Myth of Riches

When Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, announced on 2013-12-20 he was ramming through a bitumen pipeline, many Canadians expressed great joy. Even ordinary Canadians imagined it would somehow make them fabulously rich. When I pointed out some of the downsides, they thought I was crazy, and that I must want to live in the age before electricity. That is dichotomous thinking.

Here are a few of the reasons why I think the pipeline is not a good idea. These people are so focused on the imagined coming wealth, that they refuse to even consider the drawbacks.

• This project is primarily for the benefit of China and foreign corporations. There is a short term construction phase that, in theory, will benefit Canadians, but more likely it will benefit temporary imported foreign workers because they work for half price. Harper always works to direct wealth from the people/government to corporations. He does not particularly care if they are domestic or foreign corporations.
• It will not be that much longer before the world goes into panic over climate change when the symptoms such as scorching summers, droughts and forest fires become undeniable. Canada will no longer be able to sell its dirty fossil fuels. We will be stuck paying for the infrastructure. We know perfectly well fossil fuels are obsolete. We need to get on with clean energy. We are like buggy whip manufacturers trying to corner the market after the automobile was invented. Even China is flipping rapidly to green energy.
• Burning Canada’s tar sands, no matter where on earth they are burned, is suicidal. We have already passed the climate change tipping point. We in for hell on earth with climate change. This will make it only worse. It still has not sunk in that climate change is up there with global nuclear war in terms of unpleasantness. Average Canadians are fooled by its gentle name and gradual onset.
• Bitumen is very expensive to extract both in terms of energy and greenhouse gases. Whenever world oil prices drop, it becomes too expensive to extract. Sales suddenly drop to zero. Harper bet the farm of bitumen, and the entire industry has collapsed for just this reason.
• The best crude oil ocean spill cleanup that money can buy recovers only 5% of the spill under ideal conditions. Because bitumen sinks, nobody has yet invented any equipment to clean up a bitumen spill in the ocean. Tanker spills are much more serious than pipeline spills. The first tanker spill will destroy BC fisheries and coastal tourism.

Even this promised wealth for average Canadians were real, what good is having a fleet of Rolls Royces and $100,000,000 in the bank if you and billions of your fellow humans are dead?

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)