Rafe Mair Online

I’m sure, like me, you were excited to read in the Vancouver Sun for November 4 that LNG Canada (Shell and its Asian partners) will build a plant in Kitimat which will be very, very “green” and put even less greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere than the maximum prescribed by the BC government.

Oh, there will still be GHG escaping but just a teensy, weensy bit. And, of course, we all know how strict BC government standards are. After all if you can’t trust Christy Clark and Mary Polak, the Environment Minister, who can you trust?

Shell: your friendly, trustworthy oil and gas giant

It’s been suggested that Shell is not a very nice company, that amongst other things ruined Nigeria and the rivers therein. I don’t place much credence in this sort of whining from greenies! I’m told that wherever Shell goes it buys uniforms for the local Little League. Surely a company that does that is trustworthy!

I also was excited to realize that LNG Canada (Shell) would be carefully policed, and if necessary, be dealt with severely – just like fish farmers, private river power projects, or mines like Mount Polley mine have been.

Christy Clark: Always looking out for people of BC

In the same Sun issue, we learned that premier Christy Clark had a lovely meeting with the premier of Alberta and that all bits of unpleasantness were resolved. We know what a great bargainer our Christy is from her toughness with LNG companies and that, contrary to what those of little faith feared, BC will be getting lots of loot out of the Enbridge Northern Gateway and the procedure for a spill in the ocean will be “world-class”. Thank God!

Now here are two of Canada’s finest politicians, so we surely trust that all is well. After all, if you can’t trust people like Christy Clark, whom can you trust?

The Sun: Bastion of independent thought

I’m always grateful to the Vancouver Sun because it brings us independent thought – like The Fraser Institute, or the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, or the BC Fish Farmers, or the president of the BC Chamber of Commerce or the Vancouver Board of Trade. If you can’t believe independent thinkers like these unbiased folk, whom can you believe?

Doubling down on fossil fuels

I must confess, dear readers, that I have been a ninny. I thought that we decided, both in the United States and Canada, we would “wean ourselves” off fossil fuels. We had to, we were told.

How could I have been so wrong! “Weaning off” apparently means something quite different to politicians and oil barons. Or perhaps it was sometime in the future?

Since then, we’ve opened up new coal mines all over the continent, new oil wells are being drilled, especially where new techniques allow us to recapture left-over oil – and we are “fracking” everywhere we possibly can for oil and gas.

BC: the new oil and gas enabler

In British Columbia, we’re fortunate to have hydroelectric power but our job in the new scheme of things, evidently, is not to be a user but an “enabler”. We are to transport bitumen from the Alberta Tar Sands, put it on 100s of tankers and send them down our narrow fjords off to the Far East. Since we don’t actually that much of this stuff ourselves, we leave it to others, who can blame us if others pump the crap into the atmosphere?

We’ll not only put LNG plants in BC to enable overseas customers to send our stuff into the atmosphere, we’re going to “frack” away to our hearts content to produce as much as we can and fuel those plants. No small-time enabling for us, by golly!

Now, here’s my most egregious sin. I rejected the assurances of our government and the companies that “fracking” is harmless. I took the word of scientists who talk about how “fracking” sends poisonous methane gas plus the usual GHGs aloft and that, when everything is considered, in the longer run, natural gas, “fracked” or otherwise, may be just as harmful as oil or coal. Silly me!

Rafe turns over new leaf

Readers can expect me to turn over a new leaf and accept that our wise and thoughtful premier is really an environmentalist at heart and that all her thoughts are to that end. I’ll pay rapt attention to what independent commentators like the Fraser Institute say in independent papers like the Sun and Province. After all, doesn’t big business always have our best interests at heart?

How could I have been so stupid as to accept the word of 97% of climate scientists in the world and the studies done, particularly very recently, by the White House and the United Nations, that GHGs are destroying our atmosphere? That we don’t have much time left?

Surely “experts” like environmental turncoat Patrick Moore are much more reliable. Moreover, I’ve overlooked the gut instincts of climate change deniers. Hell, what could be more accurate than that?

I promise to reform. I can only hope that our publisher, Damien Gillis, doesn’t stick to his tiresome, outdated theories that we really are in trouble on this planet, that fossil fuels make a huge contribution to GHGs which are destroying our atmosphere, that we must reform our way of life and find ways to get clean energy, and all that nonsense.

I am sure that all faithful readers of The Common Sense Canadian will apply the necessary pressure to make our publisher have faith in our betters and hereafter behave himself, and make this publication even-handed like The Fraser Institute and its ilk.

And the Vancouver Sun.

Tags: LNG