The Bruce Report

In the four decades since “Limits to Growth” hit the bookstands, legions of scientists have spent several hundred happy hours dismissing, defusing and debunking its apocalyptic predictions about the fate of the earth and civilization’s inevitable collapse.

As recently as this year, a commentary in the Globe and Mail reported on a “retrospective analysis” by Charles Kenny, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Centre for Global Development, who declares that industrial output is “nowhere near” the study’s “doomsday scenario.”

On the contrary, he says, the planet’s resources will persist because “the world economy is becoming increasingly lightweight. Industries consume fewer mineral resources for each dollar of output. As much as two-thirds of global economic activity consists of outputs that don’t. . .weigh anything at all – things such as entertainment, education, finance and health care.”

The commentator, himself, observed, “This shift toward a lightweight economy parallels the rise of service industries – from a 53-per-cent share of the global economy in 1970 to a 71-per-cent share in 2010.”

Yet, a new analysis suggests that the authors of that 1972 work, published at the zenith of white, liberal guilt, were chillingly close to the mark.

According to an item in a recent edition of Smithsonian magazine, “Australian physicist Graham Turner compared real-world data from 1970 to 2000 with the business-as-usual scenario (and) found the predictions nearly matched the facts. ‘There is a very clear warning bell being rung here,’ he says. ‘We are not on a sustainable trajectory.’”

In fact, Turner reports that each and every trend line – food per capita, services per capita, global pollution, remaining non-renewable resources, population, and industrial output per capita – is tracking as expected towards a crest, followed almost immediately by a fall sometime between 2020 and 2030.

How much verisimilitude we choose to lend these observations depends entirely on how much faith we have in the business of prognostication. After all, the world is not a simple organism whose behaviour often, or even ever, conforms to our ideas about cause and effect; a lot can happen in the span of ten years.

Still, one detects the reemergence of a familiar theme in the urgent, and perennially provocative, conversation about the future of the planet – one that insists the current pace of economic growth is unsustainable and, as there’s nothing we can do about it, we’d better get used to a slower lifestyle.

That, at least, appears to be the central argument of Jeff Rubin’s new book, “The End of Growth”. He’s the former chief economist at CIBC World Markets who penned “Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller” a few years back. This new work is his follow-up.

In a Globe and Mail blog post, Rubin writes that while the planet will never run out of oil and gas, humanity will exhaust recoverable reserves of the cheap stuff. That spells the end of growth as we know it.

“The relationship is straightforward,” he says. “Economic growth is a function of energy consumption. With national economies around the world once again forced to pay more than $100 (U.S.) for every barrel of oil consumed, a critical question must be asked – what happens when the world’s most important source of energy becomes unaffordable?”

A run on shoe leather, perhaps? Bicycles for everyone?

Not quite, but Rubin doesn’t think a low-growth, or even no-growth, world shouldn’t frighten anyone. He points out that some of the happiest people are those who  take things in their decelerating stride.

Naturally, he, like the “Limits to Growth” gang before him, is not without his critics. Still, he remains adamant, dismissing Canada’s present preoccupation with Alberta oil, for example, as “insignificant”.

Indeed, he says in a recent Financial Post interview, “I don’t care if there are billions of barrels in Eagle Ford, Bakken, the tar sands, the Brazilian sub-salt, the Arctic deepwater, Orinoco. That’s not really the point. If the prices needed to get that oil out of the ground are triple-digit prices, it’s as if those resources don’t exist because the economy won’t be able to afford to burn it.”

All of which may only prove that one man’s apocalypse is another’s rapture.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Allow one of the world’s leading climatologists to be clear: He still thinks we’re all stupid.

To be precise, Dr. Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria tells CTV that we – meaning human beings, in general – are “greedy and selfish” when we should be “positioning ourselves now for the time when it does run out.”

The “it” to which he refers is oil and it’s been the bane of his existence since long before he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with other members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore for their efforts to, in the words of the awards committee, “build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

Only, now, oil tasks him for an entirely different, and unexpected, reason. Black gold, it seems, is not the culprit he once believed it was. In fact, the Alberta tar sands development is not nearly the carbon emitter he and virtually every major environmentalist in the world have claimed it is.

