Some 2,000 Canadians die in motor vehicle accidents each year. Another 11,000 suffer serious injuries.
Yet no one is demanding a ban on cars — not even MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).
Running a 21st century industrial economy also carries risks — including environmental risks. Even the great modern god of renewable energy has a downside.
Hydro dams kill entire forests (just look at Quebec), while wind turbines kill an estimated 440,000 birds a year — about 275 times more than the 1,600 ducks that famously perished in a Syncrude tailings pond in 2008.
An additional seven million birds die annually after colliding with communications towers, and 300 million-plus are killed after striking highrise offices.
Yet, for some reason, Greenpeace isn’t demanding an end to wind farms, cellphone towers, office buildings or even global jet travel — an industry whose annual carbon emissions match those of Canada’s entire economy.
Instead, the wrath of today’s altruistic eco-warriors is focused almost exclusively on the oil and gas industry — notably Alberta’s oilsands.
Which brings us to the subject of oil pipelines. For decades, they operated out of sight and out of mind.
Few people thought about them or debated the need for them, despite regular spills or leaks.
Between 1990 and 2011, for instance, some 2.6 million barrels of oil and refined products spilled from the mainland U.S. pipeline network.
That’s an average of nearly 127,000 barrels a year, or roughly eight times the total amount of oil spilled by Enbridge’s pipelines in Michigan and more recently, Wisconsin.
Sure, 127,000 barrels sounds like a lot, and it is. But let’s put it into context: the U.S. consumes about 150 times that amount each day — roughly 19 million barrels every 24 hours.
Yet, the Enbridge leaks have been treated as something akin to a national disaster by both U.S. regulators and the mainstream media. Why?
Because Enbridge has become the latest target du jour. It’s all part of the campaign to stop the company’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast.
Now, let’s be crystal clear here: Yes, pipeline leaks are a very bad thing. In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be any — just as there wouldn’t be plane crashes, train derailments or car accidents.
And yes, U.S. regulators have every right to demand greater accountability from Enbridge, just as it needs to do a far better job of monitoring its pipelines. I get it.
But let’s get a grip. Where’s the sense of proportion here? I don’t see any. It’s clear that Enbridge — like the oilsands — has been successfully demonized by a well-funded green lobby that wants the oilsands stopped, or at a minimum, shut in.
By stoking public fears through the media, the green lobby is clearly winning the PR battle, most notably on the West Coast.
It has turned Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline into a brewing interprovincial war, while ramping up efforts to block expansion of Kinder Morgan’s pipeline to Vancouver.
It’s the same story in the U.S. and Eastern Canada, where eco-activists are vowing to block any new oilsands pipelines south or east.
The result: landlocked Alberta crude has been selling at fat discounts to U.S. and world prices for the past year, and that’s bound to continue. One bank study estimates this is already costing the Canadian economy $50 million a day, or $18 billion a year.
Imagine all the taxes those lost revenues would generate, and all the public infrastructure those dollars would help build across the country — including in B.C.
Unfortunately, the energy industry has done a lousy job of explaining this to the public, and even if it had, economics remains little more than a mystery to most voters.
Fights, on the other hand, are much easier to understand. And the media loves a good fight. It gets our juices flowing.
Conflict is exciting. That’s why it gets front-page play in newspapers and leads the nightly TV newscasts.
So when B.C. Premier Christy Clark went rogue at the recent meeting of provincial leaders in Halifax, and refused to sign on to Alberta Premier Alison Redford’s proposed Canadian Energy Strategy, the media ate it up.
It made for great drama, and for Clark, who is far behind her NDP rival in the polls, it was smart politics. For once, she looked strong, although it hasn’t paid off for her in the polls.
What the latest polling does show, however, is that despite the campaign against Northern Gateway, fully half of B.C. residents remain on the fence, and could be convinced to support the pipeline if the right deal was struck.
In a world that’s full of risk, perhaps reason may yet prevail in this raucous debate.
Original Article
Source: edmonton journal
Author: Gary Lamphier
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