A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a book launch. Published by the Vancouver Observer, Extract: The Pipeline Wars Volume I Enbridge is a collection of writings that oppose the building of the Northern Gateway Pipeline on environmental grounds.
The event was to be held in the fashionable downtown Ceili's Irish Pub, but the venue was changed at the last moment because of a police incident in the area. I had planned to go by transit, but the other Ceili's location was not so accessible by transit.
Also, it had free parking. I changed my plans and drove. My writing friend Carrie Saxifrage was a contributor, and I wanted to turn out and hear her read.
Half the pub was reserved for the launch, and screens were set up around the room showing a series of beautiful slides of wild country and the animals that live there.
The half of the pub where the launch was not going on was occupied by pairs and groups of drinkers, many of whom were intent on a football game being broadcast on huge televisions that clashed with the silent salmon and grizzly bears on the other screens.
Between football footage, ads on these huge TVs promoted "Canada's Number One Pickup Truck," shown traveling through the forest with a Bobcat in tow. Now isn't that a wise use of fossil fuel?
On the other screens, the sponsors of the nature pictures were shown in tasteful small logos around the edge: LUSH, Spud, Hollyhock, Board of Change.
Contributors to the book rose gamely and read or spoke, but the only voice that was really audible on our side of the room was that of Tzeporah Berman. The others were mostly drowned out by the din of the packed pub.
The only refuge for the eardrums was the ladies' room. From there I could hear the speakers better than I could from our table, though it was quite near where they stood.
Like the football fans on the other side of the pub, the young of the green energy lobby were in one another's arms and also on their smart phones.
At the next break in the football game, TV commercials showed motorcycle races and blared out ads for oil-guzzling dirt bikes.
When I made my escape from the noise, this is what I was thinking. We may talk green, but we're all implicated. Enslaved by all those toys that require more and more energy. We're involved in a spiralling addiction to wasting oil that is planet wide.
What we are doing is insane. Building a pipeline to carry Alberta bitumen to the coast where we can waste more oil shipping it by tanker across the ocean to a distant continent where it will be used as fuel to make more stuff -- most of it unnecessary. That stuff will be shipped back over here to be sold, wasting still more oil.
It's beyond crazy. And it has to stop.
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