Someone said something on Facebook and it set me off on a subject of note. It started when one guy said, "We must get different news in Ontario" and then someone else said that the minority NDP provincial government was popular only with the protesters. And something snapped. This is what popped out:
No, it's not just "with the protesters". There are a lot of people who've never held up a placard who are 100% against this pipeline. Pipelines are safer than trains and trucks, yes, but EVERY single joint in a pipeline represents a non-zero source of risk, most of those joints are going to be in horribly inaccessible places that are also upstream to most of us. The resulting coastal tanker traffic would go up from 40 per year to 1 or 2 every day, and if only one of those tankers ever spill, several 10s of thousands of people's livelihoods (vs. the 10s of long-term jobs the pipeline might supply) based on the relatively (very, VERY relatively) pristine state of our coastal waters would be seriously compromised.
Support for the pipeline in BC is not overwhelming. Opposition to it isn't either but the opposition has more to lose than the support has to gain from it being built so, they're a bit more passionate about it than the supporters. So, a lot of us are pretty happy with what Horgan is doing even if, like me, we've never voted for the NDP.
If you'd like barges of dil-bit going through your favourite holiday lakes, up and down your scenic rivers' rapids, then yeah, you can tell us tree-huggers what to do with Alberta's pipeline. But it's possible to be sane and to oppose the building of this pipeline vehemently. I am thankful for what Horgan is doing, what our First Nations neighbours are doing and I am appalled at the bad-husbandry that led to the extraction of this only slightly flowable tar from the sands of Northern Alberta in the first place. And the best spin I can put on Trudeau buying the pipeline is to prevent the collapse of trade relations with His Frogness to the south because of our rational opposition to this long-term source of poison and disaster that big oil has been trying to foist on us.
Still, it's pretty amusing watching the NDP try to retain a national identity between Singh, Horgan and Notley. But to finish it all, I'm sure the pipeline will be built. I'm sure it will cause at least one disaster (Exxon Valdes has NOT been cleaned up successfully to this day) and I'm sure that the people who benefit most from it having been built will bear the smallest amount of the cost of the overall problem. It's stupid, but it's happened before. It'll happen again, all from a mis-translation to "fill the earth and subdue it" of our original mandate. Shame on us all, myself included.
