LNG, Lies, and Silence: How B.C.’s Gas Boom Threatens Our Environment, Democracy, and Health
1... NDP AND LNG IN BC:
The first tanker carrying Liquified Natural Gas from Canada has begun its journey across the Pacific to Asia. The tanker departed from Kitimat, in northern BC where a new port and liquification factories have been built by LNG Canada. LNG Canada is a joint venture between Shell Oil and four Asian partners and its first phase is expected to produce 14 million tonnes of gas a year. This LNG 'play' is reportedly the biggest private-sector investment in Canadian history — $40 billion has been spent on the port and liquification facilities in Kitimat, plus the Fracked Gas operations in north-eastern BC, and the pipeline that has been built to link the two.
What is LNG? LNG is Liquified Natural Gas. The gas industry presents it as 'cleaner' than oil or coal, but in my opinion and in the opinion of many experts, LNG is just one more environmental disaster. The fracking process, which produces the gas, poisons huge amounts of fresh water. This water is mixed with a variety of chemicals - and then pumped underground under high pressure to break up the rock formations that hold the gas. Some of this gas is captured, but much escapes into the air and is a very potent Greenhouse Gas (methane). The water used for fracking is heavily contaminated, and cannot really be cleaned up so it poisons whatever it comes in contact with. (In California, for years, this contaminated fracking water was used to irrigate crops, including organic foods which is why I stopped buying food from California. ) Here in British Columbia the fracking wastewater is contaminated with for example, salt, arsenic, lead, hexavalent chromium, barium, chloride, sulphates, boron, and benzene (many of which are known carcinogens) and normally occurring radioactive materials. To dispose of these billions of liters of poisoned water, the water is simply pumped deep underground where the industry doesn't have to worry about it for a few years. Long enough for them to make their money and get out. And the BC NDP supports all of this. As does Canada's corporate owned media.
I believe the BC NDP government are also spending about $10 Billion of our money (at least) to provide power for these LNG projects. The people of BC were never asked if we wanted to help these corporations make large profits while also destroying and poisoning our water and our planet - and also poisoning the people and all life that is unfortunate enough to be near the fracking fields.
Huge amounts of energy needed for LNG: In order to ship the gas overseas by tanker, the gas has to be liquified first. This is done by cooling the gas has to about -162 degrees Celsius. This process requires huge amounts of power; and here in BC we are giving the LNG companies cheap electricity (cheap for them, not for us) so they can do the cooling. I've read that the Kitimat project, plus two other LNG projects approved by the NDP, would use as much power as about 600,000 homes. The NDP just finished a large new hydro project to help provide this power; the Site C dam flooded some of the best farmland in BC, will cost the people of BC at least $20 Billion, and the new dam and reservoir will themselves emit very large amounts of greenhouse gases.
It's a very undemocratic situation, especially as the NDP pretended to oppose the Site C dam when they were the opposition. But of course they supported it when they became the government. And just to top it all off, our NDP premier David Eby cheated himself into the job of Premier, but that's a story for another day.
The road to a successful future does NOT involve LNG. LNG is just one more step towards the environmental destruction of our planet and the poisoning of us all. If we want to move ahead, the only road forward I can see is to use LESS; we have to drive less, fly less, consume less, and etc. It seems that very few are interested in these kinds of changes, but we shall see what happens as we move ahead,
2... The News These Days is All Trump All The Time:
Which conveniently allows the media to ignore the fact that we now all seem to have plastic in our brains. That sad fact very seldom gets a mention in the news as if it were of no importance. It's very important of course, but the owners of the media don't want us thinking about those kinds of things because we might start putting the corporations in prison for what they've done, so the corporate journalists and politicians just don't talk about our new 'plastic brains'. Nor do they talk about the fact that half of us will now get cancer in our lifetime, which was certainly not the case 40 or 50 years ago when cancer was quite rare. Much of the cancer is corporate caused because of the poisons and chemicals and toxins they use in the stuff they are selling us. And that too is something 'they' don't want us talking about so it's kept very quiet. Plastic in my brain? That is so Ho Hum.
And because the media can always talk about Trump, or Crime, or Sports ... they also don't have to tell us much about the fact that the newest born baby in Canada is contaminated with maybe a couple of dozen chemicals and toxins and pesticides and etc. Since The Media Corporations are completely tied into the corporations that are poisoning us and destroying our planet, why WOULD the media tell us about the truly evil things they are doing?? If we knew the truth, it might impact corporate profits, and nobody wants that to happen. And nor will we ever hear from the media the real reasons that rents and mortgages are so high for millions of Canadians - to the point where they can barely afford to eat. Because the people getting the money from those high rents and mortgages don't want us thinking about that either.
