As you know, I try to limit my rants but sometimes the spleen is full-to-the-bursting and needs venting. Sorry. My spleen is about to go nuclear. I am apoplectic.
Our government is so bad. It is so bad. It is so bad.
For those of you not on this magnificent coast, the Enbridge Pipeline proposal may not ring any bells but, out here, it is big news. This proposal threatens to cover our beaches in oil. And it will.
The Enbridge company, the provinces and the federal government want to pump sludge from the northern Alberta tar sands through BC to the deep sea port of Kitimat. The sludge will then be shipped to China using 250 tankers a year that will pass through the dangerous waters between Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) and the railhead terminal.
These are the same waters that claim ships every year and, just a few years ago, took down a BC ferry. Hurricane force winds are common. Keel-snapping seas are common. It is the northern section of the Graveyard of the Pacific.
A spill is inevitable.
And Enbridge has a long and dismal record of oil spills.
Seems the Chinese government has invested billions in the tar sands (by buying Canadian companies) and they want their oil. ‘Course, our government has to make a show of applying studies and regulations so that appearances are kept up. But it is just a show. The decision has been made. Doesn’t matter what you read, the fix is in. The latest insanity proving this is a press release made yesterday (through the lickspittle CBC) that Transport Canada has no regulatory concerns over the proposal. Transport Canada gave Enbridge the ‘thumbs up’ to ship oil along our coast.
No worries.
Our Off the Grid Home 
This falls under Policy GJDC. They just do not care. Rate them on any issue forestry, fisheries, poverty, pollution, elderly need I name others Government Just Does not Care.(GJDC). Do you think George Harrison was thinking of Christie when he wrote: (If you drive a car ), I’ll tax the street,
(If you try to sit ), I’ll tax your seat,
(If you get too cold ), I’ll tax the heat,
(If you take a walk ), I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman.”
Tax not to build a better society but to sell out Multinationals and transfer cash to them. Hence that slick of oil coming to a spot near you. Capitalism trumps people.
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I like to think that, eventually, people trump all ‘isms’ but it does seem to take a long time. Too long for my liking.
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Dave,
Just reading the blog makes me weary, because I see yet another call for tiny me to “gird my loins” (as you say) once again and do battle with behemoths, who wouldn’t feel a twinge from my most strenuous efforts. I was born after WW2 but consider myself a child of the war because my very young parents, and their parents, had just survived it, and they tried to teach their children the value of courage, integrity, self-denial for the greater good, stoicism and non-complaint. Now I’m a senior citizen, and apparently, although we aren’t at war, I must still keep fighting on and on with dwindling energy, against political and corporate entities that put self-serving greed above social justice or any of the other values that our elected officials and government agencies were intended to protect for us.
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Yeah. Writing it makes me weary, too. Sometimes the ‘dark force’ is strong, Luke. It is definitely in the majority. And we are without our light sabres, anyway. Still, for evil to be done, good people only have to do nothing and, if that is all the inertia I have to beat, I will try to do something.
Fight the political and corporate entities? Battle the behemoths? I don’t think so. I think we have to fight the aformentioned inertia first. Speak up. And that is something you did simply by commenting. If we simply raise the level of awareness, shine the light in the dark, speak up and state the truth, that will be all that is required.
Tiny, pathetic example……………
I never smoked. Ever. Just hated it. When it was ‘in’, I hated it and when it was ‘out’, I hated it. And, whenever I had the chance to say so without being shrill or preachy, I took it. Millions of others did, too. Now smoking is for pariahs.
These greedy, planet-killing idiots can change. It is doable. And we can do it. There just has to be enough of us speaking out is all.
Anyway, you were never reticent with your opinions……..
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Hey, UVic’s Environmental Law Centre, and the lawyers of Ecojustice just held a screening of the documentary “On the Line” in which Frank Wolf and Todd McGowan hike, bike and boat 2400km of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. It will cross a mere 773 rivers (no worries there). The more people who can see it the better. Check out http://www.onthelinemovie.com.
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