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LETTER: Shrink dependence on fossil fuels, not expand

A Langley letter writer is critical of MLA Rich Coleman’s position on Kinder Morgan.
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Dear Editor,

This Trans Mountain pipeline debacle is really starting to get amusing.

Every side turning, twisting, and shouting, while rolling around in this political pig pen of push-me-pull-you posturing.

A highly charged rhetorical, part-truth-tug-o-war that nobody really wins, as we all get led to the tar sands for slaughter. Which, given the rapid rate of alternative energy advancement, us EV eco-vegans no longer have the stomach for.

So now, we see Rich Coleman fries his bacon in the same grease as his recent written reiteration of irrelevance just lowered my opinion of most politicians to why-did-I-ever-bother-voting status.

LETTER: Langley MLA Rich Coleman speaks in favour of pipeline

So what if pipelines are safer than trains?

So what if the five-year approval process ignores mine and many other voters much longer disapproval one?

So what if this was done legally? Objection your honour…relevance? They are the lawmakers. They get no gold star for that either.

I ask what about morally? Or not hypocritically? And what happened to being the greenest city in the world by 2020? Or Canada’s disappearing ink signature on the Paris climate accord and plain old common sense?

But then he includes the diversionary drivel about the $50 million a year stipend for environmental groups all over B.C.? Hah!

This amount they can recover in a fraction of a penny in a fraction of an hour at the pump, while hiding behind the same phantom fuel shortage that started this hot mess in the first place.

I believe Christy’s words “up to $1 billion over 20 years” was the actual bent nail in her party’s political coffin.

Which is not to be confused with that also means from 0 to… if (which does not ever mean when) we don’t allow this… more curious given the subtle language they use. Meanwhile, I wonder what the price of gas is going up to?

Or the inflation rate, along with that, about to be blamed on the new minimum wage, which is in itself a Bandaid to offset corporate monopoly and international investment greed.

But then Notley boycotts our wine? Hysterical. Good. More for us. We can deduct those sour grapes and the $12 million Alberta market loss from the other phantom 50 from thier kinder gentler buck $0.55 a litre… lol.

Or Add it. I don’t even know anymore. Much less care. I drive electric. But, at least we don’t have to worry about hideous chemicals or “engineering and envirionmental jobs” babysitting pipeline welds, future cleanups, or counting dead wildlife and how many p.p.m. in the very same ground water that nourishes our delicious organic grapes. Or in the particulate fallout like they do in the Athabaska River area or every single tailing pond.

Now, I’m not exactly thrilled with the NDP/Green team either, but at least they are honouring the will of the people who hired them. We the feeder fish who are tired of getting fed by plastic wrapped politicians pandering to the fatter cat and not those of us who adopted them.

Oh I’m sure the cigar smoking whales who enjoy hiding behind “laws, statutory decision powers and approvals” are glad Rich is on their side.

But, whatever happened to the middle-class jobs in trades we used to have? They were traded away by NAFTA to the very conglomerates who are buying our homes and entire economy out from under us one barrel at a time right now.

The world needs to shrink the fossil fuel biz. Not expand it. You won’t find me kissing the new federal brass ring for doubling offshore spill when the risk would actually go up times seven.

Do we really need to be reminded of the words Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon or Kalamazoo? I wonder how many of those victims ever got paid.

But to even try to threaten yet another “cataclysmic environmental catastrophe” when the entire business is going obsolete just might be the funniest twist I ever read. If it wasn’t so sad, some may actually believe it.

Danny A. Halmo, Langley