It is not hypocritical to use a form of transportation that causes carbon emissions in the course of seeking a reduction in carbon admissions, as Frank Piorkowski suggests in his attack Wednesday on Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May. This is a commonplace false argument used by supporters of wide-open bitumen extraction development and as such barely warrants a response.
Mr. Piorkowski, however, errs when he implies Ms. May is not concerned by coal extraction in B.C. and its export via Vancouver. Ms. May in fact describes a complete ban on coal as “critical” to solving our planetary climate crisis. Voters in her Saanich and the Islands riding, which is not in Vancouver, may elect her in spite of or because of her position on coal, but she is quite consistent and clear about what it is.
Mr. Piorkowski is also seriously in error when he states Ms. May flies back and forth between Vancouver (as noted, that’s not where her riding is) and Ottawa “without a glimmer of remorse.” Ms. May, in fact, consistently makes a practice of using the form of transportation with the lowest carbon emissions available, sometimes at considerable inconvenience to herself, to get to meetings she must attend.
On her recent tour of Alberta, for example, she chose the Red Arrow bus over an airplane to get from Calgary to Edmonton on the day of a heavy snowstorm because she had done the calculation and knew it had the lowest carbon footprint of any available method of transportation that still allowed her to attend the meetings on her tour.
Ms. May is well informed, she does the math, and she acts on it.
I am not, of course, suggesting Mr. Piorkowski is a hypocrite. I am sure he is quite sincere. He is merely misinformed. Your readers, however, deserve not to be.
David J. Climenhaga, St. Albert
