To the editor:
The NDP/Green Agreement as it relates to fossil resource development is a classic example of ‘carbon ‘ double speak.
Section 3, 2 a(1) says:
‘Implement an increase of the carbon tax by $5 per tonne per year, beginning April 1, 2018 and expand the tax to fugitive emissions and to slash-pile burning.’
Section 3, 2 a (3) says:
Implement a climate action strategy to meet our targets.
Section 3, 2(c) says:
‘Immediately employ every tool available to the new government to stop the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the seven-fold increase in tanker traffic on our coast, and the transportation of raw bitumen through our province.
Yet there is not a reference to ‘fracking’ for natural gas or the many proposed LNG plants and pipelines. Last time I looked, natural gas was a fossil fuel. And the fact that BC natural gas passes by pipeline through two provinces: Alberta and Saskatchewan and four states: North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and into Illinois. Imagine if one of these jurisdictions took the same approach on natural gas transmission as B.C. is taking on Alberta’s oil?
And no mention of the coal mines in the interior! Isn’t coal a fossil fuel? Often described as the worst of the fossil fuels. Over the last 20 years, B.C. has exported 20 to 30 million metric tons annually, according to the B.C. Government’s figures. We see it on the coast as a hugh pile at the Delta Port.
Now, I support all this resource development.
But I reject the hypocrisy of those who pretend environmental purity by promoting excessive environmental regulation, increasing carbon taxes, rejecting a neighbouring province’s ability to prosper through oil transmission, all the while ignoring their own coal production and transmission by rail and ship, and their own natural gas production and fracking with pipelines carrying it through two provinces and four states.
Brian Peckford
Nanaimo
