Titanic clash looms over proposed Northern Gateway pipeline

[Mowich]

Itis also old school thinking that says we have to rape our environment to make a living. Why are we shipping raw logs? Why would we ship raw oil? We are losing more jobs with this mentality than gaining.

I agree completely with you on this, Cliffy. For years now we have been exporting valuable jobs along with our raw logs and I have yet to hear a cogent argument about why we do so. I also believe that more jobs would be available should we refine our crude here at home, after all the oil would still be available for export and may even attract other markets interested in a more refined product. That said, were new refineries on the horizon or even in planning stages, I am sure we would have heard something about it which leads me to believe that for now our oil we be shipped elsewhere for refining.

There are a ton of ways Canada can make money to sustain our social programs, but short term thinking is not going to get us very far.

Okay, Cliff....tell me what these 'tons of ways' are because I highly doubt that were that statement true we would now be facing cuts to those social programs due to lack of finances. I don't doubt that there are alternative methods of raising revenues and yes we should explore them. Until then we have little alternative, as I see it, then to pursue all the methods we have at our disposal to raise revenues and if that means exporting our oil, then so be it.

Total Hearing time of 18 months is a joke..
Give them 3 weeks and then start digging and laying pipe !!

Shucks Durry, 18 weeks ain't nuthin here in lotus land. I know of at least one copper project which has been in the 'consultation/environmental process for well over a decade now. We seem to have the need to give every single wing nut a chance to have his/her say no matter that they know little if anything about the entire scope of the project.

Sometimes I wonder if residue from all the primo grown here in BC over the years somehow managed to find its way into our water sources subtly alternating our personalities and thinking processes.;-)

P.S. I believe the pipe laying began long ago.

Why can't technology flourish without trashing the environment? We can put people on the moon! We are well into the 21st century!

I don't know if 'trashing' the environment is totally true, JLM. I've worked around some of the northern pipelines and once the pipe is up and running, the machinery and crews gone home - the land starts to heal itself. There are many miles of pipeline in some areas that are now in second growth stages and flourishing. The Earth does heal, JLM...........never doubt her. :smile:

 

[JLM]

Itis also old school thinking that says we have to rape our environment to make a living. Why are we shipping raw logs? Why would we ship raw oil? We are losing more jobs with this mentality than gaining. We are becoming a third world country with the vast majority of jobs being minimum wage. This pipeline in nothing more than quick profits for long term loss. Politicians can only think in 4 year terms. We have been talking about manufacturing and value added for 50 years but all our politicians can come up with is to ship off our raw resources. It is stupid and selfish to destroy our grandchildren's environment, let alone our own. There are a ton of ways Canada can make money to sustain our social programs, but short term thinking is not going to get us very far.

You can argue selling crude oil and raw logs six ways to Sunday, but there is another rule of thumb in business "You sell the customer what he wants". If he wants to buy logs but DOESN'T want to buy lumber, what do you do with the logs? Let 'em rot?

I don't know if 'trashing' the environment is totally true, JLM. I've worked around some of the northern pipelines and once the pipe is up and running, the machinery and crews gone home - the land starts to heal itself. There are many miles of pipeline in some areas that are now in second growth stages and flourishing. The Earth does heal, JLM...........never doubt her. :smile:

I don't know either, my response was directed against all the people try to stop it as much as anyone. We have to be realistic, Oil is going to be in huge demand for the next 50 years. Mounting sails on car roofs is not all that practical! :lol:

 

[Kakato]

People should watch "life after oil" on t.v. to see how much we rely on petroleum products.
The first part where the earth runs out of oil is pure fiction as it wont happen overnight but the rest of the show is absolutely eye opening.
The world runs on oil,every single aspect of your life relys on it.

 

[Cliffy]

A plastic world for plastic people. Our culture is absolutely dependent on oil. We are oil junkies and if our supply were to stop flowing we would all go into withdrawals so intense many of us wouldn't survive it. We need to start weening ourselves off this crap.

 

[Kakato]

A plastic world for plastic people. Our culture is absolutely dependent on oil. We are oil junkies and if our supply were to stop flowing we would all go into withdrawals so intense many of us wouldn't survive it. We need to start weening ourselves off this crap.

Yup,watch that show and you will see how fast the world would turn into chaos without oil,every single thing in your life depends on it right down to the food in your fridge.