Perhaps most vexing to such a respected authority and fierce opponent of fossil-fuel use, is that his own research seems to prove those inconvenient truths.

“I was surprised by the results of our analysis,” Weaver told The Canadian Press on Monday, in reference to a study he recently completed with graduate student Neil Stewart. “We’ve heard a lot about how if we burn all the oil in the tar sands, it’s going to lead to this, that and the other. We thought, ‘Well, let’s take a look at this. What is the warming potential of this area?’ and the numbers are what they are.”

According to Weaver’s and Stewart’s research, if all 170 billion barrels of commercially viable oil-sands crude is excavated, its production and subsequent use might raise global temperatures by between 0.02 and 0.05 degrees centigrade in about 100 years. If, somehow, all 1.8 trillion barrels of estimated reserves managed to spill into markets, the warming effect might measure 0.33 degrees.

These are not insignificant numbers, but they come pretty close, compared with previous estimates of oil’s contribution to global warming. And, apart from anything else, they do suggest that science can be a harsh mistress even to those who embrace it to inform their view of the world.

Still, Weaver points out his research says nothing about the other deleterious effects of tar sands development – air and water pollution and the consequent social disruption in local communities.

In fact, his findings erect another sturdy platform for new alarms. “We’re running out of oil,” he says. “We’re not running out of coal, not running out of natural gas. The warming from these other resources is very large. The bottom line from a global warming perspective as a society (is) we’ll live or die by the use of coal.”

If, for example, developed and emerging nations switched to a coal-based energy profile, global temperatures could conceivably increase by as much as 15 degrees. (Albeit, this would require a concerted, if unlikely, multinational effort to burn up all of the Earth’s recoverable reserves in a geologically infinitesimal period).

Yet, the use of coal – which is cheaper, more reliable and more abundant than just about any other renewable and non-renewable energy source – is rising. According to an analysis by BP, worldwide consumption jumped by nearly eight per cent in 2010, led my China (up 10 per cent) and India (11 per cent).

Oil, then, is merely the gateway drug to far more harmful forms of fossil-fuel addiction, when it should be the methadone we use to transition ourselves, our societies and economies into healthy, sustainable states of earthly bliss.

Or so says Weaver, who wants governments to seriously explore ways to shift consumer demand away from hydrocarbons.

That they are not because we are not interested in, or sufficiently concerned about, our continuing ability to inhabit the planet only supports his central hypothesis, which his research does not yet disprove.

We are all still stupid.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

The man of La Mancha now tilts at the sails he first hoisted. But, where Spain – the birthplace of the fictional, windmill-hating Don Quixote – has virtually abandoned an industry it once dominated, others are rushing to pick up the slackened halyard.

That’s the news, at any rate, from the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA), which reports that the global market for wind turbines set a new record last year, bringing the planet’s capacity from this energy source to 239 Gigawatt, enough to supply three per cent of total electrical demand.

That may not sound like much to oil-addicted westerners whose commitment to clean energy has been, at times, as intermittent as the wind, itself. But emerging nations are far from shy about incorporating such “marginal” technologies into their power portfolios. And the trend tells a compelling tale.

Since 2009, China has supplanted the United States as the world’s leading wind generator of electricity. The former has added nearly 40 GW of capacity to its grid, compared with the latter’s 12. And though Germany and Spain rank third and fourth, respectively, India is nibbling at their heels with 16 GW of commercial resource in play, a circumstance that prompts the WWEA to sound notes of both congratulations and concern.

“A strong increase in  wind power utilization can be observed especially in markets like China, India, Brazil and Mexico,” the organization wrote in a statement last week. “This opens new windows for further growth. . .On the other hand, several of the European markets showed stagnation or even decrease. . .We call especially on the government of Spain to revise its recent suspension of the support schemes and continue its leadership role in wind power deployment.”

That call is more likely to remain unanswered, at least for now.

The paradox of renewables is their dependence on less expensive, dirtier sources of energy to fuel the technology-producing industries that generate them. Historically, only mature, industrialized nations, like those belonging to the European Union and NAFTA, have possessed the economic wherewithal and consequent track record of commercial achievement to sustain the necessary level of investment.

