WATER NEWS
Water is Life Event – what healthy water means to us all – May 19
May 18th, 2012The False Creek Watershed Society, Village Vancouver, and others are hosting a free forum at the Roundhouse Community Centre in Yaletown this Saturday afternoon on urban streams and ... More »
Water & Oil
Why is it that the appalling BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has moved us to horrified concern while an ongoing environmental catastrophe of equal consequence, happening in our own back yard, fails to inspire similarly charged emotions and contemplation of our actions as a species?
The Alberta Tar Sands are one gigantic slow motion oil spill, the MOST destructive project on Earth. It seems that because this deliberately perpetrated disaster (which is fuelling the US and Asia while causing cancer and death in Canada) is not a dramatic accident, we allow it to continue almost unnoticed.
Let’s connect the dots.
- A pipeline (Kinder Morgan) currently transports 300,000 barrels of crude oil from Alberta to a port in Burnaby each day.
- The number of ships carrying crude oil out of Port Metro Vancouver has increased by 77% over the last year.
- Oceanographer, Peter Baker, warns there is little room in Vancouver’s port for manoeuvring these huge ships whose draft is so great that they have to enter and exit the harbour on high tide. A spill would spread outward on the tide and become unmanageable.
- Pipelines proposed for carrying oil from Alberta to a port in Kitimat for foreign export would endanger 1000 BC streams and rivers with spills and leaks that are impossible to contain or to clean up.
- These pipelines would increase tanker traffic by 220 tankers per year in BC’s sensitive coastal waters.
- The Harper government has re-written legislation to potentially enable oil drilling off the coast of British Columbia, doubling the risk to our ocean and shorelines.
What kind of culture are we that we numbly observe this organized destruction?
How have our values and intelligence become so degraded that we do not recognize and reverse the unnecessary consequences of this behaviour and the power brokers that mastermind it?
What will it take to prompt us to step up to our role as CREATORS of a healthy and happy world?
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