The Editor,
Re. “Pipeline in national interest” (Letters, The Tri-City News, June 15).
In his letter, Joerge Dyrkton argued that expanding the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain diluted bitumen pipeline is in the national interest.
On Aug. 6, 1945, the way that people think of world war changed when an atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima.
From 1988, at the establishment of the International Panel on Climate Change, the way that people think about the heedless combustion of fossil fuels changed when scientists warned that the global climate was becoming destabilized.
On May 14, 2016, I clipped a table from the Financial Post newspaper that listed the 10 costliest natural disasters in Canada over 25 years. I was surprised that seven of the 10 costliest natural disasters had occurred in Alberta. Of course, the devastating Fort McMurray wildfire of 2017 added to the tally.
At some point, the annual cost of disaster remediation and infrastructure adaptation will exceed the royalties from fossil fuel exploitation and transportation tolls.
By building more fossil fuel facilities, we are continuing to poke our finger in Mother Nature’s eye.
It is in the interest of Alberta and Canada to transform to an economy powered by renewable energy.
Derek Wilson, Port Moody