The financial collapse of 2008 and consequent rolling debt crises, however, have leveled the playing field. As the West’s gross domestic product tanked, the East’s leapt ahead. Now, BRIC (Brazil, Russia, india and China) has both the appetite for exotic energy alternatives and the bank balance to pay for them.

And, thanks to the formerly wealthy world’s decades-long process of continuous innovation, the cost of this technology is actually dropping, a fact which suggests that, soon, wind power development may not exceed the means of even the poorest nations.

In fact, this is already occurring in places like Thailand and the African country of Burkina Faso, where University of Moncton professor and renewables advocate Yves Gagnon has collaborated on comprehensively mapping wind speeds, frequencies and reliability.

“Burkina Faso is one of the poorest nations on Earth, with a per capita gross domestic product of only $1,200,” he told me recently. “There is a direct link between poverty and energy. This country has very low electrification rates – maybe 164 Megawatt (MW) of installed power from diesel-powered generators and four hydro dams to serve a population of 14 million. Energy is one of keys to growth, and if we can show the potential of renewables, then we’re creating the environment for clean, rather than dirty, development in the long run.”

The point should not be lost on policy makers and legislators in New Brunswick, where world-class breezes are a matter of record. (Gagnon produced the region’s first wind map, to various degrees of acclaim, in 2007).

Currently, the province generates only 500 of its total 4,678 MW of electrical capacity through two renewables (294 from wind and 206 from biomass). In 2009-10, NB Power deployed the following fuel mix to meet the rest of its in-province energy requirements: Bulk purchases from other jurisdictions, 27 per cent; coal, 25 per cent; hydro, 17 per cent; oil, 16 per cent; and natural gas, 12 per cent.

Still, as the costs associated with refurbishing the Point Lepreau nuclear station and the Mactaquac dam threaten to impoverish a generation, the least quixotic of all approaches to meeting our future power needs may well be in the wind.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

As Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver draws a line in the tar sands, daring well-financed “radical groups” opposed to Alberta oil development to cross, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May wags a scolding finger at the petro-lobby and their willing dupes in high government office.

And so, dear viewer, another episode of “Dynasty: Canadian Style” unfurls, chocked full of the sort of hyperbole we expect from a prime-time soap opera.

Casting himself in the role of patriot, warning his countrymen of the dark forces at work to upend their sovereign right to poison the planet, the Honourable Mr. Oliver writes in an open letter this week: “There are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydro-electric dams.”

He speaks specifically about the regulatory review, currently underway, to ascertain the environmental, economic and social implications of building a new pipeline west to the Pacific coast – a review that, he says, could be “hijacked” to achieve a “radical ideological agenda. . .These groups seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects.”

What’s worse, “They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest. They attract jet-setting celebrities with some of the largest personal carbon footprints in the world to lecture Canadians not to develop our natural resources.”

Enters from stage left Order of Canada recipient, former Sierra Club of Canada executive director and sitting Member of Parliament Ms. May with a predictably dissenting opinion:

“Dear Joe. . .I respect you and like you a lot as a colleague in the House. Unfortunately, I think your role as Minister of Natural Resources has been hijacked by the PMO spin machine. The PMO is, in turn, hijacked by the foreign oil lobby. You are, as Minister of Natural Resources, in a decision-making, judge-like role. You should not have signed such a. . .rant.”

For anyone who has been faithfully following the arc of the plot lo’ these many months, May’s choice of words is telling. “You should not have signed such a rant,” clearly suggests that Uncle Joe is not a willing participant, but rather a government foil, stripped of volition: a good soldier simply following orders.

On the other hand, the senior factotum might say the same thing about her.

“Our regulatory system must be fair, independent, consider different viewpoints including those of Aboriginal communities, review the evidence dispassionately and then make an objective determination,” he writes. “It must be based on science and the facts. . .We do not want projects that are safe, generate thousands of new jobs and open up new export markets, to die in the approval phase due to unnecessary delays.

