It’s too bad Dan Lang and his fellow senators didn’t read the Jan. 9 Yukon News instead of the Senate report with the science-fiction-inspired title of Now or Never, Canada Must Act Urgently to Seize its Place in the New Energy World Order. Wow, George Orwell would have loved it!
In his article, Lang calls it a report on Canada’s energy sector, but it seems pretty clear it’s a report from the energy sector. It’s all about oil and gas and money. What a limited view of the issue!
If Mr. Lang flipped through the rest of the Jan. 9 paper, he would have found the article about the conclusive scientific study showing that oilsands development is poisoning water up to 90 kilometres away. He would have seen the story about New York State residents atop the Marcellus shale formation working hard to ban drilling and fracking in order to preserve the beauty and health of their lands.
Lang was supposedly writing to inform us about the energy sector and the future. But his article does not even mention wind, solar, biomass and geothermal as possibilities. His approach to energy seems to be mired in the muck of the past.
The word “environment” only appears once, and then in the context of regulatory challenges. And yet a clean and healthy environment is the greatest treasure any nation could ask for.
The Idle No More activists are getting it right. They’re not talking about oil and gas and money. They’re talking about land and water and respect. I hope Lang and the other senators (as well as MPs, MLAs, and the PM) are listening and learning.
Dianne Homan
Whitehorse