In my heart I agree with Hilary Crowley (see August 11, 2010 letter) and others who want us all to just say no to the Endbridge Gateway Pipeline project, but part of me is saying that we live in a society built around the automobile and conspicuous mass consumption.
Oil is the life blood of this society and pipelines are its arteries. Our society wants cheap energy and cheap disposable plastic products and they want them now. Not 10 years from now, when they can be produced in a cleaner, and probably costlier, way.
Here in northern B.C. we have just suffered a dramatic downturn in the primary driving industry - forestry. By all accounts it will be a long time before it recovers, if it ever does. In the meantime mining, oil and gas, transportation (of imports from Asia), bio-energy and Site C are touted as replacements for the jobs lost in forestry, not, as Hilary suggests, wind, solar and geothermal.
There are, of course, some of these clean energy projects being developed but they are still costly.
People want cheap power, and lots of it right now, and they want high paid jobs (if only for the short term) to enable them to continue to consume at a gluttonous rate.
The last line in Hilary's letter says "Let's give Enbridge a resounding no - not in our backyard." But the oil and gas we burn comes through someone else's backyard.
Saying no to Enbridge and the other resource-based developments in northern B.C. and elsewhere means saying no to our current oil dependent lifestyle.
Without a clear alternative within a relatively easy grasp, I don't believe just saying no will cut it.
Roy Olsen
Prince George
