On the road Again 2013 A Brief Intermission #3/

No matter how closely one follows the news about the train wreck/crash in Lac-Megantic, it is difficult to imagine how absolutely horrendous the past week or so have been. And in the weeks to follow, long after the media have stopped reporting, the challenges will test and exhaust many of the residents' emotional and physical resources.

It was interesting to note how quickly the blame game started. The company that owns the train blames the engineer for not doing his job properly, and a former colleague of the engineer suggests that the company's decision to only have one staff on board may have led to the accident. The government and its various agencies are saying there will be a through investigation of the incident and it causes. They have, of course, promised new and tougher regulation to insure that such an incident never happens again, which would be a bit more believable if this was the first such accident. While all of the points need to be discussed and investigated, I wonder if anyone will ask the real questions.

Are freight trains the right way to transport such dangerous cargo and why? It doesn't really matter if the tracks are going to by-pass small towns (although that would be  good interim step) or if by law, there are going to be in the future two or more workers on the train or if an improved and perhaps automatic braking system gets installed. Another accident will happen. While the loss to life and personal property may be less, the environmental carnage might be even greater if an accident happened in a remote area. Again the question is do we need to  transport crude oil by train.

There are only three other obvious options. Send it by boat via the Panama Canal, ship it by tanker truck or build more pipelines. The first option is not only too expensive, but people who live along the coastline on both sides of the continent might have legitimate concerns as their environment. Trucking oil is also too expensive and while the spills are smaller, it is equally as dangerous. Which leaves us with pipe lines - which would make some sense except for the fact that their track record is not clear and therefore the risks appear to be fairly high that breaks in the line will occur.

There is another option. It is not a quick fix but it may be the only long term answer. Stop using oil. We live in a large country much of which gets damn cold in the winter. Canada can not be a viable entity if we are all forced to live either on the Gulf Islands or perhaps in the  southernmost parts of Ontario or the Praries. The nation can not exist if we live in only isolated communities. So we need to find some way to transport our goods and ourselves and to heat our homes. Not only is oil a limited resource that is not sustainable in the long run, its use will continue to pose an environmental risk.

Perhaps it is a fantasy - but maybe, just maybe the horrible incident at Lac Meganic will be a wake-up call to start thinking of the alternatives to oil.