It’s a dirty word in some circles. The ‘E’ word.
But really, it ultimately describes us all. It should be unnecessary, redundant.
“Environmentalist.”
To be human is to be an environmentalist, isn’t it? What human being doesn’t care about having air to breathe and water to drink and food to eat. That’s the environment, as it’s called, and it’s pretty crucial to being human. Other than those rare individuals who have their hopes pinned on Mars, most of us remain intimately dependent on the health of the environment.
With the provincial election over and Christy Clark firmly at the helm, the province is going to need many more of its citizens getting in touch with their inner environmentalist. Although our new premier is a parent with a big stake in the long-term future of B.C.’s environment, her stated vision of liquid natural gas fueling the engine of B.C.’s economy is short-sighted and misguided at best. Liquid natural gas sounds clean and good and pure, but the process of fracking is anything but. Along with being a terribly toxic process, it uses huge amounts of fuel – fuel that is growing more scarce by the day and could be better used. And, unlike Vegas, what happens in northern B.C. doesn’t stay in northern B.C. The designer of our wondrous planet made the environment interconnected. Devastation of water, air, plants and animals in northern B.C. will be felt throughout the province.
Most frightening to me, however, perhaps because I grew up two minutes from the ocean on Vancouver Island, are the plans for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines Project. It is unbelievably naive to think there will not be a pipeline leak or a tanker spill. History tells us otherwise, particularly regarding the record of the company in question. Super Natural B.C. will take on a whole new meaning, when our ocean creatures die a tormented death and their well-oiled bodies wash up on shore.
While Ms. Clark has listed her ‘five points’ regarding B.C.’s conditions for the pipeline, the two stating that there must be ‘world-leading marine and land oil spill response, prevention and recovery systems,’ to me, tell the whole story. There will be damage. Then there’s the fact the province will rely on the federal review. Meanwhile our prime minister is in the U.S., busily promoting the Keystone pipeline, while an Enbridge team of oil spill response surveyors visited B.C.’s Hartley Bay last week. As the saying goes, if you think the federal review is not going to give the nod to the project, then I have a nice piece of pristine wilderness near Fort McMurray to sell you.
In this community and across the province, work is ongoing to improve relationships between First Nations and settlers to B.C. Yet here we go again. Coastal First Nations, for instance, are stridently opposed to the Enbridge project, yet that opposition is going unheeded, jeopardizing everything central to their lives.
Of course people need jobs and a way to put food on our plates, but those jobs must not destroy that which sustains us. Now, more than ever, is the time to embrace that inner environmentalist.
