Fracking is Being Fought in Every Country on Every Continent - Are All the Opponents Terrorists?

Alberta landowner Jessica Ernst lights methane infused well water from her property on fire. 

This morning's article by Andrew Nikiforuk titled 'How Alberta Will Fight Fracking Folk Hero Jessica Ernst' introduced me to Jessica Ernst, a 55-year-old scientist and oil patch consultant  who is suing the Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB), the Alberta Environment and Encana for contaminating her water well with methane and other chemicals nearly a decade ago. Nikiforuk has written many great articles critical of the energy industries in Canada and beyond including a recent series on the technology of fracking with Cornell University engineering professor Anthony Ingraffea, a world-recognized fracking expert,

In a brief filed on Dec. 5, 2012 lawyers representing the ERCB [Alberta's energy regulator] argue that a regulator charged to develop oil and gas resources in the public interest owes no duty of care to protect a citizen's groundwater. The ERCB legal brief also portrays Ernst as an "ecoterrorist" because she made an offhand comment about 'the Wiebo Way'. This is the same tactic used by every neo-conservative group since 9/11. Basically if you protest or take any other action that opposes consumer capitalism, or the extraction industries, or the drone wars, or... its a long list - you are labeled a terrorist just like Jessica Ernst.

Fracking for gas not only uses toxic chemicals that can contaminate drinking and groundwater—it also releases substantial quantities of radioactive poison from the ground that will remain hot and deadly for thousands of years. Fracking is the technology being used by natural gas industry in northeastern BC to produce the gas it wants to export to China via pipelines through virgin wilderness no less destructive than the Northern Gateway Pipeline that so many are protesting.

This fracked gas to China scheme also requires the building of the Site C Dam because of the huge electric power demand that liquefying the gas would require. The Site C Dam which would flood a huge tract of the last remaining viable agricultural land in BC is another boondoggle and ecological nightmare that the First Nations and environmental communities are fighting.

Anyone who believes all this long term destruction is worth a few short term construction jobs [many of which which will go to low wage non-union temporary foreign workers anyway] has been brainwashed by the energy industry. Fracking is being fought in every country on every continent around the world. In every instance as soon as those who oppose this bullshit use civil disobedience to get publicity they are labeled terrorists by the main stream media and capitalists that own them.