Dear Editor:
It's a clever tactic, used when you can't win a discussion: simply change the focus of that discussion. We are quite literally being bombarded by advertising showing wonderful pictures of pristine B.C. and the endless jobs that the oil, gas and coal sectors have created. Ian Anderson, the CEO of Trans Mountain, using a sad victim's expression in these TV ads, implies that they are not the bad guys.
Now imagine the Star Wars scene where Ben 'Obi-Wan' Kenobi is mesmerizing a Storm Trooper by saying "These are not the droids you are looking for." Essentially you are being fooled into thinking that the future with fossil fuels is not harmful, whereas the reality is just the opposite.
It is an irrefutable fact that fossil fuels are killing this planet, and transporting them is equally as bad as burning them. One could equate here the difference between the pusher of drugs to the user and which is worse.
International diplomats are currently in Lima, Peru, debating how to protect the difference between a "newly unpleasant world and an uninhabitable one" because we are just seeing the first effects of climate change.
While it would be nice to throw a switch and stop using fossil fuels, the reality is it will happen over time. In the meantime, we don't need to be subsidizing the fossil fuel industry to the sum of $1.4 billion of your tax dollars every year by our federal government.
Some steps can be taken right away, we just need political will and open public dissent.
Gavin Wishart, New Westminster
