Re: Letter: ‘Pipelines are the best way to transport oil,’ Dec. 14.
The Trans Mountain Kinder Morgan Pipeline would require bitumen to be shipped in 34 tankers a month along B.C.’s coast.
A review to be published later this month of more than 9,000 studies of the effect of oilsands products on the marine environment indicates that nobody knows how a spill of diluted bitumen would affect marine life or whether a bitumen spill in salt water could be adequately cleaned up, because basic research is lacking.
Oil once was the “blood of commerce” as the letter states, but today oil and other fossil fuels are major contributors to greenhouse gases and global warming.
The letter writer is worried that without oil, Canada will become a third world country yet a new analysis shows energy efficiency already accounts for nearly 1.9 million U.S. jobs—ten times more than oil and gas drilling, and 30 times more than coal mining. Energy efficiency has contributed more to meeting growing U.S. energy needs in the last four decades than oil, gas, and nuclear combined.
Energy efficiency and alternative energy companies pay taxes and employ people. Yes, Canada can have a prosperous economy without pollution. To believe otherwise is a myth and delays the progress we all wish for.
Michael Jessen
Nelson