The people who run things seldom want us to know the reality of what's being done to us. Take the entire tariff story for example; the fact is the U.S. president does NOT have control of tariffs; tariffs are controlled by The Congress. And yet the Congress has remained largely silent through all these months of tariff insanity; and the media has also remained silent about tariffs; putting little or no pressure on the Congress to rein in Trump's tariff craziness. And I'm not against tariffs; I think they can be a useful part of a nation's economic programs; but you can't do it in an insane way as Trump has been doing, where tariffs are at 50% today and then gone by tomorrow. But clearly his crazy tariff policies are supported by the media who keep silent about the fact that President Trump doesn't really have the power to do what he is doing without the support of the Congressional leadership of both parties. And that means that it is not 'crazy Trump' that is doing this; it is the economic and political leadership of the United States doing it. The American leadership are making tariff enemies world-wide, and disrupting business and trade world-wide, and blaming it all on Trump. And what is their end-game? Please stay tuned and maybe we'll find out soon.
3... Theresa Tam and Bonnie Henry named to Order of Canada for Covid heroics:
Sorry but I don't agree they should be given this 'honor'. Mainly because I did try to 'follow the science' when Covid started more than five years ago and I never really agreed with what Dr. Tam (who was the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada) nor Dr. Henry (who was and is BC's Provincial Health Officer) were telling us. And ... it used to be okay to disagree with the science being presented by our public officials because maybe they are wrong ... but nowadays it is increasingly dangerous to disagree with 'official positions'. But it shouldn't be because it is a basic part of 'science' that there has to be ongoing questioning and discussion. But now, especially for doctors or researchers or journalists or politicians, certain things like 'the official Covid story' can't be disagreed with. And if you do disagree you are at risk of losing your job and your career. And that is a very dangerous situation when only the official story can be supported and questions are not allowed.
It's dangerous because the official story with Covid is the story told us by our media, governments, and politicians, and I have over my lifetime come to the sad realization that these people cannot be trusted. Which does not mean they are wrong about Covid, but it does mean that blind acceptance of what they tell us may not be our wisest policy because we've certainly learned over the decades that our media, governments, and politicians often do lie to us and mislead us, so 'trust but verify' would seem to be a wise policy. And when I did try to 'verify' I quickly found that many parts of the official Covid story could not be verified. But you still had to accept it and believe it or you were screwed.
I live in BC. In the early days of Covid, when we were just 'Social Distancing', I was following researchers and professors and scientists (on the internet) who were saying that social distancing made no sense and that there was no science backing it up. So I contacted Dr. Henry's office and asked our public health officials for some science that showed that social distancing worked. I got back an immediate response and the main part of the response was a quote from Dr. Henry saying that ... social distancing works and it has saved many thousands of lives around the world. So I emailed them back and said .. Great, but can I see the science; and I never heard back from them despite a few more emails from me to them. And a few years later, in an interview or speech, Dr. Fauci of the United States admitted that there was no science behind social distancing; they just kind of 'made it up'.
I was also involved in a Community Television program on Cable TV (Shaw Cable) here in Victoria at the time. We had on as a guest a former Provincial Public Health Officer from Manitoba who mildly questioned the way the PCR test could create false positives, and also wondered why people dying of cancer or old age or MS were being counted as Covid deaths because this was giving a false impression of how many people were dying of Covid. Shaw refused to air the show, and our show was canceled (we'd been on TV for about 8 years) until we promised to NEVER question anything that any level of government said about Covid. This was and is total censorship, and it is very dangerous when the government and the corporations can control what people are allowed to hear about a life and death matter like Covid.
So no, I don't think that Dr. Bonnie Henry and Dr. Theresa Tam should be honored by Canada without first taking a real close look at exactly what was done and exactly what the science really was. But still today, questions about Covid are not really allowed. My personal position is that I just want to know the truth. If Covid was that dangerous, and if the vaccines were that safe, then I am all for the official story. But the deeper I looked the more questions I found, and those questions have never been answered, or even allowed to be asked.
And I'd like to finish by saying that Canada owes a lot to the doctors and scientists and researchers and experts who dared to speak what they considered to be the truth about what was going on with Covid. I'm not saying they were right about everything, or anything, but they were willing to put their jobs and careers on the line to say what they believed to be the honest truth about a very important issue. And for that many of them lost their jobs and many paid a very heavy price. Just for daring to say what they considered to be true. And that is not a good place for Canada to be and if we are smart I think we will try to remember important things like freedom of the press and freedom of speech are important and we should remember how dangerous it is when our governments and media can censor what we are allowed to hear about something like Covid or about any important issue. We forget that at our peril..
