On this week’s episode of Talking Radical Radio, Jennifer West and Catherine Abreu talk about their work with a provincial coalition that opposes hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in Nova Scotia.
As stores of easily accessible fossil fuels have been depleted by the rapacious engine that is capitalism, we have not entered the realm of absolute shortages that was once expected. Rather, higher prices have made it more economically feasible to exploit fossil fuel deposits that are both more expensive and considerably more environmentally destructive to extract than conventional reserves. While Canada’s most massive contribution to this process is the Alberta tar sands, the version that is most likely to show up in smaller sites throughout the country is fracking. Novel, relatively unstudied, and fraught with risks, this process has been subject to noisy resistance around the world. And that includes Nova Scotia, where a coalition of larger, established environmental organiations and grassroots groups in affected and potentially affected communities has come together to demand a ten-year moritorium on fracking in the province, to do extensive education work both with the public and with public officials, and to support local organizing on the ground. West and Abreu talk with me about fracking and about the Nova Scotia Fracking Resource and Action Coalition, or NOFRAC.
To learn more about NOFRAC, click here.
Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada through in-depth interviews that concentrate not on current events or the crisis of the moment, but on giving people involved in a broad range of social change work a chance to take a longer view as they talk about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. To learn more about the show in general, click here.
You can also learn more about ways to listen or go to the show’s page on rabble.ca. To learn more about suggesting grassroots groups and organizations for future shows, click here. For details on the show’s theme music, click here.
Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Sudbury, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.