Unfortunately, the system seems to have lost sight of this balance over the past years. It is broken. It is time to take a look at it.”

Oh Joe, May rejoins, there you go again!

“The repeated attacks on environmental review by your government merit mention. . . Your government has dealt repeated blows to the process, both through legislative changes, shoved through in the 2010 omnibus budget bill, and through budget cuts. . .The idea that First Nations, conservation groups, and individuals opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline are opposed to all forestry, mining, hydro-electric and gas is not supported by the facts. I am one of those opposed to the Northern Gateway pipeline. I do not oppose all development; neither does the Green Party; neither do environmental NGOS; neither do First Nations.”

In fact, as both combatants acknowledge, a regulatory process is in place and commissioners will hear from 50 interveners representing all sides of the debate as well as 4,000 individual presenters. So, the idea that the system is broken, compromised or otherwise rigged thanks to either Big Oil or environmental activists is hardly credible.

But facts make poor drama. Political theatre is far more entertaining.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

To appreciate just how touchy people of every political stripe and ideological bent become when the target of their concerns is clean and accessible water, look no farther than the front page of this newspaper over the past few months.

An inter-jurisdictional spat between the City of Dieppe and the owner of a trailer park unites 500 residents, who have virtually nothing else in common, in acrimonious action to protect their rights to potable water.

Moncton City Council’s decision to slap a moratorium on fluoridation earns it plaudits from cab drivers, construction workers, bar owners, teachers and physicians (though many dentists are unimpressed impressed).

And then there’s the rolling shale gas controversy.

It doesn’t take a Maude Barlow, that ubiquitous Canadian agitator against all things corporate, to remind people of their nearest worry. But her commentary does tend to put the issue in high relief, as it did a couple of years ago when she told an international audience the following:

“The water crisis is perhaps the most urgent ecological and human threat of our time and the first – and most devastating – face of climate change. More children die each year of water-borne disease than war, HIV/AIDS and traffic accidents combined. In their recent World Water Development Report, 24 agencies of the United Nations confirmed what those of us working in the field already knew: that the global water crisis is getting worse by the day and threatening millions more people every year.

“The problem,” she continued, “is that we humans have seen the Earth and its water resources as something that exists for our benefit and economic advancement rather than as a living ecological system that needs to be safeguarded if it is to survive. We have polluted, diverted and displaced so much water from where it is needed for a healthy hydrologic cycle to function, that whole parts of the planet are drying up.

“We are just beginning to understand the devastation of this drying to the ecosystem and other species as we humans continue to rob the Earth of the water it needs for survival. The human water footprint surpasses all others and endangers life on Earth itself.”

Her conclusion: “The path to a sustainable water future is difficult but clear. First, water must be seen as a commons that belongs to the Earth and all species alike. It must be declared a public resource that belongs equally to all people, the ecosystem and the future. It must be preserved for all time and practice in law as a public trust and a human right. Clean water must be delivered as a public service, not a profitable commodity.”

In fact, the debate now raging in New Brunswick over shale gas is nothing if not about water.

A recent poll conducted by Corporate Research Associates reveals that people in this province are more or less evenly split on the subject, with 45 per cent “completely or mostly” supporting the endeavor and 45 per cent opposing. Ten per cent were noncommittal.

But when the question turned to the possible environmental implications of the hydraulic fracturing process – which employs large amounts of water, mixed with chemicals, to extract natural gas from the country rock – a revealing 83 per cent said they worried about the practice even with stiff controls in place. Indeed, 58 per cent of respondents insisted that the environment trumped commerce.

All of which strongly suggests that the provincial government’s focus, as it attempts to sell residents on the economic benefits the industry promises, should not be on establishing a framework for good corporate citizenship – a conceit no one believes will protect the water supply.

Rather, it should be on regulations that credibly back up the Alward team’s rhetoric about environmental protection. If they truly intend to install the toughest rules in North America, let’s see them do it before concerns about New Brunswick’s water becomes their political Waterloo.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

The New Brunswick government’s handling of the touchy shale gas file has, at times, resembled a stand-up routine worthy of the late, great Abbot and Costello.

“Who’s on first?”

“Yes”

“Who?”

