I am absolutely dismayed reading Jeff Nagel’s article in the May 6 Surrey-North Delta Leader, in which he reports that “Port Metro Vancouver concludes there will be no adverse environmental impacts from the project (Roberts Bank Terminal 2) to double the container-handling capacity of Deltaport.”
Get your heads out of the sand (or in this case the coal) Port Metro Vancouver. As climate scientist and Green party MLA Andrew Weaver made it perfectly clear at the DOXA screening of the documentary “Running on Climate” on May 2, the burning of thermal coal is the number-one contributor towards runaway climate change.
This is an “environmental impact” not only to our region, but to the entire world.
Even if we don’t care about the health of people who have to immediately breathe air contaminated by coal burnt to produce electricity, make no mistake, in this closed system which is our world, the environmental impact of the continued burning of fossil fuels will directly impact all of us – even if the federal environmental assessment doesn’t consider it so because of its distance from the immediate project footprint.
Step up, citizens of the world, and start asking some questions, such as:
1. What percentage of the coal leaving Terminal 2 will be thermal coal?
2. Why won’t any other port in the Pacific Northwest ship this coal?
3. Why would Canada and/or Surrey/Vancouver agree to contribute to runaway climate change?
Think seriously about this issue and let Port Metro Vancouver, and your governments municipally, provincially and federally, know how you feel about the very real concern of climate change.