Mining Archives - A\J https://www.alternativesjournal.ca Canada's Environmental Voice Mon, 04 Apr 2022 16:34:53 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Book Review: Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/climate-change/book-review-mining-country-a-history-of-canadas-mines-and-miners/ https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/climate-change/book-review-mining-country-a-history-of-canadas-mines-and-miners/#respond Thu, 10 Mar 2022 18:48:22 +0000 https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/?p=9735 When MiningWatch Canada started up in 1999, we all hoped that our work would challenge the industry-dominated discourse about mining and smelting in Canada.  We were determined to see academics, journalists, and popular publishers expose the enormous externalized costs of the metals extracted in this country to workers, indigenous peoples, […]

The post Book Review: Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners appeared first on A\J.

]]> When MiningWatch Canada started up in 1999, we all hoped that our work would challenge the industry-dominated discourse about mining and smelting in Canada. 

We were determined to see academics, journalists, and popular publishers expose the enormous externalized costs of the metals extracted in this country to workers, indigenous peoples, the ecosystem and communities – to see that this is an industry that makes its profits from terrible and often permanent loss.

Mining Country is an exciting fulfilment of this hope. The book is a large-format, popularly-written history full of stunning archival photos and well-researched, clear examples of mining conflicts and impacts. The story it tells shows the costs.

The book opens with a description of the Indigenous mining in Canada which preceded colonialism, followed by the march of colonial extraction across the country, including stories of coal and iron deposits in the Maritimes. We hear vivid descriptions of the Marmora/Hastings County, Fraser-Cariboo, and Klondike gold rushes, their impacts on the First Nations they dispossessed and impoverished, and of the miserable (and often short) lives of the miners. 

Throughout the book, the authors tie the history of Canadian mining to global trends and events: massive industrialization from 1880 onwards, the Second World War, the post-war construction boom, and neo-liberal globalization. It ends with reflections on the new “green infrastructure” demands for more metals.

The astonishing growth of mining towns like Sudbury, Noranda, Trail, and Cobalt are explained, including the huge price paid by the miners who were maimed and often killed in large numbers. The contaminants spewed by the smelters poisoned land for miles around. The communities where the miners lived were badly planned, poorly constructed, and unhealthy, sometimes leading to typhoid epidemics. 

Unions were fought for and eventually won, and some of these struggles are told in detail.

Stories about Yellowknife’s Giant mine, the Westray disaster of 1992, the Asbestos strike of 1949, and the Pine Point mine draw us into seeing the consequences of an unimaginable lack of government oversight coupled with enormous government subsidy. The history of uranium mines in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories is compelling. 

The book ends with a discussion of the long-term, often perpetual, impacts of mining on the environment and on all of us, and a call to decide if “the endless growth of mineral extraction can be maintained into the future.”

As someone who has spent most of my life living in Sudbury and studying the Canadian mining industry, I found I was a bit jealous of the resources that Keeling and Sandlos have at their disposal – many skilled and enthusiastic graduate students, and sizeable research grants. At the same time, these student researchers are barely acknowledged in the book. 

We have no idea who dug up the information that the authors put forward. For example, Mick Lowe wrote a very thorough book on the discovery of Voisey’s Bay which is not even mentioned in the text, although it is in the bibliography. The publisher and the authors appear to have decided to limit the use of references and of a useful index in order to make the book more accessible to the public. For those of us who would like to know where the information came from or to follow up on the stories, this can be frustrating.

This is also a book written by men about men. The endless hours of labour that Indigenous women, miners’ wives, and female community organizers put in to deal with the social, economic, environmental, and health impacts of mining are not even mentioned. The only woman who gets any real attention in the book is the infamous Peggy Witte (now calling herself Margaret Kent), the last owner of the Giant mine. A women’s history of mining in Canada remains to be written, but a good place to start would be Meg Luxton’s excellent study, More Than a Labour of Love, written in 1980. 

The book similarly pays little attention approach to the endless work – both paid and unpaid – done by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to strategize and protect their communities and ecosystems from the mining industry in this country.

In the same vein, I also have to confess to really wincing at the number of times the authors talk about the regreening of 3450 hectares in Sudbury, but fail to mention that the area is considerably smaller than the growing and toxic tailings impoundments that loom over the region and will require care in perpetuity.

Despite these limitations, this is an important and very readable book. It is well-researched and reliable. The photos are stunning. Its excellent labour history will appeal to miners and their communities. The devastating impacts on indigenous people is a story that needed to be told. It does indeed “provide a mining history for all Canadians.”

The post Book Review: Mining Country: A History of Canada’s Mines and Miners appeared first on A\J.

]]> https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/climate-change/book-review-mining-country-a-history-of-canadas-mines-and-miners/feed/ 0 Beyond Crisis https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/book_review/beyond-crisis/ Wed, 13 Feb 2019 03:14:43 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/book_review/beyond-crisis/ THE OVERRIDING QUESTION in Kai Reimer-Watts’ Beyond Crisis is why is our response to climate change “absurdly slow”? Humanity is already experiencing horrific forest fires and flooding – think Fort McMurray and Hurricane Sandy – yet many of us still engage in the flying, driving and beef-eating which bring wide-spread […]

The post Beyond Crisis appeared first on A\J.

]]> THE OVERRIDING QUESTION in Kai Reimer-Watts’ Beyond Crisis is why is our response to climate change “absurdly slow”?

Humanity is already experiencing horrific forest fires and flooding – think Fort McMurray and Hurricane Sandy – yet many of us still engage in the flying, driving and beef-eating which bring wide-spread greenhouse gas emissions. Some of us elect governments that don’t take global warming seriously. Psychologist Margaret Klein Salamon, one of the film’s interviewees, wonders why we continue to live pretty much as usual (even prepare for retirement) despite the rising crisis.

True, there’s now an international climate movement – and it’s made important gains. It includes among its supporters celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore, and revered scientists such as James Hansen. The 2014 People’s Climate March – whose optimism the film celebrates – brought an astounding 400,000 participants to New York.

 

When I said coal threatens climate, journalists’ eyes glazed over. When I said the black rock exacerbates asthma, they immediately understood.

Yet this activism hasn’t proven wholly successful. It hasn’t sparked the massive, worldwide citizen engagement necessary to reduce GHGs dramatically. Why is that?

Beyond Crisis suggests the movement needs to improve its strategies and tactics. For one, it has to tell a better story. It needs a language that has purchase for folks in their daily lives. The film shows activists doing street theatre in New York’s South Bronx. They remind us that fossil fuels harm local children’s respiratory health. Concerns about the latter (more than worries about climate) mobilize this struggling community. I found this framing useful in my own work to close Alberta’s coal plants. When I said coal threatens climate, journalists’ eyes glazed over. When I said the black rock exacerbates asthma, they immediately understood – and often replied that their own kids had the disease.

Dr. Peter Carter, an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tells viewers that the movement needs to have three succinct demands: divestment, polluter pays, and no fossil fuel subsidies.      

Naomi Klein argues the movement needs to speak more about justice. The rise of renewables is essential but many in the oil and gas sector will find the change wrenching; they mustn’t be abandoned. Over time the transition will be beneficial for the labour market – as Klein points out, there’s far more employment in renewables than in dirty fuels – but in the short-term some people will be out of work.  Activists should make common cause with these folks and insist that government help them find fulfilling, well-paying jobs elsewhere.

Salamon says the movement needs to “go big”. It can’t be composed merely of traditional environmentalists. It has succeeded in bringing together faith groups, labour, First Nations, youth and scientists, but needs to be more encompassing still. Venture capitalist Tom Rand suggests there’s even a role for large corporations – as major wind and solar investors.

I think these strategies are useful but, to grow, I also think the movement needs to attend to its members’ inner life. It’s not just a matter of improving the message box, correctly framing our demands or reaching out to new constituencies.  We need to create a movement people love being part of, a movement their friends are in. We need to offer folks a community – one that’s fun and uplifting and adds meaning to their lives. If people attend rallies and find themselves bored or lonely, they won’t come back.

Amanda Lewis, an editor at a major publishing house, tells viewers that, if we’re to engage citizens on climate, we need to show more creativity and “a certain amount of play”.  Those are good overarching suggestions.

As we build our movement, we need to try many different approaches – everything from arts-based activism to building bridges with big business. We need to be open to making mistakes. And, in the face of crisis, we have to offer our members a measure of lightness and joy. 

You can arrange to host a Beyond Crisis screening at beyondcrisisfilm.com/screenings.

The post Beyond Crisis appeared first on A\J.

]]> Debunking Dams https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/climate-change/debunking-dams/ https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/climate-change/debunking-dams/#respond Wed, 15 Jun 2016 00:43:38 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/climate-change/debunking-dams/ TFor decades dams have been celebrated by some as an inherently clean form of energy. In British Columbia the Christy Clark government recently dubbed a highly controversial $9-billion mega dam on the Peace River as “the site C Clean Energy Project.” TFor decades dams have been celebrated by some as an […]

The post Debunking Dams appeared first on A\J.

]]> TFor decades dams have been celebrated by some as an inherently clean form of energy. In British Columbia the Christy Clark government recently dubbed a highly controversial $9-billion mega dam on the Peace River as “the site C Clean Energy Project.”

TFor decades dams have been celebrated by some as an inherently clean form of energy. In British Columbia the Christy Clark government recently dubbed a highly controversial $9-billion mega dam on the Peace River as “the site C Clean Energy Project.”

Government propaganda adds that the dam “will provide British Columbia with the most affordable, reliable clean power for over 100 years.” But the science shows that damming water and flooding forest soils does not deserve the adjective clean. In fact, hydroelectric dams serve as a powerful reminder that every form of human-mined energy comes with significant ecological cost.

The destructive impact of some 300 hydro dams in Canada’s boreal forest is well known, but little acknowledged. Dams prevent the movement of fish, change flows in freshwater, release mercury, alter nutrient flows to the ocean, dry up deltas and flood large areas of forest and peat lands.

Also, building dams comes with a significant carbon footprint. It comes from one of two key sources: their energy intensive construction or the flooding and drawdown of water on carbon-rich lands.

Replumbing landscapes to create hydropower requires lots of heavy machinery and tonnes of concrete. The energy intensity of a medium-sized dam can produce the same amount of emissions as 46,000 vehicles a year.Cement, the second most consumed product on Earth, accounts for a whopping five percent of global CO2 emissions. But dams also make climate change worse by turning carbon sinks into methane bombs.

The mechanism is complex and has only recently been detailed. When engineers fill a dam, the flooding releases carbon that was tied up in trees and other plants as they rot. But that’s just the beginning.

