at a local level, but there’s no one with a big fat wad of cash promoting these ideas!
Even though so many people work at jobs they loathe and despise, there is certainly a sense of security and comfort in working for someone else. You just show up, do your job and get paid.
You might hate it, but hey! You don’t have to take any chances, think about it too much or stick your neck out to explore new ideas and ways of creating businesses.
Change is scary, which is why most of us, myself included, have stayed in jobs or relationships that were just not working out, making us crazy and miserable…and we only move on when we either can’t stand it anymore, or we get dumped or fired!
And then, in many cases we discover that it’s the best thing that ever happened to us. No longer attached, we are free to explore new options, relationships and ideas.
So, the government is promising us lots of jobs if we just jump on this fossil fuel bandwagon. No one will have to think about it…we can just hope for the best, because the government has never lied to us before and always does what’s in our best interests!
But how do we go about creating jobs and improving the economy in healthy and ecologically responsible ways?
Canada, and the USA, are way behind the curve when it comes to developing green energy. Imagine our communities with lots of jobs and industries that promote green energy.
We could have solar panels on homes, bio-mass fuel plants in our communities, septic systems that use natural biological processes to recycle and re-use waste instead of turning it into yet more pollution…the list is endless, and would provide jobs in all sectors.
Green energy production creates 7 times more jobs than the oil and gas industries!
But we won’t get this green future unless we put our collective feet down right now!
