Raising cultural chauvinism brings on a green backlash

Ng Weng Hoong writes that Canada’s elite are right to push ahead with the expansion of the oilsands and fracked-gas LNG industry but does not even mention climate or ocean acidification [“Cultural chauvinism poses economic risk”, September 18-25]. Ng seems to imply that soft climate denial is an Asian value and that ordinary Canadians are being racist for not wanting to cook the planet. But people in Asian countries including Bangladesh, the Philippines, and China are already experiencing the devastating effects of the climate crisis and are leading the global fight for climate justice.

Opposing the insanity of fossil-fuel expansion is just the right thing to do. Ask Yeb Sano, lead climate negotiator for the Philippines, or anyone who lost family members in Typhoon Haiyan.

> Eric Doherty / Vancouver

Disappointingly, there is little in Ng’s account of Canada’s ostensible desperate “need” for a ceaselessly accelerating influx of international capital that Christy Clark would disagree with. In making the case for Clark’s “ambitious” pipeline agenda, whose “promising start” he applauds, he regurgitates the bromide that local resistance is deeply bound up with racist attitudes towards Asia’s growing influence and even, preposterously, goes so far as to credit pipeline projects with bolstering First Nations’ voices in the public sphere.

Ng’s model of economic health conveniently overlooks two variables that are near and dear to many Canadians, including a great many indigenous and Asian Canadians. First, the project to turn British Columbia into a pipeline megacentre is rife with environmental perils that no amount of economic growth could ever ameliorate. Ng gives extremely short shrift to our reasons to distrust Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, and Petronas, as well as the provincial and federal governments.

Secondly, while Ng figures the economy as a voracious maw that desperately needs to fill an ever-growing (but, curiously, always empty) belly, many genuinely empty-bellied British Columbians see more benefit in creating local jobs, engineering tax policies that don’t asymmetrically benefit wealthy individuals and corporations (whatever their place of origin), and taking seriously our stewardship of precious ecosystems that companies like Petronas have no investment in protecting.

> Dan Adleman / Vancouver

Comments

2 Comments

Bruce

Sep 30, 2014 at 8:05pm

Keep in mind that Ng Weng Hoong is an "energy industry" (fossil fuel) journalist and consultant.

Dan

Oct 6, 2014 at 11:34pm

That's evident in every word of his article. I don't really understand why The Straight would publish such a manipulative fake anti-racism piece.