Your (Regina Leader-Post’s) editorial rightly highlights the danger of transporting oil by rail. But the Energy East pipeline – which would transport 1.1 million barrels of oil per day past the growing Harbour Landing subdivision – is not safer.
According to U.S. data, rail incidents happened twice as often as pipeline spills from 2004 to 2012. But pipelines spilled three times as much crude oil as trains over that period. And the American Association of Railroads says rail transport spills 0.38 gallons of oil per million barrels moved, compared to 0.88 gallons for pipelines.
Rail versus pipeline is a choice between more frequent versus larger oil spills.
Investing in public transit, energy efficiency and renewable energy generates more jobs than pipeline and fossil-fuel development.
This is the future we must seek, not one in which we must pick our poison.
(Full comment can be found at Regina Leader-Post)
Maude Barlow is national chairperson of the Council of Canadians and author of numerous books including – “Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Fight for the Right to Water”
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