Oil activists must walk the walk

Dear editor: Sadly the pipeline controversy, like others before, are expressions of human complexities.

I suspect the anti-pipeline supporters are comparing apples to oranges in the sense that additional pipelines, like additional vehicle traffic, could increase the number of vehicle accidents and potential oil spills. Although a normal human misinterpretation, in actuality there is no relationship between the two.

It is granted, more vehicle traffic, driver attitudes, icy roads and cell phones, to name a few, contribute to vehicle accidents, whereas pipelines do not collide with each other; pipelines have no human drivers and are not subjected to weather.

The source of the objection to additional pipelines is in truth an objection to burning and using oil globally. The global cooling and warming belief is based on the theory that we are creating vast abnormal volumes of atmospheric CO2, which in turn is acting like a blanket preventing the earth surface heat radiation out to space.

Incidentally, because the earth has a greater amount of time to radiate heat to space than the sun has radiating heat to earth, the average earth temperatures have supported life for eons. Everything in the earth atmosphere is pulled by gravity to earth, preventing accumulation of atmospheric CO2 gas.

Consider this one example: There is no CO2 emission difference between burning bitumen and the billions of acres covered by pavement and the massive areas covered by bitumen asphalt roofing.

If anti-oil Canadians are sincere, they would not be casually using oil-burning vehicles, be pleasure travelling or be buying nonessentials. The implications of less consumerism would require an as-yet unknown and fresh economic philosophy. . Bruce Alton McGillis

Penticton