The world’s large dams release 104 million metric tonnes of methane annually. 

After vegetation settles on the oxygen-deprived reservoir bottom, it decomposes and pulses dissolved methane into the water column. Once that methane-rich water passes through a turbine, the methane is released into the atmosphere. The methane also spits into the atmosphere at spillways, and downstream of the dam.

According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, the world’s large dams release 104 million metric tonnes of methane annually from reservoir surfaces, turbines and spillways. As a consequence the world’s 50,000 dams may be responsible for 23 percent of all methane emissions from human economies.

The Site C “clean energy project” is a perfect example. It would flood approximately 5340 hectares of prime agricultural land and generate emissions equivalent to 147,000 tonnes of CO2 per year or 36,000 vehicles.

Like BC, the Brazilian government has defended multiple dams constructed in the Amazon basin as sources of “clean energy” too. Yet due to the rotting of plant matter at the bottom of the reservoir, for example the Curuá-Una dam in Pará, Brazil, has produced three-and-a-half times more emissions than an equivalent generating plant running on oil.

Another Amazonian dam, Tucurui emits more climate changing gases than San Paulo, one of the most crowded cities in the world.

The methane problem does not just apply to tropical dams. In the United States, researchers in Washington state recently discovered that methane emissions from one dam site jumped 20-fold when the water was drawn down exposing rotting vegetation to the atmosphere.

In Switzerland even small run-of-the-river hydro projects can emit methane in significant quantities after nearly 100 years of operation. German researchers have also found that small dams only 15 metres deep can collect sediment and create methane hot spots that “can potentially increase global freshwater emissions by up to seven percent.”

So dams are not inherently climate friendly and the term “clean energy” is but another fiction designed to stop us from thinking critically about governments wedded to megaprojects.

The post Debunking Dams appeared first on A\J.

]]> https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/climate-change/debunking-dams/feed/ 0 Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/book_review/extracted-how-the-quest-for-mineral-wealth-is-plundering-the-planet/ Wed, 15 Apr 2015 20:38:12 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/book_review/extracted-how-the-quest-for-mineral-wealth-is-plundering-the-planet/ A few centuries ago humans ignited a fossil fire, liberating stocks of carbon long-buried in the Earth’s crust. Since then this fire has powered civilization, enabling the extraction of all other minerals. But it is now flickering, its fuel almost exhausted, even as the waste it produced threatens the biosphere. […]

The post Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet appeared first on A\J.

]]> A few centuries ago humans ignited a fossil fire, liberating stocks of carbon long-buried in the Earth’s crust. Since then this fire has powered civilization, enabling the extraction of all other minerals. But it is now flickering, its fuel almost exhausted, even as the waste it produced threatens the biosphere.

In Extracted, Ugo Bardi surveys the history and consequences of this conflagration, presenting a global view of the past, present and future of minerals. It is a story of limits. Today’s rising oil production and declining prices are, Bardi argues, only a brief interruption in a long-term trend of increasingly scarce and expensive resources: not just oil but almost every mineral, as our population and economy bump against the limits of a finite world.

This argument, of course, is not really novel – indeed, it was familiar long before the Limits to Growth study of 1972. Like that study, this book is also a report of the Club of Rome – the global think-tank dedicated to challenges facing the future of humanity and the planet. Extracted is intended to update its essential message: that decisions must be informed by an understanding of global trends in resource depletion, pollution, population and technological change.

The book takes a comprehensive view, surveying diverse resources and explaining how, when and why we can expect them to run out. But Bardi also goes to some pains to explain that depletion is more complicated than simply “running out” of something. It affects us long before minerals become truly scarce. This is because the richest, most accessible ores are always the first to be mined. As these get used up, extraction becomes more difficult, requiring more energy and producing greater impacts. (The tar sands epitomize this pattern, but it has been observed for countless minerals as well.)

The real limit on a resource is therefore not geological, but economic: at some point the cost of the energy required for its extraction exceeds its benefit. The result is “peak everything” and rising energy costs will eventually make all resources we dig out of the ground too expensive. It’s not just oil and gas: the notion of a long-term supply of cheap and abundant coal is also a myth.

Rising energy costs will eventually make all resources we dig out of the ground too expensive.

Short essays by several authors profile a variety of resources – soil, uranium, copper, lithium, nickel, zinc and other minerals – sketching their economic roles and the constraints on their production. These brief “glimpses” elaborate on the volume’s overall message of inevitable depletion.

Bardi also examines and disposes of several common beliefs. One is the hope that fossil fuel depletion will “solve” climate change by eliminating the source of the problem. In fact, as oil and gas become harder to access, their production requires more energy, which means more greenhouse gases. He also dismisses hopes invested in other energy sources. Fracking is no panacea as this source of “clean” natural gas requires enormous amounts of energy and other resources. So does nuclear power: Besides its other drawbacks, uranium supplies are subject to the same limits as other minerals. The belief that there is a substitute available for any resource is also discarded – producing any substitute always requires energy and some essential resources, such as phosphorus for agriculture, can never be replaced.

Beyond these messages, the book presents a sweeping view of the history of minerals, including their use as currency and weapons. This discussion is interesting and ambitious, but less successful. Bardi traces seemingly every historical event back to minerals – presenting, in effect, a history of the world as a miner might have written it. The result is often simplistic: access to minerals and energy “explain” phenomena as disparate as Imperial Rome’s domination of the Mediterranean, European victories over the Turkish Empire, the rise of the British Empire, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 2008 recession. The First World War was a battle between “German coal” and “British coal,” which won with help from “American coal.” Similarly, the Second World War was a war for oil and other resources. Such views violate more complex and realistic historical perspectives – and even clash with the author’s more subtle explanation of mineral depletion and other phenomena.

So what is to be done? While prediction and not policy is Bardi’s focus, he presents a few ideas. He notes that alternative sources of materials, such as landfill mining and recycling (which is really “downcycling,” as recycled materials are usually of lower quality) are useful, but limited. Instead, he calls – as have many others – for industrial transformation: more durable products that generate less waste and are designed to enable recovery of materials after use. While depletion may be inevitable, at least it can be shifted further into the future, allowing more time for our transition to scarcity.

It’s sensible advice, even as oil prices continue sliding into the basement. 

Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet, Ugo Bardi, A Report to the Club of Rome, White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2014, 368 pages.

Read more articles from Stephen Bocking.

The post Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the Planet appeared first on A\J.

]]> Inside Ijen’s Volcanic Sulphur Mine https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/inside-ijens-volcanic-sulphur-mine/ Thu, 05 Mar 2015 19:46:12 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/inside-ijens-volcanic-sulphur-mine/ See a gallery of Kevin McElvaney’s photos from his visit below It took me three flights, one train ride, two motorcycle trips and a long trek up the volcano before I saw the mine for the first time. I met Imam, a former sulphur miner, at the train station in […]

The post Inside Ijen’s Volcanic Sulphur Mine appeared first on A\J.

]]> See a gallery of Kevin McElvaney’s photos from his visit below

It took me three flights, one train ride, two motorcycle trips and a long trek up the volcano before I saw the mine for the first time. I met Imam, a former sulphur miner, at the train station in Rogojampi, Indonesia, after 48 hours with little sleep. We jumped on his scooter and were overloaded with my huge backpack and another suitcase, but this didn’t stop us from having a refreshing one-hour ride to his small village.

See a gallery of Kevin McElvaney’s photos from his visit below

It took me three flights, one train ride, two motorcycle trips and a long trek up the volcano before I saw the mine for the first time. I met Imam, a former sulphur miner, at the train station in Rogojampi, Indonesia, after 48 hours with little sleep. We jumped on his scooter and were overloaded with my huge backpack and another suitcase, but this didn’t stop us from having a refreshing one-hour ride to his small village.

I went to bed in a small house between cocoa-plantations, banana trees and rice fields at 10 pm and woke up at 3 am. The mosques and cocks in the surrounding villages were screaming and the sun was already rising. After a spicy breakfast, we started our journey to the volcano.

The 2,600-metre Ijen Volcano in Eastern Java is still active. Locals and tourists come here to see the five-metre-high blue flames at night and watch the sulphur miners working. Almost everyone stops at the plateau on the eastern face of the volcano where a sign warns, “Visitors are prohibited going down on crater – dangerous.” Many can’t stand the smell and turn back after only a few minutes. The view from up here and the gases from down there are breathtaking.


The quietly active volcano emits sulphuric gases through openings in the south-east side of the crater. Local miners capped these fumaroles on the southeast side of Ijen’s crater in 1968, and channeled the gas through ceramic pipes up to 10 metres long. The sulphur condenses inside the pipe network, and drips into barrels as a very hot red liquid. As it cools, it turns first orange, and then into a yellow, rock-hard solid.

Once you head down from the rim, the awful smell hits you and you can hear miners coughing and moaning as they inhale toxic fumes and carry baskets full of heavy sulphur.
 Poisonous gases like hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide burn their lungs and eyes. Some pass out when the oxygen level gets too low. In the past, workers have choked to death in the clouds of toxic fumes.
 My gas mask wasn’t leak-proof, and I continued coughing weeks after my time in the crater. The sight of a miner smoking a cigarette struck me as odd, since we had been surrounded by smoke all day, but he told me the taste (tobacco mixed with cloves) was the only way for him to get rid of the sour taste from the volcanic gases.

Workers come from the nearby villages and cities like Tamansari or Banyuwangi. Some stay in simple dwellings at Camp Sulfutara, so they don’t have to make the hour-long trip to Ijen every day. Most workers start at the trailhead at five or six in the morning. In the end each trip takes about four hours. Rain can make the treks less walkable and bad winds inside the crater can make work impossible.


The miners use simple tools such as stones, steel bars and shovels to harvest the cooled, brittle sulphur, smashing it into manageable sizes for their baskets and bags. It is up to individual miners how much sulphur they want to carry…. They’re paid according to how many kilograms they bring down to the sales point (a two-hour trek). An average 80-kg basket of sulphur – some weigh up to 90 – would be exchanged for $5.84. (One kilogram of sulphur was IDR900, $0.073 in October 2014.
) Most miners make this painful trip twice a day.


Few miners have protective clothing and equipment, so many are seriously injured in this dangerous environment.
 The paths up and down the volcano are slippery and rocky. Miners carry their heavy baskets on bamboo sticks, which can only be balanced on one shoulder, causing musculoskeletal deformities.
 Gas explosions killed 49 workers in 1976 and 25 in 1989. These eruptions also sent acid flying out of the crater, damaging local farms.


