Editor:
Thanks for the in-depth article last week about the Gibsons “Frack Free BC” protest. That same week my wife, Vancouver City Councillor Adriane Carr, had a developer tell her it was hard getting some people to choose to build a carbon-neutral home. He’d ask clients if they wanted to heat their homes with natural gas or electricity, and most people chose gas. Anything “natural” must be good, right?
Then he got the idea of asking them if they wanted to heat with fossil gas or renewable hydro-electricity. People immediately rejected the “fossil” choice.
The words we use really matter in the climate crisis. In truth, so-called “natural” gas is actually a fossil fuel primarily extracted from the earth by fracking, which is causing an escalating number of earthquakes in north-east B.C. Fossil gas is composed mostly of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gasses, more than 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) during its first 20 years in the atmosphere as it gradually oxidizes to form CO2 and water. As a former high school chemistry teacher, I know that once the methane is in the air, you can’t reverse its climate-changing greenhouse effect.
Who made this friendlier term so popular? The fossil fuel industry! Their goal has been to convince the public and political decision-makers that “natural” gas is OK. The impact has been government decisions to expand fossil fuel production and delay the transition to a zero-carbon, renewable-energy-powered world. Their clever PR tactics have taken us to a tipping point where we can’t stop runaway global warming and much of Earth will become uninhabitable for life.
Paul George OBC, Gibsons