 

[L Gilbert]

Yup,watch that show and you will see how fast the world would turn into chaos without oil,every single thing in your life depends on it right down to the food in your fridge.

Yeah. Sad, ain't it?

 

[mentalfloss]

Yeah. Sad, ain't it?

If you're a crack addict, then you need more crack!

 

[Cliffy]

Plumbers Crack - YouTube

 

[taxslave]

Since the majority of BC residents live in cities, I would imagine many of them are thinking with their pocket books. You will naturally see that most opponents are rural people and aboriginals peoples. But in BC many city dwellers are also environmentally aware, so I would hope that the majority of BCers are opposed. Of course anybody who is invested in dirty oil would say anything to discredit and demonize legitimate opposition to their rape and pillage mentality.

Funny that since it is mostly rural people whose livleyhoods depend on resource extraction. The only rural opponents are the rich retirees and the few that run tourism businesses and depend on scarce jobs to keep wages low.

I agree completely with you on this, Cliffy. For years now we have been exporting valuable jobs along with our raw logs and I have yet to hear a cogent argument about why we do so. I also believe that more jobs would be available should we refine our crude here at home, after all the oil would still be available for export and may even attract other markets interested in a more refined product. That said, were new refineries on the horizon or even in planning stages, I am sure we would have heard something about it which leads me to believe that for now our oil we be shipped elsewhere for refining.

Okay, Cliff....tell me what these 'tons of ways' are because I highly doubt that were that statement true we would now be facing cuts to those social programs due to lack of finances. I don't doubt that there are alternative methods of raising revenues and yes we should explore them. Until then we have little alternative, as I see it, then to pursue all the methods we have at our disposal to raise revenues and if that means exporting our oil, then so be it.



Shucks Durry, 18 weeks ain't nuthin here in lotus land. I know of at least one copper project which has been in the 'consultation/environmental process for well over a decade now. We seem to have the need to give every single wing nut a chance to have his/her say no matter that they know little if anything about the entire scope of the project.

Sometimes I wonder if residue from all the primo grown here in BC over the years somehow managed to find its way into our water sources subtly alternating our personalities and thinking processes.;-)

P.S. I believe the pipe laying began long ago.



I don't know if 'trashing' the environment is totally true, JLM. I've worked around some of the northern pipelines and once the pipe is up and running, the machinery and crews gone home - the land starts to heal itself. There are many miles of pipeline in some areas that are now in second growth stages and flourishing. The Earth does heal, JLM...........never doubt her. :smile:

OK Here is the reasons that we are exporting jobs with raw logs. Readers digest version is we killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
Guilty parties are:
Greedy unions- made labour costs uncompetitive compared to other jurisdictions.
Greedy governments-Too many layers of government got to impose taxes on mills not related to production costs.
Government bureaucracy- Primarily environment ministries staff that imposed a huge amount of costs that have very little to do with cutting pollution but add to the administrative costs of running a business with a constant demand for multiple reports and conflicting/overlapping rules.
Also attributed to government greed are the costly permits and leases required for log storage, dewatering and ship loading.

 

[L Gilbert]

Funny that since it is mostly rural people whose livleyhoods depend on resource extraction. The only rural opponents are the rich retirees and the few that run tourism businesses and depend on scarce jobs to keep wages low.

Until there's a good sized spill that kills off their lawn and garden and makes their drinking water toxic. Then they join everyone else in howling about oil.

OK Here is the reasons that we are exporting jobs with raw logs. Readers digest version is we killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
Guilty parties are:
Greedy unions- made labour costs uncompetitive compared to other jurisdictions.
Greedy governments-Too many layers of government got to impose taxes on mills not related to production costs.
Government bureaucracy- Primarily environment ministries staff that imposed a huge amount of costs that have very little to do with cutting pollution but add to the administrative costs of running a business with a constant demand for multiple reports and conflicting/overlapping rules.
Also attributed to government greed are the costly permits and leases required for log storage, dewatering and ship loading.

Making deals with foreign customers offering big money for the best timber. We get junk here without the choice of paying higher for better lumber. Fortunately, there's a couple small backyard mills near here that cut local logs. I built a deck onto the house with some pretty fine lumber and didn't pay that much more for a board foot than I would have paid for Home Building Supplies crap.

