As a Flin Flonner, I worry about the growing influence of extreme environmentalists. You should, too.
Before we begin, let’s draw a clear distinction between extreme environmentalists (EEs) and rational environmentalists (REs).
There’s nothing wrong with REs. These folks care about clean air, safe water and sustainable fish and animal populations.
Thanks to REs, Canadians enjoy many level-headed protections that people in dirty, polluted parts of the world can only pray for.
REs also recognize that our modern lifestyle relies on gasoline, electricity and digging holes in the ground to extract the metals within.
In other words, REs acknowledge that if you left Mother Nature completely undisturbed, we’d be partying like it’s 1799 – or worse.
But EEs are a different breed. They resist virtually any project, no matter how routine, that might interfere with their rigid view of how “good people” treat the earth.
EEs are the sort who chain themselves to trees, annoy oil tankers with rubber dinghies and view a discarded chip bag on the sidewalk as proof positive we’ve reverted back to Sodom-and Gomorrah-style sin.
Like most extremists, EEs claim to be speaking for “the people.” Armed with this misguided notion, they are insufferable and hysterical (that’s in the “extreme, uncontrollable emotions” sense, not the “ha ha” sense).
EEs recently scored a coup when the White House nixed the proposed Keystone XL pipeline between western Canada and Texas. Because if there’s one thing EEs hate, it’s oil – though they’re not crazy about mining, either.
Which brings us back to our neck of the woods. You’ll recall that EEs tried valiantly to prevent Hudbay’s Reed Mine from opening between Flin Flon and Snow Lake.
They weren’t shy about declaring how Reed would poison water and wipe out caribou, even though government regulators with their fancy degrees said that simply wasn’t true.
Government regulators aren’t always right, of course. But surely to heavens they’re more trustworthy than folks who never seem to have anything better to do than to scream that you’ve got the blood of endangered three-humped Tibetan yaks on your hands because you flushed your toilet.
As it happened, Reed got the green light. The mine has supplied much-needed jobs to our region, and could potentially live beyond – hopefully far beyond – its initial five-year projection.
In the case of Reed, common sense won out over worst-case-scenario fears. Regulators and their political bosses disregarded the fanatical voices. This time.
But what about next time? At what point do the sort of EE-manufactured impediments stifling the oil sector begin to mar mining in a real way?
If there ever comes a tipping point at which politicians start buckling to EE demands to halt new mines, the consequences for our region could be devastating.
Fortunately, EE protests against the oil sector may backfire. If these folks succeed in lessening the supply of oil, thus jacking up the cost of living for all of us, then the real-life consequences of their actions would be laid bare.
If EEs succeed in making North America more dependent on foreign oil, wounding the economy and people’s livelihoods in the process, then those consequences become even more evident.
If that happens, the extreme environmentalist movement would likely die a natural death, its irrational, people-hating motives no longer a concern for anyone important.
Whenever Hudbay or some other company next proposes a mine in the Flin Flon region, you can bet EEs will do their thing and raise a stink.
At that point it will be up to the rest of us to declare that as long as mineral extraction is done safely and responsibly, we’re on board.
After all, mining is what we do – and irrational voices cannot be allowed to hijack that legacy.
Local Angle is published on Fridays.
