Letter to the Editor: The “SO” Green USA!
Dear Editor,
With my rose coloured glasses I look at the USA. What I see makes me happy. Now that Joe Biden refused our Keystone pipeline, his country is ‘SO” green and clean that it does not need any more gas stations. Cars are all electric, affordable and covered with flexible solar panels. All batteries are recycled. They do not transport their cargo from town to town by road but with helium hot air balloons. They are no longer afraid that social measures are going to interfere with their faith in God. Public education is so accessible and good that each and every American understands fully the urgent aspect of cleaning the environment. They all practice a friendly neighbourhood instead of piling up weapons. Their public health system is for everyone so they are generally healthy and happy. There are solar panels on every house and building. They have small wind turbines everywhere possible and electricity is inexpensive. Now I am removing my rose coloured glasses. Oops! Americans are still mainly using fossil fuel as unique way to go. Shale gas fracking is allowed on any private land with owner’s agreement. If one day they end up with all water tables polluted, they will start pumping on Great Lakes. They own half of them. When they had access to low price gas, (probably in Venezuela), they filled all their empty wells. They have gigantic reserves and they think they will never need us. Alberta is a very resilient province with very bright scientists in every discipline. We already have wind turbines plans in different places, we use carbon (CO2) capture and sequestration technology and plans to do even more of it. (Refer to alberta.ca environment). Plenty of environmental protection techniques are going on at the moment. There should be some contests all over the province for finding new clean energies or more new clean ways or to use existing energies. May be these contests could be between all Canadian provinces. We are not as numerous as USA’s population but we are not as divided as they are. No matter our preferred political party, we can achieve a lot together in a very straightforward manner.
Gaétane Pelleteier-Lucsanszky
Well put Gaétane. Many of us live in some variant of a bubble and don’t see the bigger picture, even close to home. B.C. mines and exports more than 10x the coal that Alberta does while looking down their nose at our “dirty oil”. Alberta is also providing cutting edge solutions for lithium extraction (for batteries) as well as geothermal technology. A University of Alberta planetary geologist, one of a select team of scientists working on the Mars Perseverance project. Canada has always “punched above its weight” on the world stage. Sometimes we just need to get out of our own way. -AB