Editor:
Thank you John Gleeson for your insightful column (Coast Reporter, Feb. 15) about fracking. It was refreshing to see something in the print media about how the oil industry controlled the Alberta election. I often despair whether the mainstream media will ever tackle the hard issues. Gleeson certainly did, connecting the deposing of Alberta Premier Stelmach and him daring to suggest a tiny increase in royalties from the tar sands.
Now Alberta is facing financial woes due in part to those teeny royalties, one per cent or less, which does not begin to cover its breathtaking environmental losses or the thousands of years of toxic lakes left in place of what was once rich boreal forest. The royalties (or lack thereof) have made Canada a bit of a laughing stock, but have also drawn in companies from all over the world to ransack the resource. Compare our royalties to the more than 70 per cent demanded and received by Norway, and we must question this giant giveaway. Hewers of wood and drawers of water we continue to be.
Gleeson is also to be commended for suggesting that the same is underway here in B.C., and equally bad for our environment. Trillions of gallons of fresh water are offered free for the taking to the fracking industry, which become highly toxic wastewater, often leaking into surrounding water tables. And if the B.C. government-touted LNG plants go ahead, not even the $10 billion Peace Dam construction will be enough to provide the obscene amount of power required to turn the gas into a liquid form required for shipping overseas. Fracking is insanity on a large scale.
Reducing energy consumption and developing alternatives is the solution, with the benefit that many more jobs will be created, not to mention lessening our carbon footprint.
Gayle Neilson
Sechelt
