Editor:
The fact that many indigenous band councils have supported LNG while opposing heavy oil projects like Northern Gateway is a double standard. It's true that a heavy oil pipeline rupture would have a much greater local impact, while LNG ruptures evaporate and have little local effect (although natural gas is a very potent greenhouse gas and adds to climate change). The larger problem is that even if all of the bands' environmental concerns could be fully met from the fracking fields to the Lelu Island terminal, the piped LNG would still all be burned and add to climate change, a concern that science unequivocally tells us is shaping up to be the defining crisis of our time.
Another problem is that our government's biggest LNG deal is with Petronas, a nontransparent company largely controlled by Malaysian PM Najib, who treats it as his personal reelection patronage slush fund. This practice has embroiled him and his cronies in what the international press has dubbed 'the Scandal That Ate Malaysia'. Our premier's response to this has basically been a shoulder shrug.
Seventy years ago a grand scheme was hatched to tap a new power source by creating the Nechako Reservoir. The project was discussed in government offices and boardrooms across the land, but the hundreds of people flooded forever off of their traditional lands had no say in the matter. Today a new scheme has been hatched to tap a new power source, LNG. But if we keep burning fossil fuels we know the ocean level will rise. The project is being discussed in band offices and boardrooms across the land, but the hundreds of -millions- of people in island nations and coastal lowlands like Bangladesh who stand to be flooded forever off their traditional lands, they have no say in the matter.
Canada is one of the wealthiest nations on Earth and climate change is mostly hurting many of the poorest nations on Earth. Given that, I find it hard to justify us generating a little more 'wealth' at the expense of the world's poorest. Local elected band officials may be enticed by the prospect of a few decades of easy money, but in the long run politically, scientifically and morally, LNG leaves no good. Kudos to the wise hereditary chiefs who know this.
Sincerely,
Walter van der Kamp,
Burns Lake, BC