If anyone has the slightest idea that drilling for natural gas trapped in shale rock 1,000+ meters below the Earth is safe or sustainable, please watch the documentary film Gasland, which premiered on HBO a few days ago.

From the film, you clearly see that drilling for shale gas destroys any livable space around it. Kills it. Pollutes it. Wastes it.

You can’t live there. You can’t farm there. And you certainly can’t drink the water as evidenced by the many cases of tap water being lit on fire. That’s right – tap water – that burns.

We Quebecers are right to stop this shale gas drilling. If the drilling is allowed to occur, it will destroy the land which has already occurred far too often south of the border.

The broader question, of course, which this article fails to address is: how will Quebec or anyone else get natural gas in the future? The challenging truth is that, like petroleum oil, the easy-to-find natural gas has been found and burned.

Now what? Will we destroy our natural resources (air, land and water) just to extract and burn the last available bubbles of natural gas? It’s insane and it looks like the road we’re on unless we stop it.

Source: Globe and Mail

Thousands of metres beneath Quebec’s fertile and heavily populated St. Lawrence River valley, geologists believe up to 50 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves may be locked in hard shale. The rough preliminary estimate would place the field on a short list of the largest of its kind in Canada.

Before Quebec has even drafted its first oil-and-gas law to regulate the industry, exploration companies have obtained 600 permits and are drilling a half dozen wells to test the viability of Quebec’s gas reserves.

Shale gas would be the first major foray into fossil fuels in a province where the industry mainly pierces public consciousness for high prices at the pump, pollution, greenhouse gases or some distant environmental disaster…

At Sunday’s unveiling of the province’s plan, Mr. Arcand and Ms. Normandeau were booed and shouted down by several dozen protesters. An aide was forced to plead for calm and respect.

“Citizens have expressed their concerns, and we’ve heard them,” Ms. Normandeau said over a chorus of catcalls. “We have the responsibility to exploit such potential wealth … but we will be putting primary emphasis on the environment and on ensuring the social acceptance of any development.”

Many of the protesters were residents of Saint-Marc-sur-Richelieu, a small town about a 40-minute drive south of Montreal, where a mix of recently landed commuters and farmers have successfully stalled an early attempt at exploration by an Australian company.

Pierre Batellier, a university lecturer and leader of the local anti-drilling movement, said the town’s 2,000 residents are divided between people who welcome lease payments from drilling companies and other potential economic development and those who say Quebec is rushing into the unknown.

“There’s not a lot of tension in town, but it’s starting to grow as houses become harder to sell,” said Mr. Batellier, who teaches sustainable development at HEC Montréal, a business school.

Any oil and gas exploration would likely cause controversy in Quebec, but the “unconventional” methods used to reach shale gas promise to fuel opposition.

Exploration companies reach the gas through a recent innovation in drilling known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Thousands of litres of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into the rock to break it up and release the gas.

Several communities in Pennsylvania, where drilling is running a frenetic pace, have complained of severe water contamination while New York state has put a hold on drilling. The industry insists the problems are isolated.

Quebec environmental groups and municipal associations have asked for a moratorium on drilling until more questions are answered.

The Quebec Oil and Gas Association – created just last year and led by former Hydro-Québec president André Caillé – has predicted the industry could create thousands of jobs and drive down the price of natural gas, which is nearly twice as expensive in Quebec as it is in Alberta.

The province and industry have promised a major public-relations campaign this fall to tout the benefits of gas exploration while environmental groups say they will mobilize opposition.

The Montreal Nature museums (Insectarium, Botanical Garden, Biodôme and Planetarium) will stop selling bottled water in their gift stores. It takes more than 47 million gallons of oil to produce plastic water bottles for Americans every year. Eliminating those bottles would be like taking 100,000 cars off the road and 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. (source: Food and Water Watch)

Plastic water bottles are rarely recycled and often end up in landfill or floating in the vast ocean waste stream killing fish.

