Arguments make no sense at all

Dear editor: Re: “Ottawa to buy Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion,” (May 30).

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has talked a lot about how getting bitumen to Asia is in the national interest, but his doublespeak doesn’t make sense: Advancing the oil industry is not addressing climate change, as he claims.

Trudeau’s economic argument is not convincing: Kinder Morgan, with its decades of oil industry experience (rooted in scandalladen Enron), is eager to accept the Trudeau government’s proposed $4.5-billion buyout.

And, it’s impossible to accept Trudeau’s environmental argument: Oilsands bitumen is diluted with carcinogenic chemicals so that before it even reaches ocean-going vessels, groundwater tables are threatened.

I’m not a Green Party member, but I agree with their leader Elizabeth May who was fined for breaking a law meant to keep demonstrators away from the gates of a Kinder Morgan worksite.

She said she is a law-abiding citizen, but that there is a higher moral consideration that motivated her to demonstrate by the gates.

This higher moral consideration of saving the planet for future generations is calling out to all of us to rethink our dependency upon oil products.

Optional energy sources are becoming accessible and while we’re not going to transition to renewable-energy sources overnight, we need to let our government know that transition we must.

That $4.5 billion would go a long way toward that end. Starla Anderson Victoria