Having spent 10 days driving through B.C. last summer
…and a similar amount of time driving though southwestern Ontario
…and now back home in Alberta, I found myself wondering:
…are British Columbians, especially those so-called “Guardians of the Environment” nothing more than environmental hypocrites?
Not all of course. Most British Columbians believe in recycling and in helping save the environment, but those most vocal advocates of shutting down pipelines, banning tanker traffic and “protecting” the environment aren’t living up to their own standards.
Of course, they have two high-profile hypocrites leading them down the path to destruction in the King of Hypocrites David Suzuki and the glory-seeking political pawn Elizabeth May.
Why would I think the self-proclaimed “Guardians of the Environment” may be a bunch of hypocrites? A few examples.
In my garage I have bins for newspapers, mixed papers, glossy magazines, tin, glass, plastic and return-for-refund bottles, cans and cartons. At our local recycling station, we also return batteries, computers, televisions, metals, oils, paints, chemicals and bikes that are sent to a local non-profit where they’re fixed up and given to kids who can’t afford bikes.
At another station we take grass and tree branches.
At most of our restaurants and cafes there are bins for recyclables.
In British Columbia? Several times in 10 days I would take recyclable products to café or restaurant staff and ask where the recycle bins are … and the answer was always the same: Oh, we just throw it all in the garbage.
That’s right. WE JUST THROW IT ALL IN THE GARBAGE.
Guardians of the environment indeed.
I know, you’re thinking, yeah so some cafes and restaurants don’t recycle. Yippee do, if every small business in Canada recycled every piece of plastic or paper or glass or tin it used it wouldn’t make one iota of difference to the overall health of the environment. I agree. Indeed, I suspect if Canada were to shutter every business in this country that produced any kind of pollution, the earth’s environment wouldn’t notice the difference for more than about five minutes.
So while most British Columbians probably believe in recycling and saving the environment, lets look at B.C. in terms of the “big picture.”
Pipelines
Beginning with the government, those high foreheads who call Alberta’s oilsands the worst environmental disaster in the world and have vowed to do whatever it takes to stop the construction of the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
But guess what? Build a pipeline within the borders of B.C. to carry B.C. natural gas from northern B.C. to the coast for export on tankers? No problem. B.C. unveiled plans for LNG Canada, a $40-billion natural gas megaproject that includes a 670-kilometre pipeline and increased traffic onto B.C. coastal waters.
Where are those U.S. corporation-supported environmentalists to howl and protest like a group of kindergarten kids? Nowhere to be found because they’ve been suckered into the well-planned and executed U.S. plan to shut down Canadian oil exports.
While the Trans Mountain expansion would bring about 300 extra vessels per year into B.C. coastal waters. LNG Canada is expecting about 350 more vessels every year to export its product.
Where are those environmental hypocrites who argued Trans Mountain should not go ahead because the increased tanker traffic would kill an endangered group of 78 orcas in the Salish Sea because of increased noise. Yes, the LGN route is in the north but that’s where a “threatened” pod of whales live.
And it’s ok for hundreds of smaller boats, including those of fishing and whale sighting companies to run their noisy engines through the same whale areas? Why not ban all whale-sighting companies that harass the whales so their clients can get pictures and the companies make big profits? Oh, there it is, B.C. companies making profits.
And the Indian bands -- or First Nation or indigenous or aboriginal peoples, whatever they’re calling themselves this year – were more than happy to agree to the new within-B.C. pipelines because they’re each receiving millions of dollars in payoffs and their band members could have well-paying jobs. Yes there are four old chiefs in one band who are so out of touch with reality they still think the band wants to live like the oldtimers did 100 years ago. I suspect the truth is they weren’t going to get a large enough share of the money.
Want to eliminate the one Indian band’s objection to Trans Mountain? Offer them a few more million and I’m betting their objections would also disappear.
Speaking of whales
Then there’s some group called the Pacific Balance Pinniped (perhaps it should be Pinheads) Society that wants tens of thousands of seals killed. The reason? To protect migrating salmon and killer whales that feed on them.
Know why they want the salmon and whales protected? To protect commercial profits for fishing corporations and whale-sighting companies.
"Pinniped" is the scientific term for the family that includes seals and sea lions. There are more than 100,000 seals in B.C. waters, along with tens of thousands of sea lions.
As Peter Ross, vice-president of research at Ocean Wise, recently told CBC News: "I don't know if there's any good predator control study that's ever demonstrated that killing off a predator has led to more prey.”.
