Editor:
Burning fossil fuels is warming the planet. Rising temperatures create extreme weather events putting lives and infrastructure at risk.
Recent climate studies project up to four feet increased sea levels over the next 50 years, perhaps more.
Winter high tides combined with storm surges already overflow the highway in Davis Bay and push water onto the Boulevard in Sechelt. Imagine what an additional four feet will do. Lower level buildings in Davis Bay will be lost. The highway will need to be relocated. Sechelt, the Land Between Two Waters, may become The Land Underwater. Low bank waterfront is imperiled. The enormous costs of reconstruction and mitigation will be borne by citizens, not from the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
Building pipelines and port facilities to send diluted tar sands bitumen, supply LNG plants and tankers and thermal coal overseas is pure folly. The expensive infrastructure requires 40 to 60 years to recoup costs, creating an economic imperative to ramp up gas fracking, poisoning people, land and water, and increase strip mining of the tar sands, a permanent scar visible from space for thousands of years. Building such projects encourages continued fossil fuel burning and exacerbates climate change.
Despite the premier’s pipe dreams, LNG is not a transition fuel to a renewable energy economy. We simply don’t have 40-plus years to recoup the infrastructure costs while continuing fossil fuel burning. The vast majority of fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground.
Jef Keighley, Halfmoon Bay
