Everybody loves science, except when science clashes with their worldview.
Cariboo-Prince George Conservative MP Dick Harris supports the science behind the joint review panel's conditional approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline but isn't so crazy about the scientific evidence against the development of the New Prosperity mine.
On the other side of the political aisle, Skeena-Bulkley Valley NDP MP Nathan Cullen applauds how science was used against the New Prosperity project but is dismayed by the scientific justification for Northern Gateway.
To be fair, both northern politicians are not criticizing the expertise of either panel. Instead - and rather ironically - they are both basing their criticisms on what the panels may have missed and how the final rulings may have been influenced by either the lack of data or incorrect data.
On the surface, those seem like reasonable concerns to bring up but they're wrongheaded for a couple of reasons. First, their data argument leads straight down into a bottomless hole, which philosophers call infinite regress. It's a fancy name for what toddlers do when, for every statement an adult makes they ask "why?" in return. Scientists factor uncertainty into all of their work as best they can, on the understanding that it's impossible to know if all of the data has been included and has been properly quantified.
In other words, we don't know what we don't know.
But we have to be careful not to fall down this other bottomless pit, too. No one knows what each new day brings but we still get out of bed in the morning on the best guess that our day will be much like the day before it, with some unexpected good and bad turn of events. We make the best decisions we can with the information we have and go forward.
That's what the environmental review panels looking into Northern Gateway and New Prosperity did. Both reviews into New Prosperity and the joint review into Northern Gateway were exhaustive examinations of the respective projects, assessing their merits and shortcomings with the most reliable and valid information available at the time.
Cullen and B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix complain that the process is faulty but what exactly is wrong with it? The panels were staffed by recognized experts who spent an incredible amount of time hearing from proponents and opponents of the projects, thoroughly reviewed complicated evidence and made recommendations. In the case of New Prosperity, the federal Conservative have twice accepted the recommendations.
That's good governance.
Although their criticism of the federal Conservatives is off-base, Cullen and Dix are right to point fingers at the B.C. Liberals. Twice, a review panel has rejected New Prosperity on environmental concerns and twice the B.C. Liberals have ignored the panel's findings and encouraged the federal government to approve the project. The Liberals were also on the wrong side of the Morrison Lake project, as well, rejecting the project after a positive environmental assessment. In that case, Pacific Booker Minerals took the provincial government to court and won.
Thankfully, the Liberals are taking a more responsible approach with Northern Gateway and setting out conditions they would like to see met before approving the pipeline's construction.
Dix can't trumpet too loud, however, about trusting in the experts. He blew up his chance to be premier last spring when he announced that an NDP government under his leadership wouldn't even entertain an application from Kinder Morgan to twin its already existing pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver. Refusing to even consider an idea on the fear that there might be justification for that idea does not a leader make.
Pipelines and mines are complicated operations. Ecosystems are also complicated operations. Unfortunately, resource development debates are dominated by companies that know mines and pipelines but have no idea about environmental processes and environmentalists who have no idea how mines and pipelines actually work.
If we truly believe in the power of science to help us understand ourselves and the world we inhabit and to make our world a better place (for the most part), then we should accept the recommendations of the best scientific minds who have analyzed the best evidence available at the time in the case of both New Prosperity and Northern Gateway.
