To the editor,
Re: Protesters have valid concerns, Letters, March 15.
Two letters to the editor this month brought quite a laugh to myself and I am sure a lot of other people.
One person asked why are we investing in an obsolete industry. Another person talked about the folk in the oil industry better start looking for new jobs.
In my travels throughout B.C. all I see are gasoline/diesel-powered vehicles. In B.C. alone there over three million registered vehicles all using a soon-to-be-obsolete fuel? Look up some of the projections of the number of vehicles that will hit the road this year alone in the world that are gasoline/diesel powered, the numbers are huge.
Houses are being built at a record pace all being fuelled by natural gas. The world consumes about 90 million barrels of oil per day and that is going to rise until about 2040 and then start to go down due to renewables, but that is a long way off. So all you magic wand wavers out there that believe oil and gas is an obsolete industry and is going away, you will never see that in your lifetime.
And don’t blame ‘big oil’ for all the problems, because we are the ones that are the problem, we are the consumers, our insatiable appetite for more, more, more. It’s very simple, quit using the stuff and it will become obsolete.
Sheldon Reves, Nanaimo
To the editor,
Re: Block pipeline project, Letters, March 20.
With all the jingoism over Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion creating jobs – and almost all of it temporary work – it’s conspicuous how there’s no mention of creating actual long-term employment by processing enough of our own crude to, at the very least, supply Canadians’ consumption needs, instead of exporting the bulk raw log resource then importing the finished product. (A similar question could be asked in regards to our raw-log softwood exports abroad.)
After 30 years of consuming mainstream news media, I’ve yet to come across a seriously thorough discussion on why our national and provincial governments consistently refuse to alter this practice, which undoubtedly is the most profitable for the Texas-based oil company. And I’m not talking about open and closed on the same sole day, with the topic discussion parameters constrained to the point the outcome seemed predetermined.
If the Americans can extract and process their own oil – as well as our crude and logs – then we should be equally as patriotic thus Canada First, even if it means paying slightly higher for Canadian wages than those in the U.S.
Frank Sterle Jr., White Rock
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