To all environmentalists who are speaking and acting as if the carbon tax were the only measure of the Liberal Government: You are examples of how a good end--dealing with climate change--has been corrupted by the bad means of lending aid and comfort to a political party which will always put saving or making money ahead of any other consideration.
I ask you: Do you support Bute Inlet and other massive run-of-river projects? Are you not aware that their production, depending as it does on spring run-off, when B.C. Hydro has all the power it needs, does nothing for B.C.'s requirements and is intended for sale in the U.S.? Have you no worries over the NAFTA implications for such sales?
Do you support salmon fish farms? (In addition to their threats to wild salmon, farmed salmon gobble up millions of tons of small fish that other species depend on.)
Do you support land being taken from TFLs and developed, with all the associated carbon emissions from construction and roads, and the destruction of more wilderness?
Do you support the Gateway Project and the South Fraser perimeter road, which will only encourage more car and truck use, and therefore more emissions?
Do you approve of the fact that the Liberals have not adequately supported those who are trying to turn the E&N Railway into a commuter service, nor shown any interest in building light rail transit on south Vancouver Island, while consistently underfunding the bus system?
However good an idea a carbon tax may be, it does not trump these other grievous environmental insults, perpetrated and supported by the Liberals.
And on other issues, do you not care that we have the worst child poverty rate in the country; that seniors' needs for housing, especially long term residential care, are being neglected, and that new agriculture regulations favour large food corporations at the expense of greener alternatives of growing more food locally, saving, among other things, on transportation costs and emissions?
So far. you have chosen to spend your considerable personal prestige on behalf of a party which, by their actions over eight long years, have shown they care only for money and big business, because it is big business's money which keeps the Liberals in power.
If the Liberals are returned to office on May 12th , you will have to bear your share of the responsibility and shame for the further destruction of forests, rivers, fish, farms, and people's lives in B.C.. If the Liberals are returned with your help, I wish you all long and miserable lives in which to repent, for you will assuredly have helped make many other people's lives worse while assisting in the further destruction of our environment.
