President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the U.S. will relinquish leadership in reducing carbon [by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord] was unconscionable and shortsighted.
But I am glad to see that Washington state, California and New York have risen above this decision by forming a climate alliance and joining the rest of the world in moving away from fossil fuels and toward a clean and job-creating energy future.
Meanwhile, we have an example of the fossil fuel industry’s desperation in our own backyard.
Kinder-Morgan’s planned Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion with the pipeline terminus and tanker loading terminal in Burnaby, Canada, just outside Vancouver, B.C., would mean there would be nearly seven times as much tanker traffic in the Strait of Juan de Fuca as we currently have, according to the June 2 Vancouver Sun.
And the toxic viscous tar sands mixture they will carry — known as diluted bitumen, or dilbit — is worse than crude oil in case of a spill.
Per a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, “once dilbit starts to weather, it sinks in the water, rendering most oil recovery methods useless,” according to insideclimatenews.org.
A spill would be devastating for the San Juans, the Gulf Islands and the Olympic Peninsula.
Here in our waterway, ecological and economic interests are one and the same, and this pipeline project absolutely must be stopped.
Lisa Dekker,
Port Angeles