“Yes”

“That’s what I’m asking you. . .Who’s on first.”

“That’s right.”

Now, it appears, comparisons to the silent-film-era Keystone Kops – that fictional band of bunglers who, try as they might, never get their man – are in order.

Back in October, we may recall, Calgary-based Windsor Energy Inc. annoyed Sussex town councillors by conducting seismic tests within the community’s boundaries without first obtaining their permission to do so.

That little bit of discourtesy, at a time when half the province was up in arms over hydro-fracking, so apparently outraged Natural Resources Minister Bruce Northrup that he launched a departmental investigation before filing a complaint with the RCMP.

“I have a lot of confidence. . .in the justice system,” he told reporters on November 9, the day he asked the mounties to get involved. “They’ll work with the Crown prosecutor to get all the information together to see if there’s actions to be taken. It may take several months to complete.”

Well, not exactly.

The cops returned with their decision in less than 30 days (last Tuesday), declaring they would not lay charges against the company owing to the absence of, in the words of a Natural Resources Department Spokesman, “probable grounds.”

That set opposition Liberal Leader Victor Boudreau to licking his chops.

“Now we find out that with a simple violation, they can’t even charge a company,” he told the legislature. “They’re going rap the company on the knuckles and tell them not to do it again. . .Obviously, the rules that we have are not strong enough.”

Precisely, said Northrup. . .sort of.

Having insisted only a month ago that “New Brunswickers can be assured that all companies exploring for or developing oil and natural gas reserves in our province are expected to observe our laws,” he vowed last week “there’s going to be regulations and they will be strong regulations against companies that if this mistake is done again, we will make a decision overnight and not take weeks to do this.”

But as it may take another month or two before the new regulations are in place,   any company that wants to offend local sensibilities are, presumably, free to do so.

Not so, says Northrup (who clearly fails to appreciate his conundrum).

“I will not wait for another incident,” he fulminated last week. “I have been very, very firm with my staff that we are going to put the proper regulations in place.”

Somehow, then, tin advance of “another “incident”, the regulations will be in place before. . .well, the regulations are actually in place.

Meanwhile, in a turn worthy of a Charlie Chaplin tragicomedy (and one that cannot, for once, be laid at the government’s doorstep), provincial NDP Leader Dominic Cardy now says that Windsor Energy’s CEO, Khalid Amin, has threatened unspecified legal consequences if the politician continues to publicly claim that the company has broken the law of the land (which, strictly speaking, it has not).

Referring to a phone call he received from Amin, Cardy told the CBC last Thursday, “(He) went on to say, over the course of several minutes and in several different ways, that if I didn’t stop, I would hear from his lawyers.”

Back in June, Premier David Alward unveiled a few rules of the road for “oil and natural gas companies that wish to engage in exploration.” These include providing: baseline testing on all potable water wells located within a minimum distance of 200 metres of seismic testing and 500 metres of drilling for oil or natural gas; full disclosure of all proposed, and actual, contents of any fluids, chemicals and additives used in the hydraulic fracturing (fracing) process; and a security bond to protect property owners and taxpayers from the impact of industrial accidents.

There’s no mention of comic relief.

But, perhaps, that’s just another oversight.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

It took The Almighty seven days to make the world. It has taken international leaders, gathered in the South African city of Durban, only slightly more time to unmake it.

Apart from the hot air wafting about the conference tables and meeting rooms of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, it seems certain that nothing productive will emanate from this latest in a series of terminally flawed gabfests on the fate of the earth.

Meanwhile, polar ice caps continue to melt, glaciers continue to recede, the number of species “at risk” continues to rise, as does the level of human-generated, heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Or so says the National Aeronautics and Space Administration:

“All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.”

Still, you can’t believe everything you read, especially if it comes from so-called experts. After all, wasn’t NASA responsible for faking the lunar landings in the 1970s and the photos from Mars in the early part of the last decade?

Indeed, in the second decade of the 21st Century, there is no truth that truthiness cannot counter, no fact that a factoid can’t oppose. And the climate change debate is the perfect nexus for these diametrically different perceptions of reality.

