Mining the coal debate’s pros and cons
Re: Facts in short supply in the coal debate, Column, March 14
I’m glad the Sun lets axegrinders run pieces in the Issues and Ideas section. It lets the rest of us see both sides of an issue, and helps us make informed decisions.
Alan Fryer’s piece, however, is even more disingenuous than most. He reckons that once we understand that coal generates a lot of money ( and pride!) for everyone, we’ll smack ourselves up side the head and say, “Holy, smokes! I didn’t know that! Release the mining hounds!”
It’s not until 12 inches into his piece that Fryer suggests, parenthetically, that coal can be used and produced safely, given “the right precautions.”
No one doubts that coal mining generates loads of money. But so does asbestos mining, heroin and meth production, uranium processing, prostitution, piracy ( high- seas and otherwise) and countless other endeavours society often prohibits, most for good reason.
It may be that the benefits of coal production outweigh the risks. Or maybe not. Until industry lobbyists like Fryer start bragging about those “right precautions,” his simple and single- minded argument won’t convince anyone.
CHRIS PETTY New Westminster
Alan Fryer, acknowledged “coal industry spokesman,” goes to some length extolling the economic benefits of coal. In effectively arguing that British Columbia should allow the U. S. multinationals to use our land as a conduit for coal distribution, he conveniently avoids the following:
1) the health effects of thousands of tons of blowing coal on B. C. citizens,
2) the lack of accountability of our Port Authorities,
3) the warming of our oceans and atmosphere, warming our planet ever nearer to untenability,
4) U. S. environmental reviews forcing coal companies into the British Columbia option, where we have no such review requirements.
The cost to our environment is not worth the risk.
No longer can we, or our politicians, sit idly by while the future of our children and grandchildren is threatened by multinational conglomerates unconcerned with the environmental degradation caused by their self- serving rush for profit.
Learn more at coaltrainfacts.org
STEVEN FARAHER-AMIDON Surrey
Job creation and economic development are vital to our province’s future. And from what I’ve seen, mineral exploration and mining are among the safest and best ways for us to achieve these objectives.
For one thing, the province’s permitting and environmental assessment processes are rigorous. Likewise, the safety standards that must be achieved are among the highest in the world. And searching for mineral deposits has one of the lowest environmental impacts of any economic activity you can imagine. The people of this province deserve to benefit from the resources that nature has bestowed upon us. We can have jobs. We can have a strong economy. And we can also have an environment that is wellprotected and secured for the future.
JUSTINA HARRIS Coquitlam
What is wrong with coal along the Fraser River? I live adjacent to the railway tracks and the truck traffic in New Westminster spewing diesel fumes into the air. All buildings along this corridor have been advised to clean their air systems more regularly because of this dust. When you add coal delivery and loading on the Fraser River, transporting it from Washington and up to Texada Island, the situation can only worsen.
In 1954, federal and provincial governments, the academics and the asbestos corporations gave their blessings to extracting asbestos from the ground to be used primarily as an insulator. That was the year of my wife’s birth in Quebec. Before she was 50, she died of mesothelioma, caused by exposure to asbestos. What about the costs to our health care system? How much suffering and loss of life will this black plaque inflict? Will someone please enlighten me?
MIKE HOYER New Westminster
The prevalence of black lung disease is on the rise; 1,500 U. S. coal miners die each year from the effects of coal dust.
Coal miners on partial or permanent disability and environmental cleanup cost U. S. taxpayers up to $ 500 billion a year, a recent Harvard Public Health report estimates. In their zeal to expand coal mining and deregulation in B. C., government and industry continue to quote outdated information on black lung’s decline.
We need strong regulation and enforcement of laws to protect not only coal miner health, but also the environment and sustainable industry jobs.
SHARON SMALL Comox Valley
Spokesman Alan Fryer of the Coal Alliance feels the public misunderstands the importance of coal to the provincial economy. What we fail to understand is why coal should come through the Lower Mainland.
Look at the map of B. C. There are many possible transportation corridors, but there is only one Lower Mainland. Coal has no business coming through Port Metro Vancouver.
Fryer claims coal is safe. It is beside the point. The problem is congestion. Why add to it when there are alternatives?
NICK LOENEN Richmond
With so much focus on the unparalleled opportunity of exporting B. C.’ s natural gas to Asia, it’s easy to overlook the many other equally impressive export and job creation opportunities that are underway here in this province.