But anyway, this is about pipeline stuff. They'll get their oil but just wait till there's a big oops and oil spews all over the place.

 

[Cliffy]

And with a history of oopses, there is no doubt that eventually there will be one on this project. That is what people are fighting about. As on rep of an IPP project here said, "We want to know what your concerns are so we can mitigate them." Well, there is no way they could mitigate them. It was a bull shyte project. But like I said to him, "We don't want you to mitigate them, we want you to go home and leave the river alone." Well this pipeline will cross innumerable rivers and streams and will affect fisheries and water quality and wildlife habitat. There is no way they can guarantee there will be no accidents and mitigate all concerns. It may be a foregone conclusion but I predict people are going to die because it will go through no matter what. There will be violence and vandalism because you cannot run over the will of the people and consider their lives worth less than a commodity without some or a lot of backlash.

 

[mentalfloss]

Northern Gateway is about profits versus environment

With hearings underway into the proposed $5.5-billion, dual 1,172-kilometre Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project to transport bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat and imported condensate to dilute it from the coast back to Alberta, the fossil fuel industry and its supporters have stepped up the rhetoric.

Environmentalists and people in towns, rural areas, and First Nations communities in B.C. have lined up in opposition.

It’s not just about potential damage from an oil spill along the pipeline route or from a supertanker plying the precarious fiords and waterways along our northern coast — as critical as those concerns are. The larger issues are about our continued reliance on polluting fossil fuels and the economic impact of rapidly exploiting and selling our resources and resource industries.

It’s about Canada’s national interest. With lax royalty structures and massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, not to mention foreign ownership of tar sands operations and lobbying by foreign companies, Canadians are not enjoying the real benefits of our oil industry. In fact, increasing reliance on the tar sands is hurting other sectors of the economy, manufacturing in particular.

Thanks to the government’s support for the fossil fuel industry, ours is a petro dollar that rises and falls with the price of oil.

The high price of oil has increased our dollar’s value, and that has hurt the more labour-intensive manufacturing sector, which relies on exports.

Not only have hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs been lost over the past few years, Canada has also been missing out on opportunities to join the boom in production of renewable-energy technology.

And when we build infrastructure such as pipelines to support the fossil fuel industry, we increase the incentive to use fossil fuels for a longer time and decrease the incentives to invest in cleaner energy.

Industry adherents have come up with many arguments supporting the Northern Gateway project. Some have more holes than an oilfield.

Take the jobs argument. Even Enbridge admits that most would be in short-term construction work.

Only about 35 to 40 long-term jobs would be created at the Kitimat marine terminal, with some additional jobs in pipeline maintenance. It hardly seems worth risking tens of thousands of jobs in tourism and the fishing industry, among others, for a few short-term and even fewer long-term positions.

Most economic benefits from increased tar sands production would go to the companies and their shareholders, including firms from the U.S., Korea, and China. In fact, state-owned PetroChina, which already operates in the tar sands, has just bought 100 per cent of the MacKay River project.

The “ethical oil” argument is so absurd as to be hardly worth mentioning, but it’s one the government has latched onto. Oil can’t be ethical or unethical. People, and by extension the companies they own and operate or the governments they represent, can behave in ethical or unethical ways, but a product can’t.

The Northern Gateway project, and much of the recent and pending tar sands expansion, will help companies owned by the government of China dig up the bitumen and send it there for refining and use.

The ethical oil folks admit that China is a police state, so why do they support selling them our industry and resources? Canadian tar sands companies also do business in the countries tagged by the ethical oil folks as being unethical — often in partnership with state-owned companies.

The anti-American conspiracy theories are even more absurd. Saying that opposition to the Northern Gateway is a plot by U.S. funding agencies to protect America’s access to Canadian oil is just idiotic in light of the fact that many of the same groups and funders also oppose the Keystone XL pipeline project that would carry oil from the tar sands to Texas. It’s odd to see such anti-Americanism coming from conservatives who apparently support Communist China!

The only real argument for Northern Gateway is that it will increase profits for the oil industry, and hand over more of our resources and the associated profits and jobs to China. The arguments against it are so numerous we’ve barely touched them here.

Northern Gateway is about profits versus environment - The Western Star

 

[captain morgan]

Northern Gateway is about profits versus environment - The Western Star

Umm, was this somehow a mystery to you?

 

[Cliffy]

Umm, was this somehow a mystery to you?

