Dear Editor:
Over the past decade, thousands of jobs have been lost in the forest products industry as dozens of mills have either closed or curtailed production. They have had to adjust to the pine beetle devastation and the enormous market changes brought on by the advent of electronic media. There has been little whining and, with modest help from government, many have begun to develop new and innovative ways to produce higher value products.
The oil industry will soon face similar upheaval in its markets as renewable energy grows and the use of gasoline and other fossil fuels is displaced. This is being driven by our acceptance of the fact, finally, that burning fossil fuels is heating the planet beyond acceptable limits. Scandinavia will ban gasoline cars after 2025. China could do the same and there the impact would be many times the capacity of the Kinder Morgan pipeline. Expanding the Kinder Morgan pipeline will be like building a new buggy-whip factory at the beginning of the automobile era.
Production of tar sands bitumen already poses a serious threat to the Mackenzie river basin. It is lunacy to add the significant risks that shipping it will pose to B.C. coastal waters.
The economic downturn and job loss in the Alberta economy is not because they have no Kinder Morgan pipeline. It is because world oil prices are a fraction of what they were during Alberta’s heyday and the bitumen producers are cutting costs and deferring capital expenditure and expansion.
It is time for Alberta to stop whining and take action to diversify their economy and use the existing tar sands infrastructure to produce not just bitumen but higher value products, many of which will sequester the carbon. Much of the millions of dollars that the federal government proposes to spend on improving oil-spill response in B.C. could be better used helping Alberta begin the long overdue diversification of their economy.
Doug Taylor
North Vancouver
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