How in hell can any British Columbian who cares for our wonderful – in the literal sense of that word – and unique province support the Conservative bunch after Prime Minister Harper declared his support for oil tanker traffic on our coast?
The position I take on my own and as spokesman for The Common Sense Canadian is not some sort of outdated 1960’s flower-child fuzziness, but is based upon the certainty that the proposed piping of oil from the Tar Sands to Kitimat and thence down the coast in huge tankers will have spills and that any spill will be disastrous.
First off there are two pipelines, one to bring the black ooze from the Tar Sands to Kitimat and another back containing the natural gas condensate needed to dilute and transport that black ooze (bitumen) that is extremely toxic.
A spill in our coastal waters would make The Exxon Valdez look almost helpful by comparison.
The company doing the pipelines, Enbridge, has a horrible record, including the spilling of 4 million litres of oil into the Kalamazoo watershed in Michigan last year.
The pipelines will go through the most sensitive wild country left on the planet. It is 1050 km, so that any ruptures would be unattended for days – it took days, for God’s sake, for Enbridge to attend to the Kalamazoo, which is in Michigan not the Great Bear Rainforest!
The danger here is not some left-wing teary fuzz but a matter of arithmetic.
Suppose you had a revolver with 100 chambers with only one containing a bullet. You can easily figure out the “risk” of putting the gun to your head and pulling the trigger once. You can figure out the risk if you do it 100 times…or for a 1000.
If, however, you will do this forever it is no longer a risk but a mathematical certainty waiting to happen. And when that reality happens, you have destroyed yourself.
Now suppose you put marshmallow in the chamber not a bullet – in that case no one cares because there isn’t a serious consequence.
The reality is that both with the pipelines and the tanker traffic you have a certainty waiting to happen and it isn’t marshmallow spilling all over our precious wild country and our coastline!
If you intend to support the Tories, know that they have absolutely condemned your province to hugely destructive spills both on your precious wilderness and your coastline – perhaps the world’s most beautiful and certainly one of its most dangerous. Every time you hear the company or the government saying “risk”, substitute “certainty”.
Prime Minister Harper has shown that he either doesn’t understand the consequences of the pipelines and tankers or knows them and doesn’t care.
Are we British Columbians going to put the fate of our great and untouchable wilds and coastline in the hands of Stephen Harper and his ilk?
I am scarcely a leftie. I served as a Socred in this province’s cabinet. I’m now simply an old man who loves his province and wants to leave it to his children, grandchildren and great grandchild as he found it and finds himself fighting greedy corporations who couldn’t care less if they destroy my province … with two governments determined to help them.
Please ponder on these words and vow that this destruction won’t happen on your watch if you can help it.
I remember the protests of the 1960’s and 1970’s .
Well, theyre minor to the storm brewing over allowing oil tanker traffic and pipelines through sensitive areas in BC.
Couple that with PetroChina’s (Enbridge’s partner ) horrible track record on pollution, human rights and genocide and you have a recipe for serious confrontation.
This issue is more important to Canada today than the Vietnam war was to the US in the past.
Harper is an economist by trade. Everything looks good on paper to this profession. The trouble begins when there is an attempt to instill the concept or notion into actual physical practice.
This idea will never get past First Nations in British Columbia. Time and again the First Nation’s people demonstrate their quiet, courageous and powerful stewardship over land and water ever-hoping one day to teach the rest of us that this is the most important issue to us all; the environment in which we live and thrive as a species.
This can’t happen… HUMANS, have we not learned anything yet??? I really care about this and this 44 minute video was very informative. Beautiful photography as well. Please take the time and watch http://vimeo.com/19582018 this could be the most important issue ever!
Another zinger from Rafe Mair. Thanks Rafe the threat to our coast as been a constant for forty years, all to do with oil one way or another.
David Anderson was fighting for double hulled tanker in the 70’s. Public pressure resulted in Provincial objections to drilling. Let us keep it up.
Another zinger from Rafe Mair. Thanks Rafe the threat to our coast as been a constant for forty years, all to do with oil one way or another.
David Anderson was fighting for double hulled tanker in the 70’s. Public pressure resulted in Provincial objections to drilling. Let us keep it up.
The First Nations of Canada hold a lot of voting power. If we could have each one of them vote in this election, it could bury Harper and his policies. A community is only as healthy as the environment in which it resides.
I concur !
Thanks for this Raife sharing it on social media.
Harper will give away our coast to certain disaster.
This issue is so serious that citizens should consider taking direct action against those pushing for this mistake.
We will ruin our pristine coast and only so a small group of individuals living elsewhere can make a boatload of cash.
During the latest oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil companies were proud of the fact that normally much more oil comes into the gulf from oil tankers than from actual leaks from the oil wells themselves.
I was unaware that Harper wanted oil tanker traffic off our coastline, thank you for the heads up.