You have to hand it to the Ottawa Citizen. Despite its right-wing bias and hand-in-glove obeisance to the Harper Conservatives, it is still one of Canada’s better newspapers. Which, to be honest, does not say much for the rest of the newspapers in Canada. In a country that used to have inspired, inquisitive, insightful newspapers, written with integrity and intelligence, the road downhill has been a sorry sight. That was why there was a deep sadness felt the other day when reading an Ottawa Citizen editorial in praise of oil pipelines. It shows how far the craft of journalism has fallen!
The editorial has the colossal nerve to start by recognizing the anguish of the citizens of Mayflower, Arkansas who had Alberta bitumen pooling on their streets from a ruptured pipeline. The Citizen writer thinks that the Mayflower incident should have no influence on President Obama’s decision in regards to the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. That is certainly one opinion.
The premise of the editorial is that pipelines are here to stay and we better get used to it. It daringly says that Ottawa needs to put more pressure on the tar sands companies to improve safety and their environmental record. It thinks turning down Keystone XL would be a costly, symbolic gesture.
What this editorial and most apologists for the tar sands ignore is that there are different types of oil products moved around the continent via pipelines. The first was crude oil. This commodity makes for messy spills that are hard on the local wild life but can be mopped up with a lot of work. And now we have bitumen slurry. This highly corrosive tar sands product has to be moved through pipelines at a higher temperature and under higher pressure. This is why we are seeing ruptures such as in Michigan and Arkansas. The pipeline people are trying to send bitumen through older, less reliable pipelines.
The big difference is in the clean up. Oil floats; bitumen sinks And that is why Enbridge is still trying to clean up the Kalamazoo River. There are no estimates of the long term cost in Mayflower, Arkansas.
Rather than argue about this though, maybe we should wait until the old Enbridge Line 9 is reversed to take tar sands bitumen east through Ontario to the sea. That line goes right through Toronto in the area where Paul Godfrey used to live. It was Paul who cobbled together the American and Canadian investors for his billion-dollar PostMedia Network that owns the Ottawa Citizen. It would be fun to watch what happens when Paul’s neighbours show up with a long pole and a sack of feathers. They can use the tar that will be running down Bathurst Street. It might be an old-fashioned idea Paul, but publishers should take responsibility for their papers’ editorial opinions.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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