Dear Editor:
The North Shore News is normally full of mild and moderate viewpoints. I was surprised, therefore, last week to find myself so outraged at Keith Baldrey’s column of Feb 10.
I refer to his unaccountable championing of a National Energy Board report and the dismissive slagging of the opinions of most of the world’s statesmen and the largest consensus of scientific opinion that has ever existed concerning the risk of climate change.
At best the NEB is limited in their scope and has been discredited for not being allowed to consider the big picture and yet Baldrey finds that their report is “grounded in sober and scientific analysis” whereas the carefully constructed arguments of real scientists for the urgent need to reduce Green house gasses is trivialized as a romantic notion whose rhetoric the NEB tosses to the curb.
Where does this come from? This is the laissez-faire business-as-usual argument at its worst. The NEB report cited says we will continue to extract and burn fossil fuels simply because there is a demand for it. Period. It’s obvious, right?
Both the NEB and Baldrey have got their heads in the sand and it would just be sad and pathetic if it wasn’t the most serious issue that man has ever faced.
It is not inevitable that climate change will take us to the edge of disaster and perhaps beyond. The cause has been known for 50 years, solutions are available and yet almost nothing has been done.
Economics based on “business knows best” got us into this mess. It’s time they got out of the way.
Doug Kay
West Vancouver
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