He said the food web is complex and worries a hunt would disrupt the balance between seals, salmon and other creatures.
There’s no question the whales are in trouble and need help. But you would think B.C. would have learned from past culling of animals – like wolves that they allowed to be hunted from helicopters – simply disrupts the balance of nature. And not in a good way.
Forests
For the last few summers parts of the province have been devasted by wild forest fires. So, what is the province doing about that? It’s spraying thousands of hectares every year with the herbicide glyphosate to exterminate broadleaf trees like aspen and birch.
Trees that, experts say, are one of the best natural defences against wildfires, a natural fuel break when their leaves are out. So why destroy them? Because it makes room for the commercially valuable pine and fir trees and that’s good for the B.C. lumber industry.
In case you didn’t know, glyphosate is a chemical known more familiarly as the active ingredient in Roundup. Over the last three years, 42,531 hectares of B.C. forest have been treated with the herbicide.
When those valuable trees grow to size what do lumber companies do? They clear-cut. Cut every tree to be found within their harvesting area and then move on, leaving behind unsightly, unusable land. And when those broadleaf trees spring up the government kills them and the cycle continues.
Where are those self-proclaimed guardians of the environment? Nowhere to be seen. Protecting the environment, indeed.
As one Albertan suggested this week, perhaps Alberta should sue the B.C. government for damaging Alberta’s air by the smoke and pollution caused by those forest fires.
Culling and hunting
The B.C. government continues to think it knows more about nature than nature itself. After culling wolves and coyotes from parts of the province, it expanded the bighorn sheep hunt in part of the Cariboo region because the population increased to 106 in 2016 from 53 in 2012.
A recent Canadian Press report notes the B.C. government is expanding the bighorn sheep hunt in the Taseko Lakes area. In nearby Churn Creek southwest of Williams Lake, it has contracted the cull of wolves and coyotes to protect two sheep herds in decline.
Sadie Parr, executive director of Wolf Awareness, said predators like wolves, coyotes and cougars are not the biggest threat to the sheep and the province's decision to remove them is representative of a broken wildlife management system.
"To me, this is predators being scapegoated. It's an easy thing to do to make it look like you're helping a species recover when there's no evidence behind this," Parr said.
The B.C. Conservation Data Centre identifies primary threats to the species as habitat loss, livestock ranching and harassment by the public. Its 2015 conservation report doesn’t even mention predators as threats.
Housing
I thought my community of St. Albert was terrible for gobbling up valuable farmland to turn it into developments where ridiculously large houses are built. In B.C. it’s not farmland, but any piece of property that overlooks water, well there’s someone in B.C. who wants to buy it and built an equally large and ridiculous house.
No better example than the islands where it seems almost every shoreline has houses on it. And we’re not talking little cabins, but huge mansions. I wonder how many thousands of gallons of gasoline is burnt every year for those owners to get back-and-forth to their houses … and how much pollution that’s causing. Ever seen how much gas is spilt into the water behind most of those outboard motors?
Speaking of mansions, don’t even get me started about that ridiculous letter from Whistler, with its million-dollar-houses, to oil companies asking them to pay for costs associated with climate change events such as “drought, flooding, and extreme weather.” I suggest Whistler and its 15,000 residents take a good long look in the mirror.
Yes the oil companies contribute to climate change by producing a product that Whistler citizens demand, like gas for their gas-guzzling luxury automobiles and all those ski lifts, and oil to heat their over-sized houses.
The Whistler letter also asked the oil companies to pay for the municipality’s “$1.4 million investment in community wildfire protection activities” for 2018. Perhaps the mayor should send that letter to the B.C., government and at the same time ask that they stop spraying dangerous, tree-killing chemicals.
Then there’s Victoria, the provincial capital that is threatening to sue oil and gas companies and demanding they pay “their fair share” of the costs of climate change. This is the same city that continues to dump millions of litres of sewage into the ocean every day with no concern for what that is doing to the waters and the lifeforms living there.
Wind turbines vs dams
And where are the wind turbines? B.C. has constant winds off the Pacific Ocean so it would a natural place for wind turbines. Ontario has dozens of them taking advantage of the winds off the Great Lakes to produce electricity. B.C. would rather build land-destroying and river-killing dams, and then export much of the electricity produced to the U.S.
I could go on but that’s probably enough examples of just how hypocritical, in my humble opinion, are the B.C. environmental groups (virtually all of them supported by U.S. groups intent on shutting down Canadian oil exports) and their weak-kneed provincial government that will do anything and everything May and her three-seat Green party demands, just to remain in power.
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