The Ijen crater’s acid lake, the largest in the world at 1,000 metres wide and 200 metres deep, has a pH of 0.5 (or lower, depending on rainfall) – the same as battery acid. Though the water has a beautiful blue colour, due to its high amounts of alum and gypsum, it eats through metal and dissolves clothes, and its sulphuric and hydrochloric acid vapours cause serious respiratory problems for the miners.

Indonesia’s rapid economic growth hasn’t made life in the small villages that surround Ijen easier. Inflation since the 1998 Reformation has lowered farmers’ income, but the prices of basic necessities are rising. One miner I spoke to said he worked in the sulphur mine because his income as a farmer, working five days a week, would only be something like 30,000IDR/ day (about $58 a month).
 He can make it to the sulphur mine once a day, carries 60kg of sulphur and usually works four days a week. Minus the cost of gas for his commute to work, a miner who makes it to the sulphur mine twice a day, carries 80kg of sulphur each time and works four days a week would earn $215 each month.



Most sulphur mined at Ijen is used to bleach sugar by a local factory. In other parts of the world, sulphur is used to vulcanise rubber and produce pesticides, paints, plastics, batteries, gun powder, explosives, matches, paper and cosmetics.


There were sulphur mines until the late 19th century in countries such as Italy, New Zealand and Chile, but dangerous eruptions led to their closure. Artificial chemicals can and do replace sulphur in many industrial processes, so it could be just a matter of time until this mine is closed.

Sulphur Mountains Growing in the Alberta Oil Sands

Sulphur blocks at Syncrude base plant.
Sulphur blocks at Syncrude base plant \ by jasonwoodhead23 on Flickr \ CC BY 2.0

While Indonesian miners are (literally) breaking their backs carrying sulphur out of volcanic craters, Syncrude is building the world’s largest pyramid out of its own excess sulphur because the company can’t find anything else to do with it.

Bitumen mined in the Alberta tar sands is so thick that it must be treated before it can be shipped through pipelines and used to produce functioning fossil fuels. One of the byproducts of this treatment process is sulphur, and as a result, Alberta is now home to sulphur mountains larger than the Great Pyramid, which stands at 2,580,000 cubic meters. Syncrude’s stacks were estimated at four million cubic metres in 2013. That’s around eight million tonnes of sulphur and the pile is growing quickly – the total oil sands sulphur output for 2015 is predicted to be 4.1 million tonnes (though how much of that is Syncrude’s is unclear).

The excess sulphur – which releases toxins that damage the brains, hearts and kidneys of humans and animals – could cause problems for surrounding communities, including Fort McMurray and Bruderheim.

Sulphur can be used to make a number of consumer products, including fertilizer, batteries, detergents and matches, but Syncrude has not yet found an economical solution to its oversupply.

The Ijen Volcanic Sulphur Mine in Photos

Click on any image to view as a slideshow.

The channeled sulphur condenses and drips out of the barrels as red and hot liquid. As soon as the red sulphur cools down, it hardens and turns into famous vibrant yellow colour.

Old ceramic pipes are used to lift the heavy harvest. The baskets usually carry between 60-90kg of high-purity sulphur and are connected with a bamboo stick.

A miner lifts his bags full of sulphur on a bamboo stick. At times, the smoke forces miners to close their eyes even while carrying the heavy baskets.

After just a few minutes in the mine, Suwono Licin (38) has yellow eyelashes and red eyes. Hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide gases burn in the eyes and throat. The whole area is covered in sulphur dust.

A worker in front of the main mining area. Sometimes the smoke also drifts over to this area, where they usually try to escape from the poisonous volcano gases.

Even with gas masks it’s almost impossible to breath within the clouds of hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide. The workers have to close their eyes while entering the clouds and can’t see clearly until they reappear with the heavy chunks of sulphur.

A cap replaces a helmet and a scarf a gas mask. Mislani Panggung Licin (28) started mining here a few months ago and is not well-equipped for this hostile environment. Many miners can’t afford protective clothing; others want to spend the money on other things first.

With full baskets, the miners walk up the steep crater walls very slowly and stop several times. In the background the wind keeps clouds covering the whole crater.

The rim of the volcano. From here on, the sulphur has to be carried for another 3.5 kilometers down a sometimes very slippery path to the collection point, where it can be exchanged for cash.

These packed bamboo baskets weigh 77 kilograms. Some miners are physically deformed by carrying up to 90kg on one shoulder. All of them have wounds on their shoulders.

This man (Imam, 38) stopped mining 6 years ago, but you can still see the physical toll: shoulder injuries and deformed backs are quite common. Today Iman is working as a tour guide to Ijen.

At 4:00 am: Some miners sleep nearby in simple housings, in order to fit in three trips a day. When it’s dark they use headlamps to light up their rocky path.

Sometimes, thanks to strong winds, the sunlight is just able to break through the heavy smoke. When this happens, the sun appears as a small glowing spot in the sky.

The post Inside Ijen’s Volcanic Sulphur Mine appeared first on A\J.

]]> Why Environmentalists Should Promote a Guaranteed Basic Income https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/why-environmentalists-should-promote-a-guaranteed-basic-income/ Tue, 23 Dec 2014 17:29:34 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/why-environmentalists-should-promote-a-guaranteed-basic-income/ Several weeks ago, I watched Pride, a fascinating political drama documenting the true story of a few London-based gay rights campaigners who in 1984 decided to support some beleaguered striking Welsh coal miners. It’s a genuinely heartwarming story about political solidarity. If you have a chance to see Pride, you […]

The post Why Environmentalists Should Promote a Guaranteed Basic Income appeared first on A\J.

]]> Several weeks ago, I watched Pride, a fascinating political drama documenting the true story of a few London-based gay rights campaigners who in 1984 decided to support some beleaguered striking Welsh coal miners. It’s a genuinely heartwarming story about political solidarity. If you have a chance to see Pride, you should.

Several weeks ago, I watched Pride, a fascinating political drama documenting the true story of a few London-based gay rights campaigners who in 1984 decided to support some beleaguered striking Welsh coal miners. It’s a genuinely heartwarming story about political solidarity. If you have a chance to see Pride, you should.

The coal-miners’ strike was in opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s decision to close several coal-mining pits. Pride does a great job demonstrating the sheer emotional impact of that industrial and political dispute. For coal mining communities, the strike was a desperate struggle against an existential threat. The movie is made particularly sad by the fact that many viewers, with the benefit of posterity, will know that the coal miners lost their battle and the mines closed anyway. There are those who would tell you that many parts of Britain have never recovered from the closure of those mines.

But wait…aren’t coal mines a bad thing? Certainly they are for anybody concerned about the climate. Whatever other innovations and efficiencies we come up with, the bottom line is that we have to leave most of our fossil fuels in the ground. If you look it in that light, then Margaret Thatcher actually did us all a favour.

This is an uncomfortable position that extends well beyond film criticism. Whether we’re talking about coal miners in the 1980s or today’s Albertan tar sands workers, the simple fact is that climate action will hurt them. Not everybody who will be inconvenienced by climate action is an oil magnate; saving the planet will have collateral damage. But, of course, if we fail to act, then climate change will hurt everybody, including the workers.

Much of the wider left-wing will swiftly desert the climate cause if it cannot be squared with the livelihoods of the working class.

This is a strategic problem as well as an ethical one. Not only labour unions, but also much of the wider left-wing will swiftly desert the climate cause if it cannot be squared with the livelihoods of the working class. There’s a reason the word “jobs” is such a potent rhetorical weapon when used by vested interests opposed to climate action. One good way to counter this is with the promise of green jobs. But while it is indeed true that the green economy will need lots of wind turbine technicians and electric car battery factories, that doesn’t do much in the short-term for people whose primary skill is mining coal or drilling for oil. Even if those people can eventually find green jobs, they will still need to eat while they retrain. So the tension between jobs and the climate persists. We need a way to square this circle, or we will lose.

I’d like to propose a potential way to do that: Environmentalists should embrace the sustainability benefits of a guaranteed basic income. The idea is very simple: Everybody receives an unconditional sum from the government that is enough to cover basic living expenses. The only case in which this could ever be taken away is if somebody earns enough money to make it no longer necessary. A basic income would replace welfare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, social security and a whole range of other programs, thereby saving administrative costs.

The best argument for a basic income at the moment is founded on the automation crisis, rather than the climate crisis. Analysts expect that self-driving cars will be dominant on the roads by the 2030s, and that means self-driving trucks, taxis, delivery vehicles and forklifts. That, in turn, means a lot of people out of work. Combine that with progress in other fields of automation such as 3D printing and robotics, and suddenly it looks like a lot of jobs are going to disappear. YouTuber CGP Grey explains the coming automation crisis in an excellent video titled “Humans need not apply.” But if there are going to be far fewer jobs for which humans can apply, then maybe we need to rethink the idea of productive labour as a prerequisite for survival.

Any economic structure which removes the financial incentive for ordinary people to destroy the planet is a good thing. 

The idea has received support from some surprising places, including archconservative economist Milton Friedman. And basic income experiments have already been tried in London, Manitoba and New York City among other places, with good results.

Despite the range of economic, ethical and social justice arguments being made for a basic income, environmentalists seem to have largely missed the idea’s implications for sustainability. This should change. A basic income would remove the tension between saving the planet and supporting the working classes. Any economic structure which removes the financial incentive for ordinary people to destroy the planet is a good thing. People who depend on their environmentally destructive jobs for survival can hardly be blamed for dismissing the concerns of environmentalists. A basic income would give them the economic freedom to take climate change seriously. If the miners in Pride could have relied on enough money to remain in their community even after the pits closed, then the story might not have been so sad.

The post Why Environmentalists Should Promote a Guaranteed Basic Income appeared first on A\J.

]]> Canadian Judiciary Poised to Redress Environmental Degradation https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/canadian-judiciary-poised-to-redress-environmental-degradation/ Mon, 14 Jul 2014 15:03:57 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/canadian-judiciary-poised-to-redress-environmental-degradation/ While the media has focused its lens upon the Harper government’s undermining of scientific research, scant consideration has been given to the impact of the “war on science” on Canada’s judiciary. Tasked with reviewing and adjudicating upon the constitutionality and validity of Canada’s resource regulatory process, the judiciary may be […]

The post Canadian Judiciary Poised to Redress Environmental Degradation appeared first on A\J.

]]> While the media has focused its lens upon the Harper government’s undermining of scientific research, scant consideration has been given to the impact of the “war on science” on Canada’s judiciary. Tasked with reviewing and adjudicating upon the constitutionality and validity of Canada’s resource regulatory process, the judiciary may be poised to assume a larger role in environmental decision-making. In this three-part blog series, lawyer Barbara D.

