This is not a column for people who find it easy to make up their minds.
Those people who take one look at Justin Trudeau’s decision to let Kinder Morgan expand its pipeline to Burnaby and instantly know what to think:
1) This is a disaster, locally and globally. An accident in Burrard Inlet will forever damage a fragile ecosystem and the greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands production and export to Asia are unacceptable to a world on the brink of climate change disaster. Worthy people such as Green Party leader Elizabeth May are prepared to go to jail to prevent this from happening.
2) This is a great victory for the Canadian economy, securing our futures and paying for critical health care, education, and social services. Combined with other initiatives such as capping coal-fired electricity generation, Canada will be able to keep its promise to reduce greenhouse gas emission and pay its bills. Worthy people and declared environmentalists such as North Shore MPs Jonathan Wilkinson and Pamela Goldsmith-Jones are promoting this decision.
3) The Internet: Trudeau is a bum (and worse).
4) The Internet, too: Trudeau is a hero.
No, this column is for the rest of us who go through the agonies of ambiguity on something like this. We stew over pros and cons while our more resolute friends and neighbours are no help. In fact, our efforts are met with the following scorn: “Get that picket out of your butt and stand up for something.”
Well, millions of words have been expended by the made up minds, so I get to spend 750 on some prime-time dithering:
Item A: There has never been a spill in Burrard Inlet since tankers started shipping oil from the existing facility in the Port of Vancouver in 1956.
Item B: The pipeline company has reported 82 spills since 1961 (no word about the period before that date). It says 69.5 per cent of those occurred at pump stations or terminals.
Is that good? Obviously, the company thinks it’s good. Another 21 per cent occurred along the pipeline, which stretches from the Alberta oil fields to the sea. According to the company, only nine incidents exceeded the reporting threshold of 1.5 metres cubed, and only three of those have occurred in the last 35 years. Is that good, too?
Item C: The number of tankers entering Burrard Inlet will increase by approximately one a day and they will be double-hulled, fortified against accidents. Spills may “happen all the time” in Burrard Inlet, but not – so far – from the holds of oil tankers.
Item D: Rachel Notley, the premier of Alberta, was in Vancouver this week to promote the pipeline extension. Notley, it is worth noting, is a member of the NDP. B.C.’s NDP leader John Horgan is firmly opposed to the pipeline. So here we have the spectacle of civil war among people who we’d expect to be leading the opposition against the pipeline. It’s understandable, considering the alleged value of oil sands bitumen to the Alberta economy, but are all principles grounded in geography?
Item E: Andrew Nikiforuk, a journalist for whom I have the utmost respect, has written a piece in the Tyee with the following headline: “Kinder Morgan Approval Insults Democracy, Science and Economic Logic.”
It insults democracy, he writes, because the National Energy Board process recommending the decision was skewed to favour approval, and Trudeau’s promise to overhaul the board and redo the review process is basically a lie.
Andrew says it insults economic logic because potential customers such as the Chinese refineries can’t even process the oilsands bitumen, and “how can Kinder Morgan dump 540,000 barrels of diluted bitumen in Pacific markets and not have any impact on global oil prices. …”
It insults science because allowing Alberta to increase oil sands production to grow by 40 per cent will make it absurdly difficult for Canada to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent.
There’s a lot more where that came from, but you get the idea.
Item F: It’s worthy to note that B.C.’s Premier Christy Clark has yet to endorse Trudeau’s decision. But it seems less a question of can the B.C. Liberals be bought than, OK, what’s the price?
Item G: I have this sinking feeling that facts have been forever poisoned by politics, so figures lie and liars figure. Nonetheless, it’s the job of each of us, especially the good citizens of the North Shore and Burnaby, stewards of the shoreline, to wade through the propaganda, extract that strategically located picket, and decide for ourselves.
Ambiguity is not an option … is it?
Journalist and communications consultant Paul Sullivan has been a North Vancouver resident since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Madonna. [email protected]
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