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Letters: Taking issue with Fletcher

Otter Point resident feels column is an example of micro-management

Mr. Fletcher’s “opinion” piece last week is a prime example of micro-management. Taking numbers and moving them around until they give you an answer you’re happy with. The final facts as well as the numbers will always be the same; the extraction, transport, and use of oil in combustion engines is toxic — period. It transforms natural landscapes, disturbs and kills wildlife, spoils waterways, lakes and oceans, poisons our atmosphere,  accelerates climate change, and on and on.

To debate that once pristine lakes and waterways in wilderness areas are now within acceptable levels of toxicity, but still rising, and at this time no more harmful to humans than drinking from an urban lake, does not make me feel any better.  In fact, it saddens me even more knowing that this sort of rhetoric will somehow make sense to a few. It’s like a doctor saying, “well, you have a little bit of cancer, but don’t worry about it.”

To continue investing and building mega-infrastructures that supports our continued dependence on oil, rather than investing in our future generations by developing cleaner energy sources and their infrastructures, is just short sighted.

It is time for Canada to turn the corner and become more sensitive to domestic and world pollution issues and take a leadership role again. To become an oil state will only make the inevitable transition even harder both politically and economically.

Tom Eberhardt

Otter Point