Finally, plastic bottles are unhealthy for humans. They leach chemicals into the water that you drink leading to hormone disfunction or even cancer.

Stainless steel water bottles are a solution. The best one I found is made of surgical grade stainless steel, the highest quality available. It also comes in a backpacker-style wide-mouth design that I love. It is big and holds 38oz of liquid.

If you’re worried about the “carbon consequences” from buying a steel bottle, the manufacturer, Guyot Designs, has a program called C-Minus where they offset the carbon emitted from making the bottle. Every bottle they produce carries 100lbs of verified green house gas emissions reductions – making their bottles not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative!

Other highlights:

• Fair labor and fair wages were used in making this product.
• It’s 100% recyclable.
• Dishwasher safe.
• Lifetime warranty.

This “plan”, whose goal is to have 9 billion people “living well, within the resource limitations of the planet”, was created by corporations in an effort to preserve their usefulness in the face of Peak Everything. While there are some good ideas here to be pursued, such as reducing our carbon footprint and doubling agricultural production, there is no mention of any practical ways to achieve these goals.

For example, in their executive summary they claim that the assets to achieve their ambitious goals already exist: “The participating companies strongly believe that the world already has the knowledge, science, technologies, skills and financial resources needed to achieve Vision 2050…”

Well, that’s great, but they didn’t mention how to provide the basics of life needed to sustain 9 billion people: energy, topsoil and water. Where will they come from? Another planet? The report basically says very little. How is that so much energy gets put into writing something so large that is so useless?

Source: Smart Planet

Where there is a problem, there is an opportunity…Montreal finished at the bottom of the list behind Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Quebec City, Ottawa and Halifax.

Via: Huff Strategy

Corporate Knights Magazine unveiled the third-annual Corporate Knights Most Sustainable Cities in Canada

The top cities in the 2009 list. The comprehensive ranking identifies Canadian cities whose practices leave the smallest environmental footprint possible and create a healthy, thriving population. Corporate Knights Sustainable Cities Ranking are as follows:

Large city category: Edmonton, AB
Medium city category: Halifax, NS
Small city category: Yellowknife, NT

…Montreal’s (5.96) ambitious GHG reduction target is complemented by the city’s innovative “Bixi” bike share program and a plan to double its network of bike paths by 2014. Montreal’s 2009 budget allocated a record $322 million to accessible, energy-efficient public transit. Host to over 32 public arts events last year, the largest community garden network in the country, and the fewest fast food stores per capita of all cities, Montreal’s top score was in the Social Well-being category.

Opportunity to improve: Montreal struggled in the Ecological Integrity category with high rates of water use and poor air quality. High unemployment rates aided to a poor showing in Economic Security.

Sounds like a great evening! January 20th, 7-9PM at the Masion Verte Coop (5785 Sherbrooke West in N.D.G.)

From Maison Verte:

BOOK LAUNCH: Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A do-it-ourselves Guide by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew (South End Press, 2008).

Join author Scott Kellogg in a discussion on urban ecological survival skills. Explore the cross-section of permaculture and social activism including the design of tools and techniques used to secure people’s access to life’s basic necessities: food, water security, shelter, waste management and energy production.

These systems are simple, affordable and are built from salvaged, waste and recycled materials.

They include:

• Soil building and asphalt removal
• Bioremediation (cleaning contaminated soils using plants, fungi and biological processes)
• Rainwater harvesting
• Aquaculture (ponds, plants, fish and algae)
• Passive solar and bicycle windmills
• Biogas and veggie oil biofuels
• Natural construction methods (straw bale, clay woodchip)
• Do-It-Yourself air purification

Biography:

Scott Kellogg is a co-founder of the Rhizome Collective (Austin, Texas), and the director of its sustainability program. A teacher, activist, ecological designer and father, he divides his time between Texas, and the Albany Free School Community in Albany, New York. Scott is currently earning a Masters in Environmental Science from Johns Hopkins University.

