Anti-fracking protest in New Brunswick turns violent
Anti-fracking protest sign. Demonstrations against shale gas development by SWN Resources have taken a violent turn in Rexton, New Brunswick today.
CBC news is reporting an on-going protest against shale gas development in New Brunswick, Canada escalated dramatically today:
Shale gas protesters and RCMP trying to enforce an injunction are clashing in Rexton, N.B., leading to at least five police vehicles being set on fire and the arrest of a First Nations chief.
In a news release, the RCMP said more than 40 protesters have been arrested for various offences including firearms offences, uttering threats, intimidation, mischief and for refusing to abide by a court injunction
The same CBC report quotes Chief Gabrial Atwin, Kingsclear First Nation as saying: “We urge all sides not to resort to violence as history has proven these tactics are not productive.“
The National Post contacted Elsipogtog First Nation councillor, Robert Levi, who said he went to the site in Rexton, N.B. after hearing the RCMP was enforcing the injunction against the protestors’ blockade.
The injunction was granted earlier this month to end the blockade of a compound where energy company SWN Resources stores exploration equipment.
Levi said he planned to stay at the site to try to block the movement of the company’s equipment.
“We’re going to stay — I mean, we have to,” he said. “This is what our people have been fighting for.”
The Globe and Mail spoke with participants who describe the situation as very tense. According to Susan Levi-Peters, a former chief of the Elsipogtog First Nation:
“It is really very volatile. It’s a head-to-head between the people and the RCMP right now and the Warriors are in the middle surrounded by the RCMP and then the RCMP are surrounded by the people,” said Ms. Levi-Peters, who estimated that hundreds of police officers were at the scene and even more protesters.
According to the Globe and Mail community protestors have engaged in various blockade activity over the past summer and there have been previous arrests.
Tags: canada, environment, fracking, land use, native rights, shale gas exploration
This kind of thing is probably coming to NY soon. (the protests I mean)
If we had an environmental movement back during the industrial revolution we would all be living in caves now. Progress is messy.
“If we had an environmental movement back during the industrial revolution we would all be living in caves now.”
Or, just possibly, we’d have developed less wasteful technologies, and we’d have less global climate change and more reserves of fossil fuels left.
“If we had an environmental movement back during the industrial revolution we would all be living in caves now.”
How many folks were living in caves in the 1800’s? How many folks were relocated into dank communal living conditions in hell holes called cities as a result of the “progress” brought about by the industrial revolution? Perhaps if homo sapiens had used their, purportedly great, intelligence to analyze the cost versus benefits of utilizing initially cheap (nearly free) energy (coal and oil) to put the human population and the consumption of spaceship Earth’s resources onto an exponentially increasing conveyor, the necessity to utilize more and more energy and cost excessive techniques to satisfy the ravenous rate at which we currently devour energy could have been avoided.
The vaunted capitalist economic system based upon an ever increasing growth of humans, consumption, depletion, pollution, debt, ., .,. can only be expected to continue ad infinitum by those who view the Earth as an infinite source of all things desired. The reality is that the end result of capitalism must lead to economic collapse, of which there have been a number of preliminary examples in the past 6-700 years, which will make the “great depression” appear to have been a good time being had by all.
For someone such as myself, in the Winter of my existence with no biological offspring, I say if you wish to frack in your backyard have at it, just not in mine as I prefer my drinking water sans poisonous additives. However; for those whom found/find it irresistible to have biological offspring I am at a loss to comprehend your willingness to accept the risk of befouling the Earth at an ever increasing rate for your benefit to the detriment of your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, ., ., .