Quote:
Originally Posted by supafamous
(Post 9164851)
I'm not your enemy man - as I stated in my comment, "There are consequences to what you think we should have done (drill, drill, drill) just as there are to do the opposite - neither is inherently a wrong opinion - we want more jobs and we more money but we also don't want to end the world and destroy the environment."
Nowhere do I state that I'm AGAINST building more pipelines or refineries but I'm not FOR them either. As I pointed it out it's a complex conversation but if you want to make it a binary thing and if anyone who says there is nuance is your enemy then congrats on being miserable.
I think it's sad that we make such reductive arguments around topics this complex - resource extraction is super destructive and, in some cases, is the cause of enormous environmental damage. It's also necessary to achieve our way of life (where the fuck do people think plastic comes from?).
Can we not tax the consequences appropriately? Can we talk about how destructive it is? Can we not talk about how not extracting resources will affect our quality of life? Can we talk about all at once?
Thanks for correcting the record.
It sure feels like your time in the industry has only served to make you angry at the rest of the world whether it be environmentalists, politicians or people who don't adamantly support your line of work.
I didn't say it's right - I said it's what the country has chosen to do and it's because we're not willing to have some real conversations about the costs of extracting resources. From what I can gather you're not willing to have a nuanced discussion of what resource extraction actually costs - you just want us to get out of the way and let the real men get to work because the rest of us are clearly too weak and stupid to understand the work you do.
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I actually recognized you were just taking the opposite side of the debate just to do so, and that you aren't actually opposed to resource extraction, I apologize I didn't mean to come off as combative as I did. You are correct though years of battling people who are 100% against the industry I principally work in has conditioned me to just take a full on opposing stance to the other viewpoint.
Here's the thing, I don't actually care how much we extract or don't. I build not operate, and if we don't build mines, or oil and gas plants, I can happily build manufacturing plants, or data centers, or houses. I will never be out of a job. Actually the funny part is I'm not even working in Canada right now, and while I certainly don't mind being down here in the beautiful Caribbean working, it does make me a little sad that so many of our industry veterans are leaving Canada to go work elsewhere because it is easier than what we have going on in Canada right now.
I agree there is a lot of nuance to this discussion, I dont think every project should go ahead, I think there is a good reason that certain projects (Like AJAX for example) get halted. Maximum resource extraction is not the goal, responsible resource extraction, by responsible companies and responsible people is the goal.
Where I get frustrated is when for 2-3 decades the general sentiment towards resource extraction industry has been NIMBY'ism, and the political landscape has allowed that sentiment to run rampant, and then all of a sudden 25% tariff's roll around and the sentiment all of a sudden flips in a heartbeat to Patriotism and "we need to fasttrack all these projects and become self sufficient". Everything is a political game, and it is tiring.
I have two billion dollar projects on the go, in two different provinces no less, and both are mired in permitting issues, due to the constant changing of goal posts. One is now 2-3 years delayed, and the other is 1.5 years delayed. These are projects that government at multiple levels has stated are critical to Canada, and yet because of the powers given to opposition groups, the projects get stymied endlessly with court challenges, and permitting problems. This costs these companies 100's of millions of dollars, and it benefits nobody except lawyers and gov't workers. The projects will 100% still go ahead. Just years later than they should have and with a cost higher than it ever should have been.
At a much lower level this is the same issue that developers of residential projects have been complaining about for years with permitting costs/timelines soaring on all their projects, and yet the gov't still wonders why we dont have enough housing.
As with everything the gov't does, in a bid to please everyone, they please nobody.
And yes, I hate environmental protesters. All of them. I dont hate environmentalism, I actually believe I am an environmentalist myself, I take great care in the items I purchase, I take great care in reducing the mark I leave on this planet, and recycling where I can. But yes I hate the protestors because the protestors that spend millions of dollars in lawyers and conducting court challenges are not environmentalists, they are paid actors by external companies who benefit heavily if Canada does not refine its own crude, smelt its own minerals, process our own lumber, etc. etc. And there are external companies funnelling millions of dollars to groups like David Suzuki foundation, Our Time, they even feed many indigenous groups money to fight projects.
TL;DR: I'm not against reasonable conversation about our heavy industry, and I'm not for raping our entire country for all it's resources, but I am against the for profit game being made of this industry and the fight to get projects approved/rejected.
