Dear Editor
Re: Burnaby’s voice is clear, Opinion, Burnaby NOW, Sept. 2.
Caitlyn Vernon is correct. In Burnaby it is possible to pack an anti-oil meeting. You can always count on Lead Now, Dogwood, BROKE and the various other supporters to show up.
The Burnaby NOW will assist by keeping the fires burning. During the past three months there were 35 articles and letters/comments re: oil/pipeline issues, three of them started on the front page. There may have been a few more, however, I did not get all the issues.
Take my word, none of the articles questioned that more CO2 in the air equals global warming. Nobody ever wrote an op-ed in this paper about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change having predicted the current global warming hiatus or how it will end. (It’s 18 years and nine months by now with Whistler expecting early snow because it is a “La Niña” year.)
She is not correct stating that 100 per cent of those attending the meetings were against the Kinder Morgan pipeline. It was not received kindly when I informed Mr. Terry Beech that during the last election only the Green Party stated clearly that they were against a pipeline. The Greens received 5.7 per cent of the vote in my riding, less in the rest of Burnaby.
At another meeting, which was not so packed, I presented the panel with a policy statement by the B.C. Conservative Party, which included a lot of evidence gathered by known scientists, proving that CO2 does not drive the climate. Can she actually substantiate that the fossil fuel industry has received $7-billion in subsidies? Annually?
On the one hand Ms. Vernon dislikes subsidies but then requests that these (non-existing) subsidies be transferred to questionable industries of her own choice. In the real world, retirement fund managers are always on the lookout for potential hot performers. They eagerly invest in those but stay clear of anything that requires subsidies because of their poor performance records. What works does not require subsidies.
I do agree, of course, that we must do everything possible to operate tankers and pipelines safely. However, why is her organization only concerned about tankers that take Canadian oil to market on the West Coast? I am totally unaware that they oppose tanker traffic on the St. Lawrence, even though incoming OPEC oil is just as dirty and, in addition, could also be called unethical.
Finally, the Sierra Club must be well-heeled. They even have a campaign director. Wow! Do I dare ask where all that money is coming from, or must I go to Vivian Krause’s website for an honest answer? Anyway, here she gets paid for making things up, and me, poor schmuck, fights to keep her hands out of the pockets of my grandchildren. She wants to spend money which they have not earned yet on subsidies to prop up unsubstantiated pipe dreams (pun intended)!
Ziggy Eckardt, Burnaby
