Have you ever watched two avowed tree-huggers fight over who is the more devout conservationist? When they do it in your local paper you at least do not get whiplash trying to follow the ball. It all started last week when the Town Greenie served up an easy lob in his weekly op-ed piece that he uses instead of paid advertising to promote himself. His simple thesis was to ban all pipelines.
This proposed ban earned the ire of a certain professor (retired) who serves on the town environment committee. It was his opinion that banning pipelines was a poor way to save our planet. He admitted that, despite his efforts, his life is not carbon-free and pointed out that the Greenie might not be living entirely carbon-free either.
The professor claims that if we do not mine the Alberta tar sands for petroleum, we will just replace it by refining Saudi, Nigerian or Venezuelan petroleum to fuel our sports utility vehicles. He would much prefer that if he is going to pollute anyway, to pollute with Canadian mined petroleum, produced by Canadian workers.
He just does not believe that demonizing the tar sands and their pipelines is going to reduce carbon emissions. He points out that he and his wife toot around town in an all-electric car but still have to have another (diesel-powered) passenger vehicle for longer trips.
While the Greenie believes that all-electric cars are the colour television of the future, the professor is sceptical of the potential for a complete takeover by electric automobiles in the near future.
He is just hopeful that Canadians will see the error of their ways, give up their gas guzzling toys and take up rowing and hiking.
In the meantime, he believes the tar sands should be mined and that pipelines are the best way to move the bitumen that is extracted.
The Greenie tells us that bitumen can be moved safely by tanker cars but is dangerous when diluted for pipeline transport. The scientist obviously considered this idea and then noted that bitumen without diluents would solidify in the tanker cars and it would be a difficult and time-consuming process to get it out of the cars.
(It makes you wonder if the bitumen could be processed into slabs and transported by flat cars?)
We are looking forward to more in this ongoing confrontation.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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