Politicians and big business know this, which is why they are loath to pursue credible alternatives to the fossil-fuel-based economy. Managing the status quo is simply easier. Drawing from the rich well of misinformation buys them time.

But if, to paraphrase Ralph Nader, the use of solar energy is a non-starter because the oil industry does not own the sun, we are, in fact, running out of time for the structural imbecility that continues to insist there can be no rapprochement between environmental stewardship and blunt-nosed economics.

Canada and the United States are not only doing a disservice to humanity when they insist there can be no binding, post-Kyoto carbon-reduction agreement until other large emitters, such as China, sign on, they are ignoring the enormous industrial potential – of clean-energy R&D and consequent commercialization – such an accord would help unlock.

In an analysis last July, Google.org – the philanthropic arm of the ubiquitous Internet search provider – concluded that within 20 years “aggressive energy innovation” could expand the U.S. economy by more than $155 billion, generate more than one million jobs, save consumers an average of $1,000 a year per household, reduce oil consumption by 1.1 billion barrels a year, and reduce total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 13 per cent.

Moreover, there is mounting evidence that Americans are warming to the idea of alternatives to oil. Having surveyed hundreds stateside last year, Applied Materials Inc. found that two-thirds of respondents believe solar technology should play a greater role in meeting the country’s energy needs. Fully 75 per cent feel that increasing renewable energy and decreasing U.S. dependence on foreign oil should top the nation’s list of energy priorities.

Others point out, not unreasonably, the troubling ramifications of this type of thinking. They insist that any advances in alternative sources of energy will only eliminate jobs and business opportunities in the traditional sector and needlessly compromise global supply chains for everything from food to manufactured goods.

This criticism might be fair if the energy industry steered itself only by short-term objectives. In fact, grids and generation technologies take decades to fully deploy, during which time research and investment would not only replace “lost” petro-jobs but also multiply and diversify employment opportunities in economic segments that emerge  to serve wind, solar, and fuel cell production.

If world leaders cannot now bring themselves to agree at international conferences, they should stop talking and start doing what makes practical sense.

While there’s still time.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

A made-in-Canada technology that uses propane to extract natural gas from sedimentary rock without fouling water tables or harming the environment in any other discernible way is one of those feats of engineering that qualifies, to the untrained layman, as weird science.

Weirder still, however, is why news of the technique has not yet reached the eyes and ears of most people in New Brunswick – where the debate over hydraulic fracturing has become a pitched battle between intractable foes – even though “gas fraccing” has been tested successfully at development plays just outside Moncton.

According to a report posted on insideclimatenews.org earlier this month, Phillip Knoll, president of Halifax-based Corridor Resources (one of two major exploration companies currently operating in New Brunswick) says the procedure works. “We had absolutely tremendous results that compared favourably with other techniques,” he enthused in the article. “The technology is improving substantially.”

Specifically, the technology, developed and patented by Calgary-based GasFrac, pumps propane emulsion into shale, cracking the formations and liberating the gas therein. Says the article: “Unlike water, the gel does a kind of disappearing act underground. It reverts to vapor due to pressure and heat, then returns to the surface – along with the natural gas – for collection, possible reuse and ultimate resale. And, also unlike water, propane does not carry back to the surface drilling chemicals, ancient seabed salts and underground radioactivity.”

Added GasFrac’s Chief Technology Officer Robert Lestz: “We leave the nasties in the ground, where they belong.”

If this is true (and the claims are not just more pennies for industry’s wishing well), then are we not now sitting on a credible alternative to the extraordinarily controversial water-based method, which has riven polluted communities across North America? More pointedly, perhaps, shouldn’t the provincial government aggressively research the broad commercial potential of a technique that is, apparently, both productive and benign before the arched hyperbole on both sides of the issue finally devolves into irredeemable nonsense?

Premier Alward and his ruling Tories are staring into the maw of the toughest challenge any New Brunswick government has faced in modern times. Cavernously deep, annual deficits and long-term debt have effectively hobbled meaningful progress in almost every sphere of public administration. The size of the civil service is unsustainably large. Health care, social and education costs are badly aligned with available resources. And economic development, despite some promising initiatives up north, is proceeding with all the haste of an advancing glacier.

