Larry Powell Powell is a veteran, award-winning journalist based in Shoal Lake, Manitoba, Canada. He specialize in stories about agriculture and the environment. For decades, he worked for broadcast outlets in all four provinces in western Canada. This included a 5 years stint as Senior Editor for CBC Radio News in Saskatchewan. He is authorized to receive embargoed news releases on important, global stories, through the Science Media Centre of Canada, the Royal Society, Nature Research and the World Weather Attribution Network. He's a member of the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada, the Canadian Association of Journalists and a past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2020, Powell joined an international team of writers providing articles for the Swiss-based online journal, Focusing on Wildlife - celebrating the biodiversity of Planet Earth. In June, 2014, he was a panelist at a world conference in Winnipeg entitled Holding
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It's truly heartbreakiing to see the number of commenters in this space who seem to have no heart at all for the Mother Earth we all live upon and which gives life to us all. My simple question would be - why do we need "fracking" in Quebec (or anywhere)on top of all the other fossil fuel extraction now happening all over the globe? We are now in a serious state of OVER-SUPPLY, apparently, yet we continue to clamor for more. Evidence on the harm fracking does (including as a cause of earthquakes) is now there for all to see. Can you people not read? And, oh yes, you are fast losing your ability to govern yourselves in Quebec as elsewhere in Canada. Insidious free trade agreements political leaders at all levels are falling over themselves to endorse, take away the ability of your elected leaders to stand up to the forces of Big Oil, even if they wanted to. Here is an excerpt from a blog article I wrote last spring, entitled "Free Trade. Path to Prosperity or Back Road to Corporatism."
"LonePine Resources, a Texas-based oil company is suing Canada for $250 million because Quebec refused to allow it to "frack" beneath the St. Lawrence River, at least until better regulations could be put into place. "Fracking," or hydraulic fracturing, involves the controversial practise of pumping chemicals under pressure into underground shale formations, to force out the oil or gas. In documents filed under NAFTA, LonePine calls Quebec's actions, "an arbitrary, capricious, and illegal revocation of the Enterprise’s valuable right to mine for oil and gas..."
Perhaps the "drill-baby-drill" crowd could come forward next time they comment here and declare any conflicts they hold - i.e. how many depend on the industry for their paycheques? I'm sure there are a few...
Wake up and smell the roses, folks! We are poisoning our terrestrial home, one acquifer at a time!