Nova Scotia’s move to lift long-standing bans on natural gas fracking and uranium exploration is raising concerns among medical experts about the potential health and environmental risks to residents, with others reasoning that clean energy offers a better route to job creation.
Last week, Premier Tim Houston introduced legislation to repeal restrictions on these activities. Health experts from the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment in Nova Scotia (CAPE NS) immediately urged the government to reconsider: “The medical evidence is clear and growing—these activities are associated with serious health risks that our communities cannot afford to bear,” Dr. Laurette Geldenhuys said in a release.
CAPE NS warned of the health risks linked to fracking, particularly for newborns and children, including increased rates of preterm births, low birth weight, congenital conditions, respiratory illnesses, and certain cancers in affected communities.
“Uranium mining presents its own set of health hazards,” the physicians’ group added, listing increased risks of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases among miners and nearby residents.
In a separate letter addressed to Houston that was shared with The Energy Mix, CAPE NS adds climate harms to the litany of problems with Houston’s plans to revisit fracking and uranium mining, as well as his plans to expand fossil fuel extraction and consumption in the province.
“Building pipelines and other new fossil fuel infrastructure would only exacerbate the root cause of the severe flooding, monster wildfires, and heatwaves we are experiencing in Nova Scotia,” wrote CAPE NS, citing The Lancet’s diagnosis of climate change as “the greatest global health threat of the 21st century.”
Scientific Consensus and Policy Debate
“There is absolutely nothing in any of the climate science that would support what Premier Houston is planning to do,” Geldenhuys told The Mix, responding to the premier’s contention that the legislation is a first step in a “mature conversation” about resource extraction.
“He certainly could have a conversation, but it cannot be a conversation about equivalencies, where we debate whether we should damage the health of Nova Scotians and the climate through fracking or uranium mining or whether we should not.”
Geldenhuys also questioned the province’s rationale that uranium exploration for nuclear energy will help address global warming. Nuclear’s “enormous costs” limit its role, she argued, adding that from “health care to homelessness there are many other things in Nova Scotia that we desperately need to spend money on.”
Geldenhuys added that Nova Scotians need to speak up, urging their legislative assembly members not to support the legislation, which has been framed by the Houston government as a way to facilitate dialogue on natural resource development, job creation, and economic self-sufficiency.
“There is absolutely no need to be chasing holes in the ground to create local jobs,” said Chris Benjamin, labour force/green jobs lead at the Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre (EAC). “Just by meeting the province’s greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2030, we’d create 15,000 new jobs per year,” he added, citing [pdf] a 2019 EAC report.
In invoking job creation in the context of opening the door to extractive industries, Houston is “throwing up a red herring to enrich oil, gas and mining,” Benjamin said. An EAC report due for release in April shows that “if we meet new building code efficiency standards passed last year we’ll be short tens of thousands of labourers—especially carpenters, HVAC technicians, and electricians—in coming years,” he told The Mix.
