From time beyond memory, rivers and streams have created networks across this land. In recent centuries roads and rails have woven new networks crossing over, and sometimes under, these rivers and streams. Today, a whole new network is being created. It is a network of pipelines that will criss-cross nearly every province and territory. Perhaps you have heard of the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline in British Columbia, the Keystone XL line through Alberta and Saskatchewan extending into to the United States, the risky reversal of Line 9 from Sarnia eastward, or the proposed Energy East Pipeline project. The later will convert Trans -Canada’s 40 year old gas pipeline to an oil pipeline to carry diluted oil to ports in eastern Canada and beyond that to other countries. New pipelines are being considered to travel through parts of the three Prairie Provinces, southern Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. This proposed and already- partially- existing network will create a greater threat to our streams, rivers, lakes, underground aquifers, and oceans than anything previously developed. We need only to connect the dots to see this network. All of the earth community, including humans, are increasingly at risk.
- We, Sisters of St. Joseph, value the sacredness of creation in all its life-forms.
- We acknowledge our call to tend to creation with respect, love and honour.
- We recognize that every form of life offers its own unique gifts and vulnerability.
- We recognize our responsibility to protect water, land, plant, animal, and human life.
Despite promises of effective new technology for prevention and clean-up of spills or leaks, we believe that increased oil production and transportation threaten to pollute and destroy life. We call ourselves and others to connect the dots. Doing so will reveal the relationships between this network of pipelines, the consequent increased tar sands/oil sands development, increased global carbon emissions and more rapid and potentially destructive climate change.
We live in a society that values personal material profit and benefits over the common good and over the principles of equality and the sacredness of life. As a society we do not know or acknowledge when enough is enough. Neither do we recognize the reality of limitations to the earth’s physical resources. We accept behaviour that ignores the needs of future generations and dismiss the incredible, irreversible extinction of life currently occurring.
When will we have the wisdom and courage to really connect the dots, to limit our use of oil and oil-based products, to recognize ‘enough’?
Priscilla Solomon CSJ
Federation Ecology Committee