Quote:
Originally Posted by Daradon
Wow, how did everyone here become tree huggers all of a sudden?
I don't disagree with any of it, I just remember so many arguments and slams the other way on other topics.
It's amazing what we miss, or realize what we need, when it's truly gone.
|
It's because the vast majority of us care hugely about the environment. It's just that self proclaimed environmentalists have warped perceptions of the O&G industry, which leads to fervent defences and "slams".
O&G in Canada involves using the environment safely and sustainably, but is also a relatively large industry in a first world country. That gets us a lot of unjust hate, when there are examples of countries that COULD be taking the path that we are taking, but choose to just dump heavy metals in rivers (china), allow their pipelines to leak approximately 25% of all product (russia), cut down rainforest (peru/brazil/haiti), flare natural gas because they just don't care (middle east/africa).
Yet those places never get any flak from the "environmentalists" in the comments section of cbc.ca.
When stuff like a mine tailing pond failing, there is massive public outrage and immediate engineering, technical and political attention. That stuff happens in China? "We are not sure why our river turned red, oh well."
Personally, I'd like the anti-O&G people acknowledge that Canada is basically one of the world leaders in terms of sustainable development of oil and gas - and that includes the "tar sands". Then we can start a discussion on where the industry can continue to improve.