As an example, over the next two to three years, eight new mines are slated to open in B. C. and another nine expanded. This will add as many as 10,000 jobs to an industry that employs close to 30,000 British Columbians. In addition to jobs, these new and expanded mines will generate close to $ 1.6 billion in revenue for the people of this province every year. We have so many opportunities available to us here in B. C. I’m glad to see we’re seizing them and building a solid future we can be proud of to pass on to our children.
JESSE MCCLINTON Victoria
Is fossil fuel expansion the direction to take?
Re: Global warming’s frightening, relentless mathematics, Column, March 9
Simon Fraser University economist Mark Jaccard provides a wake- up call to government and industry that their marketing of the Keystone XL pipeline is seriously flawed.
Jaccard says that to restrict global warming “means no expansion of oilsands, no new pipelines ... you cannot be expanding carbon polluting production and also prevent 2 C or even 4 C temperature increase. The industry knows this, but prefers its ads telling us about the jobs and revenue from expanding the polluting infrastructure.”
Jaccard is both right and wrong. Although it is naive to believe we control global climate, he is right to point out that government and industry are not properly addressing the climatic impacts of oilsands expansion.
The strategy of ignoring this, the most important objection to the project, is why proponents will likely fail to convince the Obama administration to approve Keystone XL. The Canadian government must convene open, unbiased hearings into the climatic impact of the oilsands, inviting qualified scientists from all sides of the debate to testify.
Then the public will better understand the vast uncertainties in the field and the anti-Keystone campaign will fail without the government even committing themselves to a position on the science.
TOM HARRIS International Climate Science Coalition, Ottawa
Readers might think “who cares” about a 2 C warming in the Earth’s atmosphere.
But as The Vancouver Sun reported on Dec. 12, 2012, the cost to protect property in the Lower Mainland from flooding by a rising sea level has been estimated at $ 9.5 billion.
As Pete McMartin pointed out, the atmospheric warming will be relentless if we don’t act by sharply reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.
If we say “who cares” then we will be paying out tens of billions of dollars as the ocean rises by tens of metres; forests are desiccated and burn; and windstorms pummel our cities.
The global community of nations needs to conclude a comprehensive, effective and equitable greenhouse gas emission reduction treaty by 2015.
DEREK WILSON Port Moody
Pete McMartin paints quite a dire picture of our industrial CO2 “pollution” ( which is really not pollution, just atmospheric crop fertilizer) and our planet’s future. And with “relentless mathematics” and big- shot scientists behind this shameless scaremongering, who could doubt the credibility of his case for halting all expansion of fossil fuel resources to save our supposedly endangered biosphere?
Well, anyone who examines that actual temperature data for Earth’s atmosphere, that’s who. As the British Met admitted on its website last December 24, global warming stopped in its tracks 16 years ago, despite record CO2 emissions during that period, and stubbornly refuses to indulge the doomsayers’ predictions by starting up again.
What to do, if you’ve got global warming religion and nature isn’t co- operating? Ignore the data and keep pumping out propaganda, continually replacing data- falsified climate models with new alarmist fantasies, hoping someone will believe. It’s lonely being wrong all by oneself, eh? As it should be.
KENNETH LAWRENCE Surrey
Thank you, Pete McMartin, for giving us another wellresearched, grim reminder of the progress of global warming.
I remember an article by a different author, some months ago, based on different studies by the UN and other agencies, which came to precisely the same devastating conclusion.
During the countdown period to the two degree limit — which is now — full coverage of all environmental issues is essential.
H. B. COTTON Vancouver
Too bad solutions to global warming that are usually put forward are usually so halfbaked, like windmills.
Nuclear electricity from fastbreeder reactors of established designs offers all the reliable carbon- free energy the world will need for centuries at a price not much above current levels.
But it is delayed by the remnants of anti- nuclear emotions and not by reason.
I write as an energy expert of long and wide experience. Have I an axe to grind? I am 93 years old.
ERNEST SIDDALL Vancouver
Re: Exxon algae venture stalls, March 11
Exxon now say’s their “motor fuels from algae” experiments might not come to fruition for another 25 years ( up from a previous estimate of 5- 10 year).
For me, it should have read “Exxon delays algae experiments till oil reserves nearly run out, then we’ll give you something else.”
Big oil is famous for delaying, burying and buying out any technology that might mess with the status quo and their profits.
How sad that mankind will continue down a path of carbonintensive energy until corporations such as Exxon deem it time to move on to the next generation of power sources.
CHRIS MCKEE Vancouver