While the media has focused its lens upon the Harper government’s undermining of scientific research, scant consideration has been given to the impact of the “war on science” on Canada’s judiciary. Tasked with reviewing and adjudicating upon the constitutionality and validity of Canada’s resource regulatory process, the judiciary may be poised to assume a larger role in environmental decision-making. In this three-part blog series, lawyer Barbara D. Janusz examines how the “war on science” is being waged in tandem with a war on the Rule of Law.

Skip to part two (posted June 30, 2014) | Skip to part three (posted July 14, 2014)

Next summer, the Magna Carta of 1215 – the “great charter” of English civil liberties and the Rule of Law – is scheduled to tour Canada, as an exhibition. As Canadians commemorate this milestone in Western civilization’s history and ponder the Magna Carta’s legacy and impact on Canada’s political institutions, we may also be witnessing a constitutional showdown between the Canadian government and First Nations.

The fountainhead for this confrontation is the precedent-setting legal action of the Beaver Lake Cree First Nation, whose reserve lies adjacent to tar sands operations near Cold Lake, Alberta. Naming the Canadian and Alberta governments as respondents, the Beaver Lake Cree, in 2008, applied for a declaration that the cumulative effects of tar sands operations has resulted in so much degradation of their traditional lands as to constitute a violation of their treaty and constitutional rights.

Aboriginal treaty rights to hunt, fish and trap are constitutionally entrenched under Section 35 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The inviolability of those rights not only threatens the Harper government’s aspirations to transform Canada into an energy superpower, but has also positioned our judiciary to assume a larger role in environmental decision-making.

The federal and Alberta governments’ first line of attack was to duck liability by pointing the finger at one another. While the federal government, in its bid to have the lawsuit struck out, raised the argument that all licencing of tar sands operations is a provincial matter, the province, on its part, contended that it is Ottawa (by virtue of it being a signatory to aboriginal treaties), and not Alberta, that owes a fiduciary duty to First Nations.

In separate rulings, the Court of Appeal of Alberta has confirmed not only that both levels of government are properly named as respondents in the proceedings, but has also held that an examination of the scientific evidence as it relates to the cumulative effects of tar sands development is not so exceedingly burdensome or complicated as to warrant having the claim struck out.

Changing the regulatory paradigm

It is not coincidental that following the launch of the Beaver Lake Cree court action, the federal government began to gut environmental legislation, lay off scientists and shutter research laboratories, field stations and libraries. And while critics have posited that these policy measures are ideologically driven – aimed at furthering the Harper government’s Economic Action Plan – the censoring of scientific research, in my mind, also constitutes resistance on Ottawa’s part to the current global shift in environmental decision-making from a permissive regulatory paradigm to an evidence-based policy of environmental design.

Underlying the permissive regulatory paradigm is the theory of assimilative capacity, also known pejoratively as pollution control. Since environmental laws were first enacted, allowable levels of pollution have been permitted into the receiving environment. An ecosystem’s assimilative capacity is the level to which it can withstand pollutants before irreparable degradation occurs, and is often the subject of scientific debate. Industry-funded data of the assimilative capacity of pollutants upon an ecosystem, such as the boreal forests of Northern Alberta, is likely to differ from that of scientists who are not employed by industry. With the recent sacking of many government scientists, industry data may not even be contested.

Environmental laws based on assimilative capacity have accomplished little to diminish the threat and impacts of climate change.

The flip side of assimilative capacity is cumulative effects, which are determined by conducting environmental impact assessments (EIAs). The Supreme Court of Canada, in the precedent-setting Friends of the Oldman River case, held that environmental impact assessments are planning tools, “with both an information-gathering and decision-making component” – indispensable to regulatory bodies fulfilling their mandate to balance the public interest with that of industry seeking to develop the resource.    

Under recent amendments to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, however, EIAs have been altogether dispensed with for small projects and streamlined for larger industrial developments, such as the Trans Mountain pipeline which is projected to expand, almost three-fold, the transmission of oil from Alberta to the Port of Vancouver. The expansion has attracted the ire of a contingent of university professors, scientists and ordinary citizens who have been shut out of the National Energy Board hearing process. Later in this series, we will examine the constitutional challenge of amendments to the National Energy Board Act that restrict the right to participate in NEB hearings and to cross-examine the proponent’s witnesses.

With atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases now hovering above the dreaded level of 400 parts per million, we now know that environmental laws based on assimilative capacity have accomplished little to diminish the threat and impacts of climate change.

While the Obama administration’s recently-announced initiatives to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are being touted as a bid to shape Obama’s presidential legacy, they might also inaugurate the repositioning of the United States away from a permissive regulatory regime and onto a more sustainable trajectory of environmental design. Inasmuch as Canada has, in the past, striven to align its energy and climate change policies with those of the US, it will be interesting to see whether the Harper government will be inclined to backpedal on its recent cutbacks to government-funded scientific research. Harper’s recent photo-op with Australia’s new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, whose government’s political agenda reflects our own – to tackle a sluggish resource-based economy at the expense of the environment – speaks volumes, sadly, about our own government’s intentions to maintain the status quo.

By undermining government-funded baseline data that could shed some light on the cumulative effects of oil sands operations, our government has placed our judiciary in the unenviable position of having to rely upon industry-funded data to determine how the mining of bitumen and the deposit of waste material in tailings ponds have impacted the environment. The lack of compelling evidence that the cumulative effects of tar sands operations has irreparably degraded the Beaver Lake Cree’s traditional lands, may, however, according to some legal academics, provide the opportunity for the court to apply the precautionary principle, which we will explore in a subsequent post.

Just as the English nobility forced King John to defer to the Magna Carta on June 15, 1215, the Canadian government, in 2015, may be forced by the Beaver Lake Cree and other First Nations to address the growing challenges of climate change and embark, instead, on a sustainable path towards preserving Canada’s environmental heritage. Regardless of the policy and legislative obstacles confronting our courts, the Beaver Cree Lake lawsuit is poised to be precedent-setting. Apart from the significant Charter and environmental law implications, the case also has the potential to usher in a new era in Canada’s environmental decision-making framework, shifting the balance of power from the legislative and executive branches of government to the judiciary.

Part Two, updated June 30, 2014

Too big to divest

Just like the banks were deemed too big to fail during the economic meltdown of 2008, and were bailed out courtesy of taxpayers, so too is the fossil fuel industry so heavily invested in the tar sands that the Harper government is resolved to out-maneuver any legal impediments that stand in the way of their continued exploitation. Through cutbacks to scientific research and the gutting of environmental legislation, the Harper government has strategically positioned itself to defend its pro-industry economic policies against First Nations constitutional challenges aimed at redressing degradation of their territorial lands.

When Shell Canada applied to expand its Jackpine tar sands mine by 100,000 barrels per day, the Joint Review Panel (JRP), convened to oversee licencing of the project, insisted the company conduct a cumulative impact study. Based on this assessment, the JRP found that the Jackpine expansion would likely have significant adverse environmental effects upon wetlands, traditional plant potential areas, old-growth forest-reliant species at risk, migratory birds, caribou, biodiversity and Aboriginal traditional land use, rights and culture.

Regardless of the adverse environmental effects, the project was ‘justified’ because of its economic benefits.

The panel also concluded that Shell’s proposed mitigation measures were likely to be ineffective. Accordingly, as mandated, the Minister for the Environment referred the JRP’s finding to cabinet, which on December 6, 2013, approved the project on the basis that, regardless of the adverse environmental effects, the project was justified (emphasis mine) because of its economic benefits for the region and Canada as a whole.

While the Joint Review Panel’s ruling has been lauded by industry as inaugurating a new era in transparency, First Nations interveners – the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) – contend that, like the Beaver Lake Cree, their constitutionally entrenched treaty rights have been violated and have applied to the Federal Court for a review of cabinet’s decision. But while the Beaver Lake Cree’s proceedings commenced in 2008 with little fanfare, the ACFN launched their judicial review application with the much-publicized support of iconic Canadian songwriter and musician Neil Young and his Honour the Treaties concert tour.

The Jackpine mine expansion was the first time that a regulatory body found that a proposed development would result in significant adverse environmental effects. It was also the first time that a proponent was ordered to conduct a study that took into consideration past, current and future tar sands development. The legal implications of these milestones upon the Beaver Lake Cree lawsuit cannot be ignored.

The panel’s finding in the Jackpine mine hearing – that the cumulative effects of tar sands development has resulted in significant environmental degradation – appears to have taken the wind out of the sails of the Beaver Lake Cree. And the issue of whether First Nations territorial lands’ have been irreparably degraded appears to have become moot. But, in both the Beaver Lake Cree and ACFN lawsuits, the respondent governments of Canada and Alberta will be called upon to justify infringement of aboriginal treaty rights. If the respondents don’t concede that tar sands development has resulted in environmental degradation, it would be an uphill battle for the federal and Alberta governments to justify such degradation in the public interest.

But while it appears as though, in the Jackpine case, the government has conceded on the cumulative effects issue, the ACFN is not conceding anything. The ACFN is asking the court to consider the adequacy of industry data, and particularly as it relates to Shell’s proposed mitigation measures, which the panel found to be lacking. By implication, the court is also being asked to rule upon the reasonableness and fairness of the JRP’s reliance on Shell Canada to conduct a cumulative effects study, rather than ordering a government-funded impact assessment.

Lines between legislators and judiciary becoming blurred

If the government had hoped that by conceding on the cumulative effects issue the court would not be weighing in on the war being waged against science, it was sorely mistaken. Government cutbacks to scientific research has resulted not only in the government relinquishing its responsibility to First Nations (and the Canadian public) in protecting the environment, but has also placed our judiciary in the unenviable position of second-guessing the government on its broader neo-conservative policy initiatives and economic strategies. The lines between the functions of the legislative and judicial branches of government to respectively enact and interpret environmental law are at risk of becoming blurred. And while the relationship between Harper and SCC Chief Justice McLaughlin has already become strained, it is also becoming increasingly obvious that the government has put itself (and the judiciary) in an awkward position through its own political manoeuvrings.

In the ACFN case, the court is essentially being asked to step into the shoes of cabinet to review its decision that economics should trump the environment and the constitutionally-entrenched treaty rights of First Nations. Although entrenched treaty rights under Section 35 of the Constitution are not subject to the reasonable limits clause of the Charter, they are similarly limited and trigger a process wherein the government is required to justify infringement of those rights. By analogy, when Section 1 of the Charter is raised as a defence by government to a Charter violation, the court is required to determine whether the infringement is “demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society.”  

The legal precedent for the duty of government to accommodate Aboriginal treaty rights is the 1990 SCC decision of Regina v. Sparrow. In this landmark case, the Supreme Court of Canada held that in order for an infringement of treaty rights to be justified in the public interest, “the special trust relationship and responsibility of the government vis a vis aboriginal people must be the first consideration.”  

A new era of judicial activism is emerging.

Since 1982, when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was entrenched in our Constitution, the judiciary has assumed a broadened adjudicatory role of reviewing the laws and actions of government that violate Charter rights. Inasmuch as Charter rights are not absolute, however, the judiciary is required to balance individual and collective rights with the broader interests of society.

Until now, environmental decision-making has largely remained a function of the legislative and executive branches of the government, but with First Nations alleging infringement of their aboriginal treaty rights by the cumulative effects of tar sands developments, a new era of judicial activism is emerging. For the first time, human rights have become aligned with broader universal rights to a sustainable environment.

Part Three, updated July 14, 2014

Changing the game

In commemoration of National Aboriginal Day on June 21, 2014, Stephen Harper made the following statement: “The Government of Canada has had an enduring historic relationship with the first peoples of this land, based on mutual respect, friendship and support.” For First Nations battling pipelines and tar sands development, Harper’s words must  have come across as Newspeak – the propagandist language of the totalitarian state in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. Just five days earlier, on June 17, the Harper government announced its conditional approval of the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline. Projected to transport tar sands crude from Bruderheim, Alberta, across rugged mountain terrain, to Kitimat, BC, Northern Gateway has galvanized BC First Nations to harness any and all legal measures to obstruct the project’s development.

And while opposition to the pipeline escalates, fomenting civil disobedience, the Supreme Court of Canada in its recent historic judgement, Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, has radically altered the landscape through which the pipeline is projected to be constructed. Unlike the Beaver Lake Cree and Athabasca Chipewan First Nations in Alberta, few BC First Nations have ever entered into treaties with the federal government. Until the Tsilhqot’in decision, the duty of the government to accommodate the interests of BC First Nations whose lands are earmarked for resource development had remained undefined.

            RELATED: The Tsilhqot’in First Nation’s fight against the New Prosperity Mine.

By affirming the Tsilhqot’in First Nation’s claim to traditional lands, the SCC has extended the constitutional safeguards, enunciated twenty-four years ago in Regina v. Sparrow, to BC First Nations. Any incursions on Aboriginal title lands, such as pipelines or tar sands operations, must be justified by the government or the regulatory agency authorized to licence exploitation of the resource. The adverse effects of such incursions must not outweigh the benefits that may be expected to flow from such resource development.

The Tsilhqot’in decision, accordingly, is a game changer, not only for the Northern Gateway pipeline, but also for Kinder Morgan’s bid to expand its Trans-Mountain pipeline that extends from Alberta to the Port of Vancouver. Unlike Northern Gateway, however, Trans-Mountain has yet to receive National Energy Board approval. But as opposition to pipelines and oil and gas development has intensified, so too has the resolve of our federal government to streamline the approval process for resource development.

Justice must not only be done, but seen to be done

Recent amendments to the National Energy Board Act restrict the rights of interested parties to participate as interveners and to cross-examine the proponent’s witnesses. A contingent of environmental and civil liberties organizations, academics, including scientists, and ordinary citizens who have been denied intervener status have launched a constitutional challenge against the legislative amendments.

The group contends that the NEB’s new review process offends section 2 (b) of the Charter – the right to freedom of expression. Simon Fraser University professor and molecular biologist Lynne Quarmby applied to participate in the Trans-Mountain pipeline NEB hearing because she believes that it is critical that the panel understand the connection between the pipeline’s expansion and climate change. Quarmby and others have applied to the Federal Court for review of the NEB’s decision to shut them out of the hearing process.

Apart from the freedom-of-expression argument, the Federal Court is also being asked to consider whether changes to legislation governing the NEB are contrary to the rules of natural justice. These rules ensure that the adjudicatory process overseen by regulatory boards is conducted reasonably, fairly and transparently. There is an old adage that justice must not only be done, but seen to be done. Cross-examination of witnesses in any type of legal proceeding – whether it’s in a civil or criminal trial or a regulatory hearing – is critical, as it affords the opposing side the opportunity to impeach the credibility of a witness who is testifying.

By restricting the right to cross-examine, and relegating scientists and other participants to reducing their concerns and evidence to writing, the Trans-Mountain Pipeline review panel may not be presented with the best evidence available in determining the potential adverse environmental impacts of tripling the pipeline’s capacity.

Decision after decision is being appealed and subjected to judicial review.

While it would be presumptuous on my part to speculate upon how the Federal Court is likely to rule on the relevance of evidence linking pipeline developments and expansions to climate change (and whether it has been correctly excluded by the NEB from the hearing process), there is little doubt that the environmental decision-making framework in this country is in transition. Decision after decision is being appealed and subjected to judicial review – and in the process, the judiciary is being called upon to consider not only the rights of First Nations, but of everyone in Canada.

In deliberating upon the relevance of scientific evidence linking the pipeline to climate change, the Federal Court may strike a compromise by ruling that the precautionary principle is appropriately applied under these circumstances. Euphemistically defined as “better safe than sorry,” the precautionary principle has been applied by our judiciary and by regulatory boards outside of Canada when scientific evidence lacks certainty. It has also been incorporated into international treaties aimed at environmental protection and sustainable development.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in 2001, set a precedent by applying the precautionary principle in 114956 Canada Ltee. (Spraytech Societe d’arrosage) v. Town of Hudson (the Spraytech decision) when it held that a municipality had jurisdiction to ban the use of a pesticide out of precaution for the safety of its citizens.

While the Harper government can be anticipated to raise the argument, in defence of National Energy Board Act amendments, that the streamlining of the regulatory process is expediently necessary, the application of the precautionary principle should be embraced precisely because it enhances expediency. In an adversarial setting, where the evidence lead by opponents to development often glaringly departs from that presented by industry, the search for the truth can be time consuming. And when the proliferation of litigation against regulatory board decisions is factored in, it also becomes glaringly apparent that the policies designed (ostensibly) to streamline the process have only exacerbated the problem that they were intended to address in the first place.

New legislation triggering constitutional challenges

That government policy on environmental protection is increasingly out of sync with the values of ordinary Canadians is undeniable. The fact that the Harper government’s “war on science” has been facilitated by policies directing how federal Department of Justice lawyers evaluate new laws, however, is less likely to be common knowledge amongst the Canadian public. According to lawyer and whistleblower Edgar Schmidt, the Legislative Services Branch (LSB) of the federal Department of Justice has been engaged in some serious streamlining of its own. While it would be a violation of solicitor-client privilege for Mr. Schmidt to comment upon any particular legislation that he reviewed, in his capacity as a member of the LSB, to ensure consistency with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he has spoken out about policy changes, in general, that have resulted in newly enacted legislation triggering constitutional challenges.

Mr. Schmidt, who is no longer employed by Justice Canada, during a telephone interview, expressed the opinion that the policy is precipitating “an erosion of respect for the Rule of Law” within the federal government. He has commenced his own lawsuit against the federal government, “…asking the [Federal] Court to clarify the duties of the Minister and Deputy Minister of Justice to vet proposed legislation for conformity with the Charter.” When proposed new laws (such as the amendments to the National Energy Board Act) are interpreted by the LSB to be inconsistent with the Charter, the House of Commons no longer needs to be alerted so long as some (emphasis mine) argument – even if it is almost certain to fail – can be made in favour of Charter compliance. This has resulted in many more constitutional challenges being initiated once those new laws are enacted, not only with respect to environmental laws, but also amendments to the Criminal Code and Immigration Act.

Inasmuch as the government’s streamlining policies have come about as a result of intense lobbying on the part of industry, one can’t help but wonder if the government is not only engaging in Newspeak but also in doublethink. Doublethink, like Newspeak, was coined by George Orwell and refers to a person subscribing simultaneously to two contradictory concepts or ideas without realizing it. While the government has adopted policies intended to streamline the regulatory process, it has also unwittingly fanned the flames of opposition to the very projects that industry hopes to expeditiously develop.

In the meantime, the Canadian judiciary – tasked with resolving burgeoning disputes between government and First Nations – is assuming a more activist role in environmental decision-making and in directing Canada from pollution control, a permissive regulatory paradigm and towards a more sustainable framework of environmental design.

This shift towards an expanded role for the judiciary in environmental law enforcement is part of a global trend. In 2011, Pace University School of Law and the Environmental Law Institute (of Washington, DC) hosted an international symposium for Judges, at the Judicial Institute of the State of New York. The symposium’s agenda was to instruct judges on “how governments have decided to empower courts to enforce environmental law and enhance the rule of law.”

It is ultimately up to the courts to decide whether the economy should trump the environment and aboriginal treaty rights.

Titled “Giving Force to Environmental Laws: Court Innovations around the World,” the symposium examined innovations in law enforcement, including the lead taken by countries like New Zealand and Australia, that have established separate environmental courts. And while the Canadian constitution does not easily lend itself to restructuring of our court system, Canada is in an enviable position because its Charter of Rights and Freedoms was designed to strike a balance between human rights and the broader interests of Canadian society.

When adjudicating upon First Nations land claims, the SCC has judiciously and consistently applied the Charter principle of reasonable limits.  Despite government assertions that environmental degradation – caused cumulatively by tar sands operations – is justified because of the economic benefits provided, it is ultimately up to the courts to decide whether the economy should trump the environment and aboriginal treaty rights. Waging a war on science is one thing, but waging a battle against the Rule of Law is another. It brings to mind Sonny Curtis’ famous line: “I fought the law and the law won.”

The post Canadian Judiciary Poised to Redress Environmental Degradation appeared first on A\J.

]]> Hudbay Minerals: Confronting a Corporate Criminal https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/hudbay-minerals-confronting-a-corporate-criminal/ Fri, 14 Feb 2014 18:40:52 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/hudbay-minerals-confronting-a-corporate-criminal/ The scene was absurd: four activists, each with a bundle of 75 black and gold helium-filled balloons, riding an escalator. As we reached the top, we clipped our banner to the bundles and let go, watching our work rise slowly toward the hundred-foot ceiling of the lobby of a downtown […]

The post Hudbay Minerals: Confronting a Corporate Criminal appeared first on A\J.

]]> The scene was absurd: four activists, each with a bundle of 75 black and gold helium-filled balloons, riding an escalator. As we reached the top, we clipped our banner to the bundles and let go, watching our work rise slowly toward the hundred-foot ceiling of the lobby of a downtown Toronto office tower. Suddenly there were security guards rushing toward us. One of them jumped to make a grab for the bottom edge of the banner. We held our breath. He missed by mere inches and groaned.

