Saturday, November 05, 2016

Show Us It Floats.


Most British Columbians expect the Trudeau government will throw its environmental credibility down the toilet and approve the Kinder Morgan pipeline intended to carry some 890,000 barrels of dilbit each and every day to "tidewater" an utterly greaseball term for B.C.'s south coast.

Garneau who, despite the plain wording of his mandate letter, has been weaseling around non-committally has now come out of lurking to announce that there will indeed be an oil tanker moratorium on the north coast. That should be the end of the Enbridge Northern Gateway initiative but, with this government as with the last, best not to bet the farm on it.

So, Kinder Morgan it is. One reader suggested that Trudeau might try to appease the resistance from environmentalists and Lower Mainland mayors by re-routing the pipeline to the coal terminal at Tsawwassen. This map reveals the problem with that idea:


The Tsawwassen idea would bring the armada of supertankers necessary to transport 890,000 barrels a day of toxic diluted bitumen on the doorstep of America's territorial waters. That's not a sheltered area. It's often very windswept and exposed. And when a spill occurs the contamination would rapidly sweep into the coastal waters of Washington State. I'm not entirely sure the Americanos would tolerate the idea.

Here's the thing. If dilbit could float, Trudeau would be the first to demonstrate that just as Harper would have when it was his turn. If dilbit could float Enbridge and Kinder Morgan and the entire bloody Alberta oil patch would be proving it and would never let anybody forget it. Likewise, if the technology and infrastructure existed to ensure that a bitumen spill did not turn into a generational ecological disaster, they would be trotting that out for public inspection. If that technology and infrastructure actually existed the environment ministry would not have had to resort to approving highly dangerous Corexit for use as an oil dispersant when the Deepwater Horizon fiasco proved it really works to sink oil - "out of sight/out of mind" environmental remediation.

This whole thing is a goddamned scam initiated by Harper, perpetuated by his successors and now, it seems, brought to fruition by Justin Trudeau and his predatory supporting caste - McKenna, Garneau, Carr and Freeland.

We know what's coming. Kinder Morgan is already coordinating its action plan with the RCMP.  For its part, the federal police force, its credibility already sullied, is spinning the lie that it's going to be strictly impartial. Guess what, it's already partial and it has been since Harper created the pipeline secret police, marrying RCMP officers with CSIS agents in service to Kinder Morgan and the greater oil cartel. These jokers have been feeling each other up for years, getting together, once or twice a year, for group gropes. They've been gathering intelligence on environmentalists and, at times, intimidating them by having officers show up at the door of those Kinder Morgan doesn't like.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

And now, a message from your local RCMP and CSIS detachments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gK-VexgwzQ

The Mound of Sound said...


There's more truth in that Simpsons clip than you may realize, anon. The RCMP is back to its old ways of criminalizing dissent.

UU4077 said...

As for some of the language in your last paragraph - are you turning into "The Rude Pundit"?

The Mound of Sound said...

UU4077 - I see your point. Perhaps I strayed.

Northern PoV said...

Are you suggesting a new moniker?

"One reader"

btw - your map could also be used to support my point. The routing depends on who you want to piss off. (Or who you can afford to piss off - the voters in WA or BC? And it would be a "glorious" distraction.)

Dr Purva Pius said...
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