Dear Editor,
Regarding the Nov. 7 issue’s article on Top Speed Energy announcing an LNG plant on Taisheng International property hard by Terrace airport.
Taisheng, a state-owned enterprise of China, has yet to build the alfalfa plant promised in 2014 to acquire the property. That land now appears nothing but an outpost island of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) like the coral reefs on which China builds air force bases to claim the sea.
BRI flaws and deceptions are increasingly evident, as Pakistan and Sri Lanka have discovered with the “debt-trap diplomacy” of Chinese loans. The World Bank identifies a suspect lack of transparency for BRI, which reflects the Chinese state’s duplicitous governance generally (note the tit-for-tat jailing of two Canadians over suspect Huawei business, Trumpish or not).
The duplicity of Top Speed’s project is evident in a build plan that evades full environmental assessment, which in the Standard article Rob Hart rightly questions.
READ MORE: Chinese LNG distributor proposes LNG processing facility in Terrace
China claims that LNG will reduce dependency on coal. Yet science condemns any further fossil fuel combustion, regardless of source. Our atmosphere and planet suffer, and our descendants face a deepening crisis that science repeatedly identifies.
Not only do analysts warn against BRI “carbon lock-in”—that is, the inability to leave BRI—the Belt notches an increased global carbon bloat. Further, a Canadian military analyst warns that the Belt will attempt to cinch the Arctic (Smith, Lt.-Cdr. O.R., “How China’s [BRI] Threatens Canadian Arctic Sovereignty”, Service Paper JCSP 45, 2019).
If China wants to get off coal—and if all of us accept that burning more fossil fuel imperils our children’s future—then our first and best tactic is to reduce demand, especially of frivolous use, whether for plastics or pleasures.
Further, what fossil fuel production remains in Canada should be nationalized in a comprehensive carbon reduction strategy of non-commercial, essential, and emergency use only.
Only political immaturity prevents it. We ourselves remain children, spoiled at that.
David Heinimann
Terrace B.C.