Like it or not, shale gas promises enormous boons for the province at a time when it most needs them. Some estimates peg the yearly royalties accruing from a fully developed industry at more than $400 million – a nice chunk of rolling change for a province that, apart from all its other financial burdens, must soon worry about a $2-billion capital upgrade (or decommission) of the Mactaquac hydroelectric plant.

Still, drilling only makes sense if the social and environmental costs do not exceed the putative economic benefits. Unfortunately, the provincial government has found little to comfort the growing number of New Brunswickers, from all walks of life and political persuasions, who are convinced that Fredericton’s latest league of extraordinary ladies and gentlemen is simply spooning with its Big Gas paramour.

That the propane procedure is not well known outside industry circles may only suggest that the companies currently engaged in testing and exploration consider the technology experimental or, more likely, prohibitively expensive. Indeed, exploiting a free, public resource (water), rather than a refined petrochemical, to meet their financial objectives is the logical, if amoral, choice.

But the private sector’s narrow, bottom-line preoccupations should not supersede the public interest. And, in this respect, the provincial government is obligated to openly explore all options that may serve to heal the rift between producers and consumers, between corporations and communities.

For the sake of New Brunswick’s long-term economic future, this is a conversation we need to have, even if (especially if) the science behind gas fraccing turns out to be truly weird, after all.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Does it take a former small-town mayor from nowhereville, Texas, to teach New Brunswickers the meaning of decorum?

Was it decorous, for example, when the province’s deputy minister of Natural Resources – one Sam McEwan – chose to sit with natural gas industry honchos at a public meeting about hydro-fraccing in Fredericton last Sunday? Was it dignified when he joked about the “evangelical” atmosphere in the room packed with opponents of the risky practice – worried citizens, all?

Likewise, was it reasonable for those who gathered to treat a duly appointed officer of government – a government that the majority of this fractious jurisdiction’s electorate installed only a year ago – as if he were an interloper, a  cypher, a quisling?

Mr. McEwan later explained he meant no offense by the remark, overheard by a member of the gallery sitting in the row ahead of him; only that he was impressed by the passion on display. The overture hardly mattered, though, as organizers claimed the group didn’t care what he had to say, anyway.

But one man did: The guest of honour, Calvin Tillman, the ex-chief administrative officer of Dish, Texas (population: 200) who had travelled on someone’s dime (perhaps, his own) to chronicle his unhappy experiences with the shale gas industry in his state.

“I don’t want to ever discourage someone from coming out and, frankly, I would have liked for him (McEwan) to be able to ask questions about my presentation and do that sort of stuff,” he quite reasonably observed. “I think they (government) could learn from what I have to say. I think just by virtue of them coming out shows my trip up here was some success and you have that group listening to what’s going on down at the grassroots level. I would happily spend as much time as I can with them and help them in their decision-making, as well.”

It is, perhaps, too pollyannaish to expect the debate over hydraulic fracturing in this province to suddenly apply Robert’s Rules of Order to its proceedings. Like everywhere else – where the controversial method of blowing water into layers of sedimentary rock to liberate the natural gas trapped therein has polarized opinion – this has become a dog fight between industry representatives and community advocates.

Yet, Tillman’s call for cooler heads is both rational and timely. Nothing good ever comes from screaming across a crowded chamber. Meanwhile, as he correctly suggests, government’s proper role should be to weigh all the available evidence with as much impartiality as it can muster.

The question is whether the Alward team is inclined or prepared to do this.

From the beginning, the Tories have articulated their desires clearly. They want shale gas exploration and drilling to rebuild local economies and help restore the province’s fiscal health, now ailing from historically deep annual deficits and a long-term debt that, for the size of the population, rivals a Third World country’s.

To this end, several government members have toured large plays in the United States and returned to cheerfully report that criticism of the industry’s environmental depredations (poisoned water, polluted air, defiled soil) are exaggerated. Besides, they’ve declared, nothing like that could ever happen in New Brunswick, as they are committed to erecting the toughest regulatory regime “on the continent”.

