It’s mind-numbing to try to keep up with all the decisions politicians in Ottawa made about the British Columbia coastline last week.
Next week in the news…
Mon: Gov’t buys tobacco farm.
Tues: Gov’t passes motion declaring a national emergency on smoking.
Wed: Gov’t approves massive subsidy of cigarette manufacturing
Thurs: Gov’t bans smoking in certain areas (except for tiny cigarettes)#bcpoli— Adam Olsen (@AdamPOlsen) June 21, 2019
First, on Monday the Members in the House of Commons voted 186 to 63 to support a motion from Hon. Catherine McKenna (Minister of Environment and Climate Change) declaring a national climate emergency and recommitting Canada to the targets set in the Paris agreement.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government is approving the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project, again. If you had concerns of the obvious inconsistencies in these two announcements, fear not. The support of the pipeline comes with a caveat that his government will invest all profits, “every dollar” is the quote, on green energy projects.
Last Thursday, the Canadian Senate’s approval of Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, adds to the confusion of the national news cycle. On one hand there is a national climate change crisis and on another hand we will make the problem better by making it worse through an approval of fossil fuel infrastructure. On the third hand, (if you don’t have three hands don’t worry about it, suspend reality to help you make it through this anyway) they are banning oil tankers over 12,500 metric tonnes from transiting Canadian waters north of Vancouver Island.
Guaranteed safety?
NDP MP Nathan Cullen tweeted that the decision was a “guarantee that our coastline, communities and sealife will be safe from a devastating oil spill.” Except for the fact that in 2013 the Nathan E. Stewart, an articulated tug and barge ran aground in Seaforth Channel spilling approximately 100,000 litres of petroleum products into the ocean. These articulated tug and barge operations would not be affected by this new ban. Just as they were allowed to continue under the previous moratorium.
This is the problem with the current debate around fossil fuels in our country. It’s been politicized to the point that there is little honesty left in it. Follow the storyline. Climate change is real, we are fighting it, look at our motion! We are funding the fight with ramping up fossil fuel production and when the Prime Minister says we need to transition away, he’s forced to scramble back to safety, else the oil lobby’s grip tighten. And now with an oil tankers ban in place, politicians are promoting a false sense of security.
Don’t get me wrong. The Oil Tanker Moratorium Act is important. However, are oil tanker transports more dangerous to the pristine coastline of central and northern British Columbia than they are in the Salish Sea? Calling a national climate emergency is important. Although, haven’t we lost all credibility by piggy-backing that announcement with a massive public subsidy of oil corporations?
Like I said, trying to understand the logic from the decisions in Ottawa is enough to make your mind numb.
Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay
That’s a pretty easy promise, if you over-spent on the purchase and expect to sell at a loss!
This was a cynical hand-out to the oil industry. The ex-Enron execs that Trudeau gifted are laughing all the way to the bank.
This won’t affect the Trans-Mountain Pipeline at all, since it will be tripling capacity to the Salish Sea, which is not “north of Vancouver Island!
There are definitely times when people’s action make little sense to me and elicit feelings of frustration and anger that lead to a conclusion of particular judgements. However, through experience I’ve come to understand some things that can inform that process when I notice it happening. One, that when I have that experience it’s most often because I’m engaging in black and white thinking, dualism, when generally speaking circumstances and the people in them exist in grey, things are always more complex than they appear and when I try to make a complex situation conform to either/or thinking rather than all/and, that’s when I’m bewildered by the actions and choices of others. Also, the axiom, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, you can only please some of the people some of the time which is of course the bane and the rub that all politicians must come to accept. Finally, I find I can overlay any societal dynamics onto a family dynamic such as the idealization that both parents can spend an equal amount of time parenting their children creating the optimal experience for childhood, however it’s undoable because at least one parent must work to provide food and shelter, so compromise becomes the reality in which the family must live and so it is with the larger family. Yes, in an ideal version of the world, there is no need to rely on fossil fuels, we simply just stop. Unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world, just as with the family if both parents were to stay home with their children eventually their daily existence would be threatened so it is with the larger family, if we didn’t find a way to compromise in the present towards a better future too many members of that family would find their daily existence under threat.
It may be mind numbing but my eyes see pretty clearly.