The scene was absurd: four activists, each with a bundle of 75 black and gold helium-filled balloons, riding an escalator. As we reached the top, we clipped our banner to the bundles and let go, watching our work rise slowly toward the hundred-foot ceiling of the lobby of a downtown Toronto office tower. Suddenly there were security guards rushing toward us. One of them jumped to make a grab for the bottom edge of the banner. We held our breath. He missed by mere inches and groaned. And then for just a moment, everyone in the lobby was standing still, staring up, as our huge painted banner rose until the balloons bumped and jostled against the ceiling. The bold red letters made our message clear: “HUDBAY MINERALS, CORPORATE CRIMINALS.”


The banner announcing “Hudbay Minerals, Corporate Criminals” stayed up in the lobby of the building where Hudbay’s shareholders were meeting for two hours until the company was able to remove it. 

Outside on King Street, we joined the group of protesters who had already been standing in the pouring rain for more than two hours. A banner just like the one we had raised inside was stretched out, soaked, between two elders from the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation. They had traveled from northern Manitoba to confront Hudbay at this shareholder meeting where important decisions were being made by people who may have a financial stake but whose lives will never be directly impacted by the actual workings of any of the company’s mines.

Hudbay Minerals is one of several Canadian-owned mining companies censured by environmental activists, human rights organizations and more recently by mainstream media for carrying out violent forced evictions, murdering a community leader who resisted one of their mines, robbing Indigenous peoples of their lands, supporting brutal police and security operations and criminalizing anyone who has tried to resist their mining projects around the world and here in Canada. Hudbay has gained increasing attention recently because they are the first Canadian company to be tried in Canadian courts for crimes committed at mines overseas.

I [Rachel] have been directly involved in supporting communities resisting Hudbay’s mines since 2010, when I traveled to Guatemala as part of a human rights delegation and had the chance to meet people in a Mayan Q’eqchi’ community impacted by a mine formerly operated by the company. One of those people was Angelica Choc, who is now at the centre of Choc vs. Hudbay, the groundbreaking lawsuit currently being heard by Canadian courts. Angelica’s journey through the Canadian justice system began with the murder of her husband in 2009. Her community’s struggle against Canadian-owned mining companies goes back decades and is interwoven with armed conflict, genocide, government corruption, and Canada’s international development policy.

The history of the Fenix nickel mine, on the shores of Lake Izabal in western Guatemala, began in the 1960s when it was started by Inco, a Canadian company with a deep involvement in the Guatemalan government’s efforts to wipe out opposition. The Canadian government provided significant financial support to Inco’s Guatemalan subsidiary while people who protested or organized against the mine were killed, kidnapped, threatened, and whole communities were forcibly evicted from lands that had been their traditional territory for generations. Inco shut down mining operations in the 1980s, and the Fenix mine site was purchased by two Canadian companies – first Skye Resources in 2004 and then Hudbay in 2008. Shortly after the announcement of a lawsuit against Hudbay for negligence concerning violent acts committed by its employees and subsidiaries, Hudbay sold the Fenix mine to Russian company Solway Group at a $290 million loss.

The banner lift I organized in Toronto in the spring of 2013 was staged for the annual Hudbay shareholder meeting. It was an opportunity for organizations like the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network to counter the company’s media spin and to make evident – if only for the few hours that the crowds assembled outside and the banner floated near the 100 foot high lobby ceiling –  that there was a bigger story at play than the record growth investment and corporate social responsibility initiatives that Hudbay was announcing inside. It was one small part of a series of actions and events that tied together Angelica’s quest for justice and that of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation (MCCN) in Manitoba.

Leahjane Robinson with 300 balloons, used for a protest at Hudbay's shareholder meeting.
Leahjane Robinson with 300 balloons, moments before packing them into a uhaul to drive downtown to Hudbay’s shareholder meeting. Photo by Ashling Ligate. 

MCCN has never been consulted by Hudbay or the province of Manitoba regarding the company’s mining operations on their territory. In an effort to assert their claim to the land and prevent Hudbay from carrying out their operations without permission, Chief Arlen Dumas formally issued stop work orders against the company in January and March of 2013, and band members organized peaceful gatherings at the mine site where they held drumming and singing ceremonies.

Hudbay responded by obtaining injunctions against the community and by launching a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Chief Dumas. The result of the company’s retaliatory actions is that MCCN people, who live off the land, have been instantly criminalized and held in contempt of court for trying to maintain their livelihood. Because of a mining operation they don’t want and never agreed to, they can no longer legally hunt and fish on their own land. MCCN has since delivered formal eviction notices to Hudbay and the Province of Manitoba.

Clayton Thomas-Muller, a member of the Pukatawagan Cree Nation and campaigner with Idle No More & Defenders of the Land, also came into town to stand with protesters outside Hudbay’s Toronto meeting. He addressed the crowd: “Investing in disputed Indigenous Lands, not respecting our nations’ right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent, trying to use the courts to suppress our Cree Nations’ sovereign right to protect our lands and water, are all signalers that the board and CEO of Hudbay are negligent, uninformed and morally bankrupt.” The community of Pukatawagan is located less than a hundred kilometres from the mine site.

Hudbay’s actions against MCCN, first ignoring the community’s right to determine what happens on their land, and later responding to resistance with significant legal threats, is heavy-handed and repressive, but less overtly violent than the threats faced by Angelica Choc’s community and those nearby. In 2007, Mayan farmers near the Fenix mine site were forced from their lands by hundreds of armed men from police, military, and private security forces who then burned down their homes.

In a village called Lote Ocho, eleven women were gang raped by the police, army, and security forces hired by Hudbay during an attempted eviction. The Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala attempted to discredit documentary film evidence of these violent evictions, claiming that the scenes were staged, or were filmed during the country’s armed conflict decades earlier. A Canadian court later found him guilty of slander, and ordered both the Ambassador and the Canadian Government to pay almost $10,000 in damages and costs to the filmmaker. 


Angelica Choc addresses the supporters gathered outside of the courthouse where the trial began to hold Canadian company Hudbay accountable for the death of her husband. Also pictured: Grahame Russell from Rights Action. Photo by Veronica Díaz.

Two years later, in the face of another round of possible evictions, Angelica Choc’s husband Adolfo Ich Chamán, a community leader and outspoken critic of the mining company’s operations, was shot and killed by security forces. On the same day, German Chub was shot and permanently injured. These incidents, along with the brutal gang-rapes in Lote Ocho, are part of the case against Hudbay currently being heard in the Superior Court of Ontario. There are currently three lawsuits against the company, all for negligence resulting in death or significant harm.

Angelica’s message to Hudbay, which she shared with those who came to support her during a Toronto court appearance, is unflinching. “You made a mistake with me because I did not remain silent with my arms crossed…I demand justice.” She is a powerful speakerher words and her emotions impacted the crowd deeply as they heard about the brutality her community, like many others, has experienced in their efforts to resist violations of land and human rights.

“They need to pay for all the damage caused to my family and our communities. What Hudbay has done is deplorable. Even now they hide behind walls, refusing to accept the damages caused in Guatemala. I call upon everyone, and even more so, my Indigenous peoples, who are here [gathered in Toronto] right now, to remember who we are, where we come from and where we are going. I know this is not only the case in Guatemala, and I am not working, I am not fighting, only for Guatemala. This struggle is for the whole world, to defend the earth.”

On the day of her court appearance, in solidarity with Angelica and the other claimants, local Idle No More organizers led a round dance outside the courtroom. Members of the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network hung up t-shirts and sweaters on a clothesline as a way of “airing Hudbay’s dirty laundry.” Each piece of clothing had been painted by someone in Canada with messages about Hudbay’s activities, including a shirt painted by Angelica the night before. Photographs of this clothesline have since appeared in numerous media stories about the court case and the status of Hudbay’s corporate reputation.


A few of the pieces created to express solidarity with the plaintiffs and to air Hudbay’s dirty laundry. Photo by Leahjane Robinson.

Although the progress of the Choc vs. Hudbay case through the Canadian courts is a legal victory for the claimants and the lawyers representing them, back in the communities surrounding the Fenix mine repressive threats have intensified. Communities and families have been deliberately divided by offers of money and by campaigns of misinformation spread by mine officials and the government.

As disturbing as it is that these claimants are experiencing threats, it comes as little surprise to those of us who have worked on mining resistance. Unfortunately, Canadian mining companies regularly act illegally and with impunity in repressing resistance. This is especially easy to do in Guatemala, a country with one of the highest rates of impunity in the world. It is also a country where human rights activists and those organizing around the defense of land are routinely targets of violent attacks and murders.


Angelica Choc holds up the shirt she created for the laundry line. Photo by Monica Gutierrez.

Angelica knows that it will take the voices and commitment of many Canadians to make a change in the actions of Canadian-owned companies operating in her country. Surprisingly few Canadians realize that the majority of mines around the world are owned by companies based here, or the magnitude of the impact these mines are having.

To many Mayan peoples in Guatemala, the abuses carried out by Canadian companies on their land, across Central America, and globally are understood to be simply one part of a long and violent history of colonization, which they have been fighting against for hundreds of years.

Increasingly, settlers (non-Native people) in Canada are realizing what Indigenous peoples have been saying for a long time – these aren’t accidents, or the story of a few bad apples. If we’re going to change the way these companies act, we’ll need to challenge complex systems with a multitude of players that serve to concentrate power and resources in the hands of a few, often at the expense of Indigenous peoples.

And we need to acknowledge that, knowingly or not, we are all complicit in these harms, whether through the investments of our pension plans, the actions of our elected officials, the jewelry or electronics we buy, or by our tacit acceptance of systematic racism, colonialism and other oppressive, violent forces. It will be a long struggle to reverse these patterns. 

The last time Angelica was in Toronto, she and I ate an early breakfast of pupusas in my kitchen before she left for the airport. We didn’t speak about much, but there was a weight to our conversation. We both knew just how dangerous it had been for her to come to Canada, and the risks she faced as she headed back to her community. We both knew that there is a very real threat of more evictions now that the mine has new owners. There was little I could say except to feebly send her off with a hug and a “please take care.”

Rachel and Joanne are spending February and March visiting with mining-impacted communities in Guatemala. For more info on mining in Guatemala, and for writing from their trip, see Under-Mining Guate. Visit the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network for updates on related issues, campaigns and actions. You can also read more about Canadian mining injustices abroad in A\J‘s Resource Wars issue.

