By now it should be clear (and perhaps it does not need to be said) that this is a space for me to vent my significant frustrations with the public dialogues and private backroom dealings that are unfolding around Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline project. Further indications of corporate collusion with Canada's federal government have caused me significant apprehension in the past month. As Enbridge ramps up its public marketing campaign, our government continues to decimate the environmental review process and challenge legislation aimed at preserving a clean environment for future generations.
Using a rhetoric which paints oil and gas expansion on Canada's west coast as beneficial for the future prosperity of Canada is sickly ironic. The Northern Gateway Pipeline would make BC's north coast an internationally recognized port for oil and gas shipping, bringing billions of liters (if not tons) of oil into one of the world's last remaining tracts of true coastal wilderness. These waters are not only some of the wildest, most biologically diverse areas in the temperate world, they are also some of the most challenging to navigate. It is a cliche to say that it is not a matter of if, but simply when, a spill will occur. Coated in oil, our coast and the lands the pipeline pass through loose their significant ecological, social and spiritual heritage. While these are losses that will not be measured by our government's economic accounting, they will deeply influence the quality of life of generations still to come.
All this is to say nothing about the issue of climate change. Building pipelines to enable a massive increase in oil and gas exploitation imprisons Canada in at least 20 more years of "business as usual" in a time when scientists all over the world say we must act immediately to avoid catastrophic climate scenereos.
Our government seems woefully uninterested in any of this reality, and chooses instead to live in a spreadsheet of economic figures, clinging to illusions of technological power. In a country where scientists are muzzled, ocean's are disregarded and small towns are deemed terrorists, it's worth asking how much longer will we put up with this non-sense?