Yet, in their public pronouncements they’ve only grudgingly embraced their function as honest brokers. And so, they’ve appeared more flat-footed than sure-footed amidst a rising tide of public opposition they never expected and still don’t fully understand. “We take your concerns very seriously,” they blurt defensively before they trundle back to their offices mumbling inaudibly, “What’s all the fuss about?”

In fact, the contretemps is not solely about unwanted mining operations. It’s embedded in a larger, global context: A gathering popular uprising against real and perceived injustices manufactured by increasingly cozy relationships between big businesses and democratically elected governments.

There may still be time for provincial ministers to correct the impression they’ve left with their constituents, but only if they take a page from Tillman’s political playbook: Reach out to the critics, examine all the evidence they present, judge the facts in good faith, stop cleaving reflexively to industry’s patois, stop making wisecracks.

And, for God’s sake, let’s start keeping it civil.

There is no such thing as an environmentally neutral way to extract a fossil fuel from the ground. There are only degrees of degradation, and for more than 100 years governments have made their faustian deals with the oil and gas industry, appreciating this simple calculus, regardless of public opinion.

How much pollution is worth the fat royalty cheques that flow into public coffers to pay for things like health care, education and deficit reduction? How many poisoned wells are tolerable in return for hundreds, even thousands, of jobs and new business opportunities? What value do we assign to resource development, and is it always higher than that we ascribe to livable communities?

New Brunswickers are about to parse these questions as the rolling debate over hydraulic fracturing stumps through their byways and backyards this fall. But, in the end, what will they discover?

On one side of the issue is a newly formed alliance of more than two-dozen groups opposed to the controversial practice of liberating natural gas by blowing slurries of water and chemicals into sedimentary rock lying deep beneath the surface. On the other are exploration companies who insist their methods are safe, and that criticism is uninformed and increasingly hyperbolic. Somewhere in the middle is the provincial department of the environment which, despite its best efforts, just can’t seem to get its message straight.

Only weeks after Minister Margaret Ann Blaney declared that the Conservation Council of New Brunswick was responsible for fanning opposition against the gas companies (a statement she later retracted and for which she apologized), she was seen executing a perfect bit of political gymnastics last Thursday when she told reporters, “We want to be clear this isn’t us hitting the road with a yea or a nay. We won’t hit the road to sell this to New Brunswickers.”

So what, then, is she hitting the road to do?

Her cabinet colleagues have already issued provisional licenses to Corridor Resources and SWN Canada to ascertain the volume of recoverable, marketable gas. Surely, their interests are not merely academic. Meanwhile, government representatives have traveled as far afield as Texas to research the industry’s practices in other jurisdictions, and have returned to tell me, for one, that almost all of the resistance is based on “old information, faulty premises and flawed logic”.

From this evidence, alone, it seems clear the Province has made up its mind. What isn’t yet evident is how government minions will manage to whitewash their tacit support with the broad and beloved brush of “public consultation”.

Will they, for example, set themselves up as dispassionate umpires, calling strikes, fouls and home runs for and against the opposing teams according to rules of engagement they’ve yet to write? Or will they sit on their thumbs and let the nature of political debate take its inevitable course to chaos until such time as they deem necessary to intercede on behalf of the province’s economic future?

Certainly, the new alliance of community naysayers seem ready for anything from   a government whose impartiality they’re no longer inclined to trust. “The groups get together on teleconferences once a week and everybody gets their say and we come to some common goals that we want to achieve or a common event that we want to promote,” Jim Emberger of the Taymouth Community Association told the CBC last week. “We can’t be accused en masse. It doesn’t make it easier for them to say, ‘Ah, they did this’. Well, you know, there are lots of people here doing different things and that makes it a little harder for them to play defence.”

All of which bodes ill for clarity – something Blaney insists is crucial for “thousands of New Brunswickers” who have no skin in the fracking game and who barely understand its science, let alone its potential impact on their lives.

A responsible government declares its policy preferences. It doesn’t hide behind the fiction of objectivity to manufacture the semblance of transparency. Say what you really think Freddy Beach, and let the people decide how much risk they’re willing to accept from the tabernacle of oil and gas.