Editor:
If anything good is to come out of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is that governments around the world may take seriously the need to get the planet off oil.
Completing a pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to our coast, in order to ship oil offshore, will inevitably lead to a major oil spill in our own waters - it's just a matter of time.
The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? clearly shows how the automobile and oil industry killed off the development of a state-of-the-art electric car 20 years ago. In the early 20th century, the oil industry successfully blocked not just electric cars, but trains and buses. In return for producing a lineage of oil billionaires and pouring billions of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere every year from burning this oil, what has the industry done to guard against global warming or to benefit us? Now they would have us believe that all we need to do is sequester the CO2 underground (at huge cost and possibly dire consequences).
It not only makes environmental and long-term economic sense to end our reliance on oil, but it is essential. Oil reserves are declining - why else would extracting oil from sand at huge energy costs be profitable? Rather than subsidizing the tar sands, we need to fund alternate energy. Forward thinking governments with enlightened leadership that invest in a much-needed new vision, will take the lead in a new renaissance of energy sustainability.
Let's hope our country won't be left behind.
Gayle Neilson
Gibsons
