Massive risks with pipeline
Dear editor: The recent announcement by the Canadian federal government that it intends to purchase an aging pipeline from a Texas-based company in order to further what is promoted to be “in the national interest” is unfortunate in the extreme.
It is clearly in the interests of Kinder Morgan, and the bank accounts of those corporate executives who will profit from the sale, and the political career of Rachel Notley, but it is a severe underestimation of the gravity of our true situation.
It is a profound failure of leadership from many levels of government, but most fundamentally by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet. This is not a decision serving the national interest, but rather the subordination of environmental and democratic objectives to private investors.
We are told that these “tough decisions” will ultimately result in our common benefit, providing a treasure trove of jobs and economic prosperity to the entire country.
The prime minister and Premier Notley speak about this wonderful pot of gold at the end of the pipeline rainbow, as if it were happening in some welcoming frontier, not that this project would put ever fragile ecosystems at ever greater risk, increase national greenhouse gas emissions and provoke even deeper conflict with First Nations right across the country. There is also a probability this decision, should it proceed, will invoke a constitutional crisis.
The prime minister appears to have forgotten that as a nation we are signatories to two significant international documents: The 2015 Paris Accord, and the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Despite the armchair experts pontificating from their air conditioned comfort, we are now facing the potential collapse of both civilization and Earth’s ecological systems.
Everywhere you turn, from world population, loss of biodiversity, resource depletion, debt, plastic waste, ocean acidification and pollution, all of the present systems sustaining human life on this planet are now in danger of collapse.
Our government’s decision to pursue this foolhardy course as the only way to economic security is a profound failure of imagination and leadership.
The risks inherent in the construction of a second pipeline through another route entirely places the risks entirely on local environments and indigenous communities, struggling marine species and other ecosystems in the path of the proposed second pipeline. Laurel Burnham Penticton