Re: Many benefits from oil pipelines (Letters, Jan. 3)
The writer from Duncan points out that individuals have potential risks from their plane going down or a car accident.
While these events could become tragic incidents for individuals and their families, they cannot be compared with devastation being caused to communities impacted by the extraction activities of oil, gas and coal industries poisoning their water and environments.
So pipelines might bring us some short-term financial benefits, but the cost to current and future generations will rapidly wipe out those benefits.
Better for us as a province and country to quickly transition to renewable sources of energy and away from all the products we derive from oil.
Meanwhile by not allowing the pipelines, we do not risk wiping out the coastal economy of our fisheries, tourism and all the small communities which depend on our clean environment – one spill caused by one human error could wipe out millions of dollars now injected into our provincial coffers. That is a risk we dare not take.
Carolyn Herbert
Saanich