Editor,
This is a reply to Mr. Muir’s two-part article [‘Flash mobs for the protest era,’ published online Jan. 23] expressing bewilderment towards the opposition, both local and world-wide, against the Coastal GasLink’s pipeline project.
Sir, you spent half a page of a newspaper editorial demonizing the Coastal GasLink protesters, then extolled the virtues and benefits of the pipeline for the Indigenous peoples. Yet it is the Indigenous peoples who are primarily standing in the pipeline’s way, protecting Indigenous lands and waters, protecting the Indigenous historic essence and heritage, protecting Indigenous semi-sovereignty.
You suggest we should enjoy the pipeline’s wealth both today and in the near future. It appears irrelevant to you that it is our children who will have to mitigate the exacerbating crisis of global warming our generation has for the most part caused and not rectified. And yet you wonder why we stand in this pipeline’s way, befuddled why we reject eating, drinking and being merry celebrating the pipeline, as in Alfred E. Neuman’s famous quote, “What, me worry?”
You have demonized the concerned citizens of the world, condemning our beautiful little blue marble floating in space to irrelevance. You disregard the fossil fuel’s damnation of present and future generations of humanity/flora/fauna. You ignore the rapidly melting Arctic ice, the rapidly melting Antarctic ice, and all points in between afflicted by global warming. Wilbur Ross, the current US Secretary of Commerce, recently commented on the 800,000 unpaid government workers going to food banks during the US Government shutdown: “I don’t know really … why they shouldn’t get a loan…” The man, a billionaire, is both deaf and clueless, living in a human-less bubble of profits and expenditures.
Sometimes personal and global integrity mean more than fecundity of wealth. Wilbur Ross wasn’t listening, and neither are you.
Keith Cummings
Telkwa