Last Saturday I attended a rally in Vancouver that was the last opportunity to show Stephen Harper, our erstwhile "leader" that the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal supported by Enbridge to bring bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands to a new marine terminal in Kitimat where it would be transported to Asian markets by oil tankers is both foolish and dangerous.
We see endless advertisements by the Northern Gateway proponents stating that in fact the project would be good for wildlife both on sea and on land, their verbiage displaying a spectacular "doublespeak" of misinformation and untruths. They should realize that this type of communication only serves to displays their corporate greed instead, showing all of us clearly that the Emperor has no clothes but instead believes that all of us will swallow this deception without comment.
I am currently doing volunteer work with Ocean Alliance (www.whale.org) who has spent the past four years in the Gulf of Mexico researching the continuing effect of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on sperm whales, and they are conducting this research with the Wise Laboratory at the University of Southern Maine and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The scientists involved in this research have stated that, contrary to what BP has stated about their "active cleanup" and how it has been completed, the waters are far from healthy. The levels of heavy metals found in the sperm whales of the Gulf are considerably higher that other sperm whales they have tested around the world.
The fact is, one spill from the Northern Gateway Pipeline project will quite possibly render wildlife, marine mammals, human habitations and the environment uninhabitable, for generations. There is no cleanup that is effective and we will live with a disaster of this magnitude for a long time. Vancouver's goal of being the most environmentally safe city in the world, and the cleanest, by 2020 will become a chimera.
What kind of a world are we leaving to our children? How will they remember us?
At the rally, we heard a First Nations elder quote a Cree prophecy:
When all the trees have been cut down,
When all the animals have been hunted,
When all the waters are polluted,
When the air is unsafe to breathe,
Only then will you discover you cannot eat money.
We see endless advertisements by the Northern Gateway proponents stating that in fact the project would be good for wildlife both on sea and on land, their verbiage displaying a spectacular "doublespeak" of misinformation and untruths. They should realize that this type of communication only serves to displays their corporate greed instead, showing all of us clearly that the Emperor has no clothes but instead believes that all of us will swallow this deception without comment.
I am currently doing volunteer work with Ocean Alliance (www.whale.org) who has spent the past four years in the Gulf of Mexico researching the continuing effect of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on sperm whales, and they are conducting this research with the Wise Laboratory at the University of Southern Maine and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The scientists involved in this research have stated that, contrary to what BP has stated about their "active cleanup" and how it has been completed, the waters are far from healthy. The levels of heavy metals found in the sperm whales of the Gulf are considerably higher that other sperm whales they have tested around the world.
The fact is, one spill from the Northern Gateway Pipeline project will quite possibly render wildlife, marine mammals, human habitations and the environment uninhabitable, for generations. There is no cleanup that is effective and we will live with a disaster of this magnitude for a long time. Vancouver's goal of being the most environmentally safe city in the world, and the cleanest, by 2020 will become a chimera.
What kind of a world are we leaving to our children? How will they remember us?
At the rally, we heard a First Nations elder quote a Cree prophecy:
When all the trees have been cut down,
When all the animals have been hunted,
When all the waters are polluted,
When the air is unsafe to breathe,
Only then will you discover you cannot eat money.