Margaret Wente's argument for 'more fracking and faster' represents a dangerously narrow approach to economic development and addressing Canada's energy needs. In addition to price and availability, we need to carefully assess the risks of fracking including the potential for water contamination, high lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, links between earthquakes and injection of fracking wastewater into the ground, the lack of regulations legally requiring public disclosure of chemicals and the lack of information on the cumulative impacts of fracking on public health and our environment.
Federal, Quebec, British Columbia and Nova Scotia governments have begun reviews on fracking precisely because they don't know enough about it. Sixty-two per cent of Canadians support a moratorium on all fracking for natural gas until all federal environmental reviews are complete.
Considering risks and community opposition, we need a ban on fracking or at the very least a moratorium.
More important, even if fracking technology can be proven to be environmentally sound (which is unlikely), the use of natural gas itself is an environmental nightmare. Fifty percent "cleaner" than coal and 30% "cleaner" than oil is still pretty dirty fuel. Fossil fuels have caused runaway climate change. They are not a clean energy technology. Calling for more production of natural gas is criminally irresponsible.
And natural gas has something that's far worse than the CO2 emissions of oil or coal: it's made up almost entirely of methane! Methane gas, without even being burned, is over 20 times more effective in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, over a 100-year period. That makes natural gas itself a far more potent greenhouse gas than the CO2 that's produced when you burn it! A great amount of methane gas is wasted and released into the atmosphere during the processes of fracking, processing, storage, transportation, and distribution. Controlling this wastage is possible to some extent, but it can never be eliminated. For example, ground water that absorbs natural gas because of the tremendous pressures used in the fracking process will eventually release that methane gas into the atmosphere when it is brought to the surface.