Editor, The Times:
Denial has long been a weapon in the arsenal of large corporations.
For instance, though thousands of coal miners have died or been incapacitated by ‘black lung,’ the coal industry used to and perhaps still does deny the connection of coal dust to the miners’ inability to breath.
So too the tobacco industry, with its long denials of the link between tobacco and lung cancer. They’ve hired huge public relations firms such as Hill and Knowlton, and spent millions on this denial.
Then there’s that climate change denial gang that grasps at any straw to deny the obvious.
Ignoring the fact that extreme weather was predicted long ago to be the end result of global warming, they’ve had a field day with the cold weather back east.
Plus one small area in the Antarctic counters the fact that Northwest and Northeast passages are now open during the summer.
Millions are poured into outfits like the Fraser Institute to front this denial.
The latest of the deniers is the ‘fracking gang’. In Pavilion, Wyoming, when wells drilled by the U.S. Geological Survey found groundwater contamination, the American Petroleum Institute argued that this pollution should not be connected with fracking.
The same in places like Rosebud, Alberta. Just because your groundwater was good before fracking and now you can light it on fire doesn’t mean there’s any connection.
All over the planet where fracking has occurred there are multiple reports of fouled groundwater, methane escapes, etc. But deny, deny, deny.
Worse, especially in Alberta, is the connivance of the provincial government in this denial. Do you think it’s going to get any better here in B.C. with Christie Clark’s great LNG projects just on the horizon?
Denial comes in handy now and again. However, when the water rushes down the stairway of the Titanic flooding out your card game, it’s somewhat too late too deny that the ship is sinking!
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.
