To the Editor,
Re: Planet Earth needs repair, Editorial, April 21.
In your newspaper almost nightly there are nonsensical letters and editorials suggesting that a big switch can be thrown that replaces ‘nasty oil and gas’ with the apparently ever-pervasive ‘clean, green, renewable energies’ and the world will be happy and prosper. As someone who, ‘shock, horror’ has worked in the energy-supplying hydrocarbon industry, I am intrigued to know what precisely these ‘green’ energy supplies are that may supplant the enormous amounts of hydrocarbon based fuels the world consumes? In reading editorials and letters to the editor I assume that these must be readily available, but windmills, hydroelectricity (if you have water falling over rocks that is handy), wave power, solar and ‘carbon’ taxes (what environmental benefit do these bring?) simply will not fill this void. What can achieve some success, however, is if all the well-intentioned ‘eco-warriors’ stop using cars, natural gas, airplanes, public transit, ferries, etc., then we will doubtless manage to generate a 0.00001 per cent drop in the contribution to B.C.’s contamination of the atmosphere.
Oh, and I am quite sure that many Islanders would also be happy to get their economics improved through having a job back in the oil and gas business.
D.W. PritchardNanaimo
