There was a protest in Vancouver this weekened against the proposed Enbridge pipeline. A crowd of 1500-2000 people waved signs and made speeches about preserving the traditional ways of life and fighting the fatcats at Big Oil and Steven Harper. Its easy to photograph a crowd and make it look bigger than it was, but I feel this is a pretty representative shot of the turnout.
Across the bike lane was a much smaller (and honestly unexpected by myself) rally of people that were in favour of the pipeline. They were representing a handful of tribes that presumably stand to benefit from transportation rights and potential jobs, so I got a photo of them in the interests of equal representation.
Regardless of which side of the arguement you find yourself on, you must agree that this woman's owl spirit outfit was as fantastic as it was
Miyazaki-esque.
While I am personally opposed to the pipeline and hope to preserve the current state of the BC coast, I also recognize that we live in a global society which depends on oil to an outlandish degree. I laud the efforts of the organizers to preserve their culture and piece of the world, but doubt that the vast majority of Vancouver supporters would be too keen on the lifestyle changes required by all of us to truly change the modern world's oil addiction.
The issue is so complicated! Certainly there will be a lot of benefits to the community, and to the economics of the entire province. Clearly there's a huge market for the product, and we have lots of it. And there's some rational logic behind the claims that a pipeline would be safer than moving oil around by rail or trucks. But the volume of a pipeline spill can be enormous. This short list of oil spills, even from just this past year, is sobering. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills) Can you imagine spilling nearly 3000 tonnes of oil, as North Dakota just dealt with, into whale habitats?
ReplyDeleteBut I guess whales aren't endangered anymore, according to the Harper Gvt.