And who profits from environmental destruction? Certainly not the general public. Oh, a few might get temperary jobs, but the hazards far out weigh the benefits for generations to come. A few rich assholes will profit handsomely. Do you think they care about anything other than their fat wallets? But these pricks love it when we fight among ourselves over the few scraps they throw our way. Divide and conquer. That is how they get their own way and nothing ever gets done to rid the world of these parasites.

 

[Niflmir]

Here's the million dollar question:

Is BP going to be operating the pipeline?

I mean, it's not like lightning ever strikes twice...

 

[captain morgan]

And who profits from environmental destruction?

How dramatic. How about the enviro destruction that lead to the construction of your home (or mine), community, etc?

Where do you draw the line Cliffy? Stop only when your personal needs are recognized and everything else from there is bad?

Oh, a few might get temperary jobs, but the hazards far out weigh the benefits for generations to come.

Don't you have a problem with the enviro destruction or hazards associated with mining, road construction, rail, hydro projects, etc? How about the gas stations that you use to fuel your vehicle - they have leaks and spliils often too?

It's disingenuous to attack one issue so strongly (and without any real proof) and ignore the rest as they are 'necessary evils' that contribute to your own personal comfort & security.

A few rich assholes will profit handsomely. Do you think they care about anything other than their fat wallets?

Like who?

But these pricks love it when we fight among ourselves over the few scraps they throw our way. Divide and conquer. That is how they get their own way and nothing ever gets done to rid the world of these parasites.

WTF?????

Here's the million dollar question:

Is BP going to be operating the pipeline?

I mean, it's not like lightning ever strikes twice...

Enbridge

 

[Cliffy]

Captain, I'm talking about the ruling class. The ones who run this country and all the others. Oh, I know you think we actually live in a democracy, but that is just an illusion they feed you to make you think you are free.

There are a lot of alternatives to our housing materials,costs, alternative technologies etc that do not require the rape of the planet. I know you keep saying it is not there but I have been looking into it for 40 years and it is there. It is being purposely squashed by big oil to maintain their strangle hold on us and the economy. But you just keep going along shilling for the ruling class as if they care that you are. They don't, BTW.

 

[L Gilbert]

Northern Gateway is about profits versus environment

With hearings underway into the proposed $5.5-billion, dual 1,172-kilometre Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project to transport bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to Kitimat and imported condensate to dilute it from the coast back to Alberta, the fossil fuel industry and its supporters have stepped up the rhetoric.

Environmentalists and people in towns, rural areas, and First Nations communities in B.C. have lined up in opposition.

It’s not just about potential damage from an oil spill along the pipeline route or from a supertanker plying the precarious fiords and waterways along our northern coast — as critical as those concerns are. The larger issues are about our continued reliance on polluting fossil fuels and the economic impact of rapidly exploiting and selling our resources and resource industries.

"The larger issues"? 'Scuse me? Quality of life on the planet is a smaller issue than the economy of the planet?
And about the rest of it, ever since the provinces decided to glue each other together, Canada has been pro-resource and anti-manufacture (more or less) regardless of whether it had oil or not.

 

[captain morgan]

Captain, I'm talking about the ruling class. The ones who run this country and all the others. Oh, I know you think we actually live in a democracy, but that is just an illusion they feed you to make you think you are free.

Cliffy, you are free at any time to cut out of the rat race and make your statement... No one is stopping you except yourself.

There are a lot of alternatives to our housing materials,costs, alternative technologies etc that do not require the rape of the planet. I know you keep saying it is not there but I have been looking into it for 40 years and it is there. It is being purposely squashed by big oil to maintain their strangle hold on us and the economy. But you just keep going along shilling for the ruling class as if they care that you are. They don't, BTW.

Unless you're talking about sod houses or picking loose rocks and constructing a shelter, then every other alternative will result in raping nature in some form or another.

I'm also here to tell you that 'big oil' conspiracies to destroy alternative tech exist only in your mind and not reality... Really man, you're too old to still believe in this boogy-man

 

[L Gilbert]

Actually Big Oil, or some of them anyway, are also into alternative energy research. I say good on them.
Maybe they'll turn into Big Solar or Big Wind. lol (um, in case you folks aren't awake yet, that last comment is a joke. It adds up to Big Oil turning into an alternative energy Hot Air, hence solar and wind)