The complexities of a debate over oil pipelines are enough to want to stick your head in the tar sand and pretend nothing is happening.
If ever there were was a multi-faceted issue, it's this one. There's jobs versus the environment. Domestic priorities versus international. Corporate interests versus individual. Facts versus propaganda. Science versus spin. Add plenty of partisan politics, a dash of name-calling, and the time-honoured social tradition of framing every issue as a black-and-white "us-versus-them" battle, and it's enough to throw your hands up in their air and let someone else figure it all out.
Which is kind of what's happening anyway: the public hearing on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline began yesterday in Kitimat, where the line - carrying oil from the Alberta tar sands - will terminate. For the people of that region, the pipeline is both attractive (as a job creator) and fearful (as a potential environmental concern), and no matter which side of the line they fall on (most, it would seem, are torn right down the middle) the issue is immediate and pressing.
For people elsewhere, like those of us here in the Lower Mainland, the debate is a little more fuzzy and surreal: it's the headline on our morning paper, the hot topic on the nightly news, but not really something that has our attention at the water cooler (where these days, Snooki and her crew tend to dominate interest.)
But we should be paying very close attention. We have, right here in our backyard in Burnaby, a major pipeline - and one that may be the source of a new debate right around the corner, as talk of expansion heats up.
Kinder Morgan has not said yet whether they'll be pursuing an expansion, but if they do, it's a guarantee that those "sides" lining up to fight in Kitimat will come home to roost right here. It would serve us all well to learn what we can - the truth beyond the spin - while the battle plays out up north.