The post Hudbay Minerals: Confronting a Corporate Criminal appeared first on A\J.

]]> 9 Ways to Fight Fracking https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/community/9-ways-to-fight-fracking/ https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/community/9-ways-to-fight-fracking/#respond Wed, 29 Jan 2014 18:02:07 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/activists/9-ways-to-fight-fracking/ Imagine going to your favourite bar year after year and ordering beer on tap. Then, one day, the tap runs dry. All that’s left are the drops that have fallen on the bar floor after decades of beer-thirsty customers. The only way to get more beer is to squeeze droplets […]

The post 9 Ways to Fight Fracking appeared first on A\J.

]]> Imagine going to your favourite bar year after year and ordering beer on tap. Then, one day, the tap runs dry. All that’s left are the drops that have fallen on the bar floor after decades of beer-thirsty customers. The only way to get more beer is to squeeze droplets out of the rug and into your mug.

Imagine going to your favourite bar year after year and ordering beer on tap. Then, one day, the tap runs dry. All that’s left are the drops that have fallen on the bar floor after decades of beer-thirsty customers. The only way to get more beer is to squeeze droplets out of the rug and into your mug.

As the former climate and energy coordinator with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick (CCNB), Raphael Shay often used this analogy to explain how the oil and gas industry feeds our addiction to fossil fuels. The growing scarcity of conventional oil and gas has forced the industry to mine the stains in the rug – dirty, difficult-to-extract resources like tar sands bitumen and shale gas.

Shale gas mining by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, requires brute force and causes substantial problems that are hard to measure. Shale gas, which is mostly methane, is imprisoned in deep sedimentary rock. For each frack, water mixed with sand and a toxic brew of chemicals is pumped downward and then horizontally into an L-shaped borehole at a high enough pressure to fracture the rock, allowing the trapped methane to escape and be drawn to the surface. The amount of water used to frack a single well is equivalent to seven Olympic-sized swimming pools. More than two-thirds of it stays down, but what comes up after the pressure is released is untreatable toxic waste. There have been more than 1,000 allegations in the US of ground or surface water contamination caused by escaped fracking fluid, either above or below ground.

American endocrinologist Theo Colborn says 75 per cent of the chemicals used in fracking disrupt sensory organs and respiratory gastrointestinal system. In September, Colborn and her colleagues at the Colorado-based Endocrine Disruption Exchange published a paper in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment arguing that air pollution in areas where residents and gas wells coexist is also a source of major concern. Other concerns include damage to property values, roads and infrastructure, tourism and agricultural industries, as well as increased noise pollution, health care costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

More fracking to come

Jessica Ernst, the environmental scientist who is currently suing oil giant Encana because she alleges that fracking operations contaminated her water well in Rosebud, Alberta, warns that the number of water contamination cases in Canada is rising. Fracking is currently taking place in rural British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick. Some form of moratorium has been imposed in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and parts of Québec. According to the 2012 Report of the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development, Canada will see a 50-per-cent increase in unconventional gas production over the next 20 years.

New Brunswick has become a cauldron of public pushback against fracking operations. Mark D’Arcy of the Fredericton chapter of the Council of Canadians estimates that there could be as many as 60,000 active wells in the licensed area held by SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of Texas-based Southwestern Energy Company. In 2010, the company pledged to spend almost $47-million to explore for the commercial viability of shale gas on more than a million hectares of land stretching the entire width of the province. Furious that the provincial government had not engaged them prior to issuing exploratory licenses to this and other companies, grandmothers, taxi drivers, hairdressers, university professors and New Brunswickers from all walks of life – hailing from Indigenous, Acadian and Anglophone communities alike – have reorganized their lives and become activists to halt the development of shale gas mining in the province.

The conflicts in New Brunswick reflect what’s happening in communities across Canada and beyond our borders. Cash-strapped governments are promoting economic growth and responsible development, while activists are calling for a permanent halt to exploration for the sake of ecosystem vitality and human safety. But this struggle is not just about shale gas, which is but a symptom of a much larger problem. Many rural New Brunswickers initially heard about this invasion of their lands not from the officials they elected to represent their interests, but from the oil and gas industry.

We can no longer afford to be complacent.

According to Henry David Thoreau, complacency is one of democracy’s greatest weaknesses. We can no longer afford to be complacent. The mounting resistance in New Brunswick, which has required unflinching determination and countless hours of unpaid work, shows that we can reclaim a stake in our faltering democracy. These are some of the tools and strategies we’ve used to push back against seismic testing operations and exploratory thumper trucks.

#1: Design a Counter Campaign

In New Brunswick, there are currently nine oil and gas companies holding shale gas exploration licenses. Starting in 2010, two companies, Corridor Resources and SWN Resources Canada, started hosting town hall meetings to discuss their plans with residents. It was news to us.

To ensure people understood what was happening, members of existing groups like the Taymouth Community Association and Sackville’s Tantramar Alliance Against Hydrofracking organized their own meetings to raise awareness about shale gas mining. Stephanie Merrill of CCNB Action spent the better part of two years travelling across the province giving presentations and telling mainstream media about the risks and impacts of fracking. Others like Jim emberger and Patricia leger were inspired to follow her example. Merrill was also instrumental in distributing the film Gasland – Josh Fox’s 2010 documentary about the devastation caused by the US fracking industry – in New Brunswick.

This evolving public education campaign is now the mainstay of the newly created New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA), established in fall 2013.

#2: Build a Resistance Network

To protest closed-door meetings about shale gas mining organized by David Alward’s provincial government in June 2011. a range of NB-based NGOs established a province-wide network to stop development. The New Brunswick Environmental Network (NBEN) now provides a forum for more than two dozen community associations to talk strategy during monthly teleconferences. Each member of the NBEN shale gas caucus has one representative, and a new chair is elected every six months. Causus proposals are vetted by members of each community association, which are free to choose strategies to partake in and support.

This headless organizational system (which also includes members of the NBASGA) makes it difficult for government or industry to target specific protesters or resistance groups. But as we shall see below, resistors can still become targets.

It stands to reason that the more people and diversity of groups we can represent, the more powerful and credible we become. Many allies have either passed resolutions advocating a moratorium or become active in the anti-shale campaign: the New Brunswick chapter of the National Farmers Union; New Brunswick Nurses Union; New Brunswick College of Family Physicians; Association francophone des municipalités du Nouveau Brunswick; Maritime Conference of the United Church of Canada; the medical doctors of both the George Dumont Hospital and the Moncton Hospital; The Federation of Rural New Brunswickers; New Brunswick Lung Association; Wolastoqiyik First Nations Chiefs and Band Councils of New Brunswick; the Maliseet Grand Council; the New Brunswick division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees; Fredericton District Labour Council; Unifor; and more.

The collaboration of New Brunswick’s Aboriginal Peoples deserves particular attention. Many First Nations communities have asked for help to ensure their treaty rights are protected. Harper’s gutting of environmental protection laws is well known, but few Canadians know about the Alward government’s behaviour. In 2011, it decreed that any wooded wetland that doesn’t appear on provincial maps was not a wetland. In 2012, Alward began neglecting a watercourse classification regulation meant to establish legally binding quality standards for lakes, rivers and streams. What little protection we have left stems from treaties. In order for Aboriginals to be guaranteed the right to hunt, fish and gather in perpetuity, the air, water and habitat required to sustain the plants and animals that feed them need to be protected from industrial development.

#3. Call in Reinforcements

There is no doubt that the election of the Parti Québécois government helped Québec citizens get a fracking moratorium in 2013. A YouTube video called “Gaz de schiste: Wo!” featuring well-known Québec artists also generated momentum.

Unaware of New Brunswick celebrities interested in taking on a similar video project, the NBEN shale gas caucus sought celebrities of another kind to enlighten locals: smart, relatively unknown people who had experienced fracking. The first, in 2011, was Calvin Tillman. The former mayor of Dish, Texas, felt compelled to move his family after his children developed severe nosebleeds, ostensibly caused by air pollutants from shale gas wells. According to a 2013 paper in the American Journal of Nursing by Ruth McDermott-Levy and colleagues, nosebleeds among children are common in areas subjected to shale gas development.

Other speakers brought to counter government and industry ideology included Jessica Ernst, shale gas economics lecturer Deborah Rogers and Anthony Ingraeffea, a Cornell University professor with 30 years of experience in hydrofracking.

Tillman’s take-home message was that folks need to be just as concerned about air pollution as water pollution. Ingraeffea warned about the many myths industry will peddle to try and convince opponents. Rogers said the only way to win this fight is by poking holes in economic arguments.

#4. Fine-Tune Your Message

Community associations have sold thousands of signs and T-shirts depicting an anti-shale gas message for a buck or two above cost, providing an important means of fundraising. These messages also help build solidarity. Earlier this fall, I drove to a NBASGA meeting in St. Ignace along Highway 11, where SWN Resources Canada had set up the final stages of its seismic testing operations for the season. Strewn alongside the highway for many kilometres were SWN’s geophones, detectors that record echoes of sounds made on the Earth’s surface by thumper trucks. Paradoxically, there was a “No shale gas” sign in almost every driveway!

Messages on signs and T-shirts have also evolved over the past three years to become more positive and practical. The Fredericton chapter of the Council of Canadians recently issued a challenge on bright yellow signs and T-shirts that read “Jobs: You do the math.” These show that the number of jobs created for every million-dollar investment in clean energy production is up to seven times greater than those created by the same investment in the oil and gas industry.

The past three years have witnessed two public rallies in Moncton and five in Fredericton. Thousands of people have walked the streets carrying signs or banners, chanting lyrics and beating drums. We are now able to pull off demonstrations in a matter of days. (The key is to inform local police of your route and request their presence during the march, especially to stop or divert traffic at busy intersections.)

In November 2013, instead of marching to the Legislative Assembly, we started with a symbolic gesture of “turning our backs” to the building and then marching to a traditional longhouse built by six Maliseet and two Mi’kmaq communities. Using a pick-up truck bed as our stage and a borrowed microphone and speaker system, representatives from the Aboriginal, Acadian and Anglophone communities each addressed the demonstrators. Even though marches and rallies have done little to deter the Alward government’s hard line on the shale gas file, they have proven indispensable to keeping spirits high and building solidarity during a long and difficult campaign. They have also made it clear to Alward and SWN that New Brunswickers will not be excluded from these decisions.

