Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Over the next few years, the people of the Sahtu and the people of the Northwest Territories will have to make a decision: Do we frack our land or not?
Today companies are telling us we can make lots of money fracking the land and selling the oil that comes out, but unlike the past, we can also do our own research now and we can understand that this is dangerous.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released its latest report. It repeats what we already knew from the last report in 2007, and the one before that, 2001, only now with greater certainty. Burning fossil fuels causes the planetary climate to become unbalanced, with severe consequences.
One new and startling discovery was that natural gas, or methane, is a much more dangerous greenhouse gas than we thought. We now know that methane is 34 times more unbalancing than CO2. That number used to be 25. This means that natural gas is not the clean alternative to coal that the gas companies say it is. Consider that oil fracking operations in North Dakota flare a billion dollars’ worth of methane each year.
Mary Robinson is familiar with the role of government. She is the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and was the President of Ireland. She recently said, “There is a global limit on a safe level of emissions. That means major fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground.” In publications last year, Bill McKibbon made it very clear. The fossil fuels that are left in the ground right now are five times more than what can be allowed to burn and still avoid dangerous changes to our climate. Most of it has to stay in the ground.
We need to step up and say now is not the time to extract this resource. We have the chance to make a responsible choice. Really, who wants to find meaning in their lives by driving around trucks full of toxic chemicals for a living? But there’s a truly sustainable alternative. We can choose to develop an economy based on renewable energy like biomass, wind, hydropower and solar. Instead of putting our money into infrastructure for oil companies, let’s build healthy communities. We can fix up our homes and buildings so they are warm and energy efficient. We can install wood pellet heating systems and build small hydroelectric power plants.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted
Besides environmental sustainability, such an approach would restore earth systems, ensure diversity and self-sufficiency of community economies, support our cultures, and yield distributed benefits across all of our residents. Let’s take charge of this parade and make it happen.
I will have questions for the Minister of Environment. Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.
