Paul Simon on tanker risks: ‘Hello darkness, my old friend’
Singer joins Coastal First Nations TV ad campaign against oil tanker traffic along the B.C. coast
VANCOUVER Singer Paul Simon has added his voice to the fight against oil tanker traffic on the West Coast in a haunting new television commercial released on the 24th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
The singer personally approved the use of his song in the video created by Coastal First Nations, said the group’s executive director, Art Sterritt.
The two-minute video begins with footage of the Exxon Valdez and overlays crackling audio of its call to the coast guard, “we’ve fetched up hard aground ...” with Simon’s haunting lyrics “Hello darkness, my old friend,” from The Sound of Silence.
Sterritt wrote a letter to Simon outlining CFN’s position against oil tanker traffic in coastal waters and the potentially devastating effect of a spill on the ecosystem of the central B.C. coast’s Great Bear region’s and the cultures and communities of the area.
They received Simon’s permission to use the song for a nominal fee — “about the price of a nice dinner out,” said CFN spokesperson Andrew Frank.
Sterritt said the video is part of “a public education strategy” aimed at correcting what he calls the “skewed information in the yellow brick road commercials” by Enbridge in a multi-million-dollar public relations campaign supporting its controversial Northern Gateway pipeline project.
In their new ad, CFN says a disaster similar to the Exxon Valdez spill, in which 40 million litres of crude oil were spilled in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, would cost B.C. taxpayers $24.1 billion to clean up and cost B.C. nearly 4,500 full time jobs.
Sterritt said federal measures unveiled last week aimed at improving tanker safety in Canada, including an expanded aerial surveillance system, are “nothing new. Flyovers aren’t to prevent spills, they are just to monitor them.
“Once a spill happens, it’s game over.”
Sterritt said if you transpose the geographic area affected by the Valdez spill onto the area tankers would travel on B.C.’s west coast, a spill’s slick could theoretically stretch from Prince Rupert to Vancouver. “It’s been 24 years since the Exxon Valdez spill and the herring have still not recovered,” said Sterritt. “If you dig into the sub strata and the clam beds, oil is still being released. If we move forward with oil tankers, this is what we could subject ourselves to in B.C.”
A report released 20 years after the spill by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council revealed that “Exxon Valdez oil persists in the environment and, in places, is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill.”
The report also states that 200,000 sea birds and 4,000 otters died as a result of the contamination.
A similar spill in B.C.’s coastal waterways “could go right to Vancouver and destroy wild fisheries, aquaculture and sport fisheries,” said Sterritt.
He said such a spill would pose a serious threat to aboriginal culture.
The video, which urges “don’t be silent” and “vote for an oil-free coast” will be uploaded to YouTube today, and will air on TV in some areas of northern B.C. starting Monday. CFN is hoping for an angel investor to help foot the cost of airtime in southern B.C.
Coastal First Nations recently withdrew from the federal review process for the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline.