To the editor,
I’ve lived on the Lower mainland and on the Island for most of my life. I like it here. I want B.C. to stay beautiful, and I also want my country to aim for progressive goals that include reducing reliance on climate changing and ocean acidifying fossil fuels. Nevertheless, I can sympathize with the goal of job creation. However, job creation would be much better served by keeping the raw oil product in Albert and refined there. Building refineries and creating many more stable and well paid jobs for Canadians to operate refineries in Alberta is more optimal than creating a small number of jobs on the pipeline to export the raw product for refining by workers overseas. The Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion project is too risky.
Shaun Dychko, Nanaimo
VIDEO: Community members march in opposition to pipeline project
To the editor,
Re: Oil spill dangers are being overblown, Letters, May 29.
One can’t miss the irony in the letter writer denigrating environmental activism of others when she obviously retired to this beautiful land for the very reasons we protect it.
The government webpage she quoted is misleading, it gives mismatching data making it impossible to compare apples to apples (east versus west). It is important to note from a cost-benefit analysis (more accurately risk-benefit) that eastern population centres logically require and therefore support greater volumes.
Fairy-dust? Return to the 21st century? I’ll submit that we’ll only progress to modern technology by moving away from 19th century energy. As for jobs, B.C. currently has the lowest unemployment rate in Canada, so risk-benefit for that many pipeline jobs? No thanks!
I too am retired, a grandfather; I’ll gladly pass on trips abroad to ensure we reverse climate change and continue moving to a sustainable future for my loved ones.
Graham Henderson, Nanaimo
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To the editor,
The expansion is not the problem; what is made to flow in it is.
Many are trying to compare many tankers full of oil and other petroleum products shipped by sea, rail and pipelines with very dirty sludge that is not oil. It never has been, is not now and never will be oil, heavy crude or any other description of petroleum. The stuff is and will remain tar sands. With some difficulty, oil is, at some point, extracted from this toxic mess. Even with hundreds of millions of dollars spent to convince you and me it now has miraculously been transformed into oil sands is an outright lie. If this product were so good and so safe, why would even a penny need to be spent to change the story?
Why is it as Canadians that we play chicken every time some government, corporation, or other corrupt source inside and outside of Canada tells us to. It would do all of us great service as well as our children and their children to stop and think of what our tax dollars are to be spent on. Looking for jobs? Then get off your backsides and be prepared to work. And do not tell me that work is scarce. Really? Ambition is scarce as is discipline.
Grant Goodwin, Nanaimo
The views and opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the writer and do not reflect the views of Black Press or the Nanaimo News Bulletin. If you have a different view, we encourage you to write to us or contribute to the discussion below.