In order for Shuswap residents to learn more about climate change and “fracking,” KAIROS-Salmon Arm and Shuswap Environmental Action Society will sponsor a public forum at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 9 in the hall at First United Church.

 

Experts, Joe Foy and Eoin Madden from the Vancouver-based Wilderness Committee will speak to the issues.

 

Foy is the Wilderness Committee’s national campaign director and has been the driving force behind many of the group’s successful projects since 1987.

 

Madden began his career in Ireland as a criminal lawyer and, after completing a post-graduate degree in climate change, moved to B.C. where he is the Wilderness Committee’s climate change campaigner.

 

With deposits of conventional gas and oil dwindling, the industry is keen to develop less accessible deposits of oil and gas using hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”

 

This involves blasting millions of gallons of fracturing fluids, including sand, water and toxic chemicals, into well bores two miles deep that then deviate horizontally another kilometre underground. The rock is broken up through use of extreme pressures.

 

“It is only in the last decade that a combination of four new technologies has enabled industry to access gas and oil trapped between layers of shale rock,” says Kairos member Ann Morris. “The problem is that this fracking technology has grown so quickly there has been insufficient time to do the scientific study on its environmental and health impacts, or on the impact of the inevitable accidents.”

 

There is also a concern fracking causes chronic leaks of methane, a potent climate change driver.

 

“Many scientists believe rapid shale gas development will exacerbate global climate change and could tip the world into climate chaos,” says SEAS president Jim Cooperman.

 

Foy says climate change is already happening, and at a much faster rate than was expected, but a worst-case scenario can still be avoided if government leaders listen to the World Bank, the UN Energy Agency and a coalition of the world’s largest investors who are calling for urgent action now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.