The little town of Saint Martine just south of Montreal (see map) is offering new home builders a one year property tax rebate if they can earn a Silver, Gold or Platinum level LEED designation for water use. There is no reason why other towns like Westmount or Hampstead couldn’t make the same offer for existing homes. It saves the municipality money in the long (sustainable) run.

Source: Le Devoir

La municipalité montérégienne de Sainte-Martine exemptera de taxes municipales pendant un an toute nouvelle construction qui respectera les exigences de certification LEED pour résidences, que ce soit au niveau argent, or ou platine. Elle devient ainsi la première municipalité au Canada à offrir une telle incitation fiscale.

Research Credit: Mary Soderstrom

This sounds like a U.S.-style power grab to rob the people of their rightful property. It also seems to be a direct assault on anyone who wishes to live sustainably by drawing the water from a well under their own land. However, containers of less than 20 liters for human consumption would be banned.

This needs further investigation and discussion. The press release seems to be from a pro-industry think-tank. Anyone have a perspective on this?

Source: The Fraser Institute

MONTREAL, QC—The Quebec government’s proposed legislation, Bill 92, will abolish all private property rights to water and result in a massive transfer of wealth from Quebecers to government, concludes a new report from independent research organization the Fraser Institute.

“Bill 92 ignores the power of market forces in favour of government force. If the legislation is enacted, it will rob Quebecers of their property rights and discourage investment in the province,” said Jean-François Minardi, Fraser Institute senior policy analyst and co-author of the report, The Government’s Groundwater Grab: An Attack on Property Rights in Quebec.

“Nearly half of Quebec’s population relies on groundwater from private wells for drinking water. This legislation is an attack on these property rights.”

The proposed Bill 92 declares both surface water and groundwater to be “part of the common heritage of the Quebec nation” and off limits to appropriation “except under the conditions defined by law.” This legislation, if passed, will empower government regulators to dictate who may use water, how much they may use, and how they can use it. Additionally, the government has indicated that it plans to impose water royalties following the passage of the legislation.

But Minardi and co-author, Diane Katz, Fraser Institute director of risk, environment, and energy policy, argue in the report that Quebec’s water resources are not threatened and there is no need for such extreme, interventionist legislation.

“Quebec contains 20 per cent of Canada’s freshwater land area and it’s estimated that the renewable reserves of groundwater in Quebec’s inhabited regions totals 200 trillion litres,” Katz said.

“Regulations already exist that prohibit bulk water withdrawals and diversions. This proposed legislation is simply an expansion of government power over water use. This is in contrast to legal precedence in Quebec that suggests landowners have rights to groundwater beneath their property.”

The report traces the history of water regulation in Quebec, pointing out that Quebec has had regulations covering water diversions for more than a decade. It also finds that the proposed legislation is riddled with vague and arbitrary provisions and grants virtually unlimited powers to the minister of sustainable development, environment and parks. Such overzealous regulation offers no guarantee that water will be apportioned wisely. Instead, it promises to politicize every aspect of water use and dissuade industrial investment.

Interestingly, the legislation also exempts water withdrawn to be marketed for human consumption, if packaged in Quebec in containers of 20 litres or less. Quebec’s water-bottling industry is undergoing rapid growth and currently generates sales of $75 million a year.

Minardi and Katz suggest that rather than additional regulation, the government should look to property rights and market mechanisms, which have historically been more effective at managing resources than government regulations.

They write that a water market would allow farmers, industry, municipalities, and even environmental groups to buy and sell water rights as dictated by supply and demand. The prices would reflect the true value of water with far more accuracy than any government royalty scheme and thus better encourage efficiency and conservation.

“Well-defined property rights to resources such as water are fundamental to giving people the proper incentives for sustainable management of resources,” Minardi said.

“As it is now structured, Bill 92 is an attempt by the government to establish water as a public resource and to terminate the rights of private property owners.”