Dear editor,A month ago it was difficult to avoid the media frenzy regarding the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.It might serve us well to consider this maritime disaster as we contemplate the massive energy export projects currently proposed for our coastline: Enbridge鈥檚 Northern Gateway Pipeline, Raven and Compliance Coal, doubling the Kinder-Morgan pipeline to Vancouver and a huge coal port just south of the border at Cherry Point, Wash.It is good to have confidence in the technologies we create. For the most part our inventions do what they are supposed to do and serve us so reliably that we take them for granted.The Titanic sinking, however, poignantly illustrates the folly of believing in technology鈥檚 infallibility. The Titanic was built to be 鈥渦nsinkable鈥� and yet sink she did 鈥� on her maiden voyage.As with Titanic, all of the projects mentioned above are again being promised as virtually risk-free, their technologies proven beyond worry.While it is certain that our engineering abilities and legal safeguards are light years ahead of what they were a century ago, there are hundreds of miles of fouled coastline in Louisiana (and Alaska) echoing the name Titanic as if she had gone under yesterday.The loss of life on Titanic was so great because the ship only had enough lifeboats for a third of its passengers 鈥� the ship was, after all, unsinkable. One wonders not at the shortage of lifeboats but at the wastage of money and space on any lifeboats at all given the widespread acceptance that Titanic could not sink. (Perhaps some lifeboats were deemed necessary to assuage those few passengers backward-thinking enough to doubt the ship鈥檚 technological perfection.)What 鈥渓ifeboats鈥� are we going to have available if any of the above energy megaprojects strikes an iceberg? Once again, probably not enough, as the Louisiana oil spill continues to so horrifically exemplify.Ours is a truly magnificent coastline, blessed with seemingly endless fjords, estuaries, beaches and islands.It is true that we need jobs so we can afford to live here. But is our economic situation really so dire that we are willing to risk all these splendors for promises of technologies so advanced, so safe, so infallible that accidents simply cannot happen? If we are truly this desperate, full speed ahead and damn the icebergs, Mr. Harper! A century from now I鈥檓 sure the great-grandkids will understand.Ken Piercy,Comox
