Devil in the details

The news about WCOP’s planned project for P.G. is exciting, with $5.6 Billion injected into the P.G. economy for its construction and up to 1,000 new, skilled jobs.

Mayor Lyn Hall is right when he says it can be a game-changer for P.G. It would be a huge, permanent boost to the economy of P.G. and Northern B.C. It would help us diversify from the beleaguered forestry sector, which has supported us in the past.

WCOP stresses that the manufacturing process will reduce the production of greenhouse gases (GHG).

This may be true.

But the intent of the project is to manufacture ethylene (from natural gas components). Ethylene in turn is used to make polyethylene plastic. This is the same plastic that is polluting our oceans and landfills, and killing wildlife. Current ways of destroying polyethylene add GHG to the atmosphere. And if you simply let it degrade slowly, as in landfills or oceans, it also produces GHG, which are added to the atmosphere.

The whole project promises to become an exemplar of the economy-versus-environment debate, right here in P.G.

I wish to see WCOP address the plastic pollution problem associated with this project. Are they investigating or developing environmentally safer ways to recycle the plastic? Or safer ways of not adding GHG to the environment when it is disposed of or destroyed?

I think before jumping to approve the project we have to consider if WCOP is trying to mitigate this polyethylene pollution problem. If WCOP is unable to show how it is trying to mitigate this problem, perhaps we should, sorrowfully, reject this project.

John Macdonell

Prince George