#5. Create Conversation-Starters

A petition containing 20,000 signatures was delivered to the Legislative Assembly in 2011 asking the government for a ban. A letter-writing campaign was designed so that citizens could easily send all 55 Members of the Legislative Assembly a note denouncing shale gas development. A satirical newspaper called the Daily Glove Puppet has brought a sharp tongue to the discussion. Because a relatively high percentage of New Brunswickers have low literacy (53 per cent), more emphasis is now being placed on YouTube videos and skits such as Dame Rita’s “I am ‘ear’ for you.”

Fredericton’s Council of Canadians members have designed and used “Frack-fry” costumes to demonstrate the increased risks of contamination in food grown in soil where shale gas mining occurs. The decorated appliance-sized cardboard boxes list many common ingredients found in fracking fluids on the back and are easy to make and wear. They’re a great way to draw attention in communities less familiar with shale gas.

In December 2013, Council members constructed a pillory and used it to depict how the courts have put citizens in stocks, unable to live in a clean and healthy environment.

#6. Go to Court with Caution

Hampton Water First, a member of the NBEN shale gas caucus, is currently trying to raise $100,000 to take the government to court on the basis that shale gas mining is detrimental to people’s health.

This issue has already been before the courts on four different occasions in late 2013. On October 3, SWN Resources Canada initially succeeded in getting a Moncton judge to grant an injunction against activists in Kings County who had prevented its thumper trucks from leaving a compound located off Highway 134. Although SWN failed to have that injunction extended, it did sue 13 activists for $650,000 in damages it claimed to have incurred because of summertime protests in Kent County. Despite the lack of anti-SLAPP legislation in New Brunswick, few anticipated these particular protesters would be targeted. (The lesson: lobby for your province to introduce anti-SLAPP protection if none is available.)

On November 15, Elsipogtog First Nation asked a Fredericton judge for an injunction against the Alward government for not adhering to its duty to consult them prior to issuing exploratory licenses. The judge denied their request. (Note that in other jurisdictions, the courts have honoured similar requests – an Inuit group in Nunavut contested seismic testing in Lancaster Sound in 2010, and the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation in Ontario prohibited exploration by Platinex Inc. in 2006.)

When SWN presented its case before the same judge who denied Elispogtog’s motion on November 22, the company’s request that no person be allowed within 20 meters of the side of the road or 250 meters from the front or back of its thumper trucks was granted. SWN reappeared in court on December 2 asking for an extension to its previous injunction, which was also granted.

From our experience, the courts have so far proven unsatisfactory and prohibitively expensive, and they are structured to give preference to large businesses. The lesson learned is to approach the bench with irrefutable evidence.

#7. Document the Conflict

Irving Oil, a family-owned company worth billions, controls every English-language daily in New Brunswick and all the community weeklies except two. Naturally, this has led to a very biased approach to news coverage of shale gas development. It has been difficult to get a pro-industry conglomerate to give equal treatment to both sides of this controversy. It calls to mind what Mount Allison professor Erin Steuter said when the Liberals under Shawn Graham tried selling NB Power to Québec: “The papers are presenting the view that what’s good for the Irving company is good for the province.”

Even the CBC has fallen into disfavour among activists for often undermining the NBASGA’s message and for continuously underreporting the number of people participating in marches and rallies.

During the summer and fall of 2013, an independent journalist affiliated with the Halifax Media Co-op named Miles Howe lived among activists staging a blockade in Kent County. Whereas other journalists had to drive up to wherever the blockades were being set up, which was a moving target in and of itself, Howe was able to provide up-to-the minute accounts of everything that was happening. Much to his dismay and surprise, he was arrested three times for doing his job.

Many activists used their digital devices to capture videos of tense moments between the RCMP and activists. Blogger Charles LeBlanc was present with his camera phone, recording every aspect of how the arrests on Highway 126 unfolded on June 14, 2013. LeBlanc’s short video of friends and allies being physically manhandled by the RCMP was heart-wrenching and impossible to capture in print media. Without his perspective, we wouldn’t know the ferocity with which the Alward government was prepared to quash any form of resistance to shale gas exploration.

#8. Reclaim Power

New Brunswickers are not used to being arrested for blocking thumper trucks in the middle of a public highway. Acts of civil disobedience require training. Philippe Duhamel, a non-violent activist and educator for social change from Québec City, delivered a weeklong training session on civil disobedience in Elsipogtog last fall. Duhamel talked about the importance of preplanning acts of disobedience, having a contingency plan and always keeping a watchful eye for agents provocateurs, such as those alleged to have torched six RCMP vehicles in Rexton on October 17, 2013.

Inverness County in Nova Scotia is believed to be the first community in Canada to pass a bylaw prohibiting fracking within community boundaries (read about it in “First Places“). Two years in the making, the bylaw came about because of residents’ fears about the fracking of an exploratory well drilled by Petroworth Resources next to Lake Ainslie.

Ben Price of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund doesn’t think Inverness has gone far enough. “Community rights will not be won by banning fracking, but by empowering every community to govern corporate behavior within their jurisdiction, including but certainly not limited by the prohibition of rights-violating fracking,” he says. “Corporate privileges must be subordinated to the right of communities to protect their health, safety and welfare by legislating against the local siting of factory farms, GMOs, toxic landfills, sewage-sludge dumping, huge water withdrawals, long-wall and mountain top removal ‘mining’ – you name it.”

#9. Get Out the Vote

The Alward government has consistently maintained that it was given a majority mandate to pursue shale gas development in the 2010 provincial elections. We disagree, as there was no mention of shale gas or hydraulic fracturing in his party’s election platform. Many New Brunswickers are now focused on ousting Alward from office on September 22, 2014. The true challenge will be to elect a trustworthy coalition government to repair the cumulative impact of decades of majority governments that have led to shale gas exploration and mining operations.

Town hall meetings are being held across the province in early 2014 to mobilize and empower New Brunswickers to take charge of their futures and financial challenges by using the voting process. Get tools for organizing a community awareness campaign and other activities. See where there’s fracking activity or shale basins near you in our Fracking Hotspots map.

The post 9 Ways to Fight Fracking appeared first on A\J.

]]> https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/community/9-ways-to-fight-fracking/feed/ 0 Is Coal Making a Comeback? https://www.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/is-coal-making-a-comeback/ Wed, 22 Jan 2014 17:52:32 +0000 https://aj3.alternativesjournal.ca/blog/is-coal-making-a-comeback/ One year after The Economist declared an “unwelcomed coal renaissance,” Bloomberg News reported in early January that Europe’s lust for lower energy prices was reviving lignite mining for coal-fired generation in a big way. One year after The Economist declared an “unwelcomed coal renaissance,” Bloomberg News reported in early January that Europe’s […]

The post Is Coal Making a Comeback? appeared first on A\J.

]]> One year after The Economist declared an “unwelcomed coal renaissance,” Bloomberg News reported in early January that Europe’s lust for lower energy prices was reviving lignite mining for coal-fired generation in a big way.

One year after The Economist declared an “unwelcomed coal renaissance,” Bloomberg News reported in early January that Europe’s lust for lower energy prices was reviving lignite mining for coal-fired generation in a big way.

Lignite, a low-quality form of coal that contains fewer units of energy and greater volumes of carbon than traditional coal, is once again the prize European energy firms are seeking in open-pit mines in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic in an effort to wrestle high-energy prices to the mat.

According to Bloomberg, new coal developments “go against the grain of European Union rules limiting emissions and pushing cleaner energy.” However, “alarmed at power prices about double U.S. levels, policy makers are allowing the expansion of coal mines that were scaled back in the past two decades.”

By comparison, Ontarians enjoy a significantly lower electricity rate than their European counterparts. The average electricity rate among Europe’s largest cities is 20.42 (EURO) cents per kilowatt/hour, which works out to approximately 30 (CDN) cents. This is well above the 2013 average price of electricity in Ontario at 8.55 cents per kWh.  

Those anxious about the impact a resurging coal market could have on renewable energy in Europe needn’t worry, according to Barry O’Flynn, environmental finance and clean technology director at Ernst & Young LLP.

The lignite upswing may ultimately boost support for wind and solar projects by increasing public attention on the health, environmental and economic downsides of burning fossil fuels, he believes.

“There will be increasing emissions restraints and controls in the years ahead,” O’Flynn told Bloomberg. “Lignite is not a threat to renewables. It could benefit them, since the emissions from lignite-fired plants will need to be offset” under European Union pollution restrictions.

The shift in Europe comes as expanding shale gas exploration is making the economic case for natural gas more attractive in the United States than burning coal, despite the influence of entrenched coal interests there.

It also occurs against the backdrop of Ontario signalling the end of its on-again, off-again love affair with coal in 2013.

Premier Kathleen Wynne welcomed prominent environmentalist and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to Toronto on Nov. 21 to celebrate the announcement that Ontario’s two remaining coal-burning generating stations would use up the remainder of their coal by the end of 2014.

“To solve the climate crisis, we need people, provinces and countries to show the way forward towards a coal-free, sustainable future [and] Ontario has distinguished itself as a leader in Canada and around the world,” Gore told the MaRS Building’s packed atrium in downtown Toronto.

“It is heartening to see the tremendous progress that has been made here and it is my hope that others will quickly follow suit.”

The Gore announcement was complemented by Environment Minister Jim Bradley signalling the government’s intention to introduce the Ending Coal for Cleaner Air Act which would require any future legislature that wishes to bring back coal-fired electricity generation in Ontario to debate the move at Queen’s Park, rather than make it happen through closed-door regulation.

But while coal-fired electricity generation may be slated to wind down by Dec. 31, 2014, broad exemptions for coal-burning industries like steel manufacturing and cement production will ensure more than 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will continue to make its way into Ontario’s air every year.

This CO₂ pollution, emitted from 18 facilities that will continue to use coal for production purposes, will contribute 6.47 per cent of the province’s total CO₂ emissions of more than 170 million tonnes.

Bradley told reporters in November he believes the Liberals have been clear that their commitment to eliminate coal burning in the province extends no further than shutting down Ontario Power Generation’s Thunder Bay, Lambton, Atikokan and Nanticoke generating stations.

“Our commitment was clearly on the production of electricity using coal and those were the main sources in this province over the years, the coal-fired plants,” Bradley said.

“I think the public is aware from certainly all the information that we have provided that our announcement deals strictly with the production of electricity by the government of Ontario” and is not an overall coal ban.

Subsequently, the Liberals announced on Jan. 8 the massive Nanticoke plant on Lake Erie, once the largest coal plant in North America, had ceased production in late December, leaving OPG’s Thunder Bay plant the last provincial dinosaur standing.

But unlike the Nanticoke plant, the Thunder Bay station is slated for conversion to burn advanced biomass by the end of this year.

The post Is Coal Making a Comeback? appeared first on A\J.

]]>