Editor:
Mr. Weston has a vision of the Northern Gateway pipeline project as the key to building a country and jobs. It is time that this Conservative government looks at what is happening in other countries that are truly creating jobs while addressing the issue of climate change.
The U.S. has more people working in the solar industry than in coal mining; in fact, the solar industry in the U.S. has grown by 418 per cent in the last four years.
Peru is about to provide free solar power panels to two million of its poorest citizens. At least we could put panels on schools, day-care centres and hospitals. Denmark has already reached its 2020 goal for solar production and now 30 per cent of its energy is generated through wind. This country will be carbon neutral by 2025.
Germany, which has a climate similar to the Coast, is going nuclear free and continues to break world records in solar power generation with 1.4 million photo-voltaic systems producing a surplus of energy.
The U.S. navy has already flown planes and moved cargo ships using fuel made from algae. Even Turkey has a marble-making factory that runs on solar power, and a 16-year-old Turkish teenager has created a bio-plastic from banana peels.
Two university students have designed an energy-generating soccer ball that kids in Africa and Brazil play with. The energy generated from kicking powers homework lamps at night.
Not only is the vision of the pipeline from the tar sands and shipping of bitumen along the B.C. coastline unethical in the year 2014 with the highest record levels of CO2 in the atmosphere in human history, it is also a vision of dinosaur thinking. Time to think outside the barrel.
Denise Birklein-Lagasse, Halfmoon Bay
