‘A burning planet’
Dear Editor:
While communities battle floods, heat waves and wildfire smoke this summer, oil and gas companies are posting record profits. That is not a coincidence. It is the business model.
Rather than taxing this windfall or holding polluters accountable, the federal government is handing the industry billions in public support for new pipeline projects that the industry would not fund or build themselves. That is money that could fund health care, wildfire response or a genuine transition to renewable energy.
On top of this, communities (primarily Indigenous) are left to fend for themselves because of delayed or non-existent evacuation orders. All while the warnings of experts are ignored in the provincial and federal governments about how changes to the wildfire response plan are going to cause widespread disaster. But now they pat themselves on the back, calling it a job well done.
Canadians should not be asked to subsidize the same industry that is driving the disasters we are living through. We need leaders willing to make polluters pay, not underwrite their expansion.
The time for half-measures is over. We need real action. No pipelines on a burning planet.
Real solutions to climate change. Which we have. Renewable energies can replace a huge amount of the demand provided now by oil and gas-based energy.
Darcy Tyrrell,
Hillsburgh