Stephen Harper's Recent Embrace Of 'Science' Is Laughable!
"A Calgary columnist remarked petulantly last week that British Columbians are "suffering from a collective case of anticipatory anxiety." Damn right we are.
An oil "spill" isn't something that can be cleaned up with a paper towel. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency faced the first ever major spill of diluted bitumen into water (the Kalamazoo River) two years ago. It found that the lighter chemicals in "dilbit," as it's called, evaporated and the bitumen sank to the bottom sediments. Skimmers and oil booms proved useless.
Cleanup was estimated at 10 times the cost of conventional oil-spill cleanup.
If there is a supertanker accident off the coast, how does our reduced Coast Guard react? Enbridge's "shoreline protection consultant" says that, though Enbridge's liability ends at the end of the pipe, its spill "management plan" will be "state of the art," whatever that means.
The Western Canada Marine Response Corp. would likely be called in with the skimmers, booms, pumps and absorbent pads that are in caches along the coast. The company has 22 employees, and would rely on other marine response companies around the globe to help. The company says it would take between six and 72 hours to respond, longer if there's a storm. By then, how much sludge is sinking to smother life on the sea bottom and washing ashore? Skimmers and booms don't do much in heavy seas, anyway.
We don't need "science" to warn us that we face "significant adverse environmental effects," which Harper may find "justified in the circumstances."
Victoria Times Colonist
Decades after the fact, Exxon has paid about half the compensation it owes for the Valdez catastrophe in Prince William Sound. That disaster was plainly behind the liability cut-outs structured into the Northern Gateway/Kinder Morgan pipeline supertanker trafficking agreements. Alberta isn't liable. Oil producers aren't liable. Enbridge will duck liability. The Chinese supertanker operators have limited liability. Ottawa isn't on the hook. The shelf company Enbridge uses as a liability cut-out to operate the pipeline won't have enough assets to do squat. We, the people of British Columbia, are on the hook.
If Harper believed in science and if Enbridge believed in safety they wouldn't have chosen the most dangerous but inexpensive route for that goddamned pipeline and then covered their asses with liability cut-outs.
If Harper believed in science he wouldn't have stripped B.C. of Fisheries and Coast Guard monitors and protectors and gutted our fisheries regulations.
Fuck Alberta, fuck the oil patch and fuck Ottawa.
Posted by
The Mound of Sound |
11:22 am, August 12, 2012
Harper got rid of all the top scientists in Canada. Harper having his own scientists means, the fix is in. Same as the robo-call cheat, and the election riding disputes. Watch for dirty tactics from Harper.
Harper looks out for Harper and his own selfish goals. Seems everyone but him, Premier Redford, Enbridge and Communist China, don't seem to understand nor care, the dirty tar sands can and will pollute the entire planet. This comes from, the Scientists around the globe.
Strange, how the greedy ones are the only ones, that don't understand. This planet is in dire straights. Global warming disasters, are all around the world.
However, their greed trumps common sense every time. Giving Communist China control of the tar sands, is treason as far as I am concerned.
Posted by
Gloria |
7:43 pm, August 14, 2012