Editor’s note: Tim Nitz is the founder and owner of Burlington-based Panther Internet, a website builder. He has been communications manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
I have seen the coverage of the protests in Burlington last weekend, and I’d like to take the opportunity to provide background. I am a protester, business owner, father of two children and Burlington homeowner.
What did I protest?
• I protested the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Provincial Premiers.
Why did I protest?
• The Quebec government has unveiled its “Plan Nord,” which is set to industrialize 50 percent of the remaining wild lands of Quebec. This entails mining, timber harvesting and massive hydroelectric dam projects. The government has pretended to get permission for these plans from the Native Americans whose lands will be destroyed, but that is not the case. Many Native Americans are in Burlington right now to protest, as their hunting, fishing, and way of life will be eradicated with this plan.
• Hydro-Quebec already provides more than enough power for Quebec, and the new dam projects will simply be revenue rather than fulfilling the electrical needs of the province. The power will be sold to cities on the eastern U.S. seaboard. In other words, the people of Quebec will suffer the loss of their wilderness without any long-term benefit.
• The power lines to transmit this new power will likely go through Vermont and Maine and certainly New Hampshire. These are gigantic high-voltage transmission lines like the ones you see on the way to Montreal in Canada. They are a blight on the landscape and destroy views and property values, as well as causing cancer to those living nearby.
In general, I protested the mentality of “profits at any cost” that seems to have taken over the entire globe, which is responsible for the destruction of the middle class in the U.S., shipping well-paying jobs to countries with the weakest workers’ rights; the destruction of 30 percent of the world’s plant and animal species in the last few decades; climate change that is already wreaking havoc on our agriculture and water supplies, and countless other problems.
Again, remember that we in these states won’t be using this power — it will be destroying our landscape in order to power the big cities on the Eastern seaboard.
In addition, oil from Canadian tar sands — the dirty oil that Canada is producing — is set to be shipped to ports on the Eastern seaboard via pipelines through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The tar is much more toxic than oil, does not float on water and spills from the pipelines are very dangerous. This will not get us off of Mideast oil, as the Canadian oil will be exported.
For these reasons alone I am protesting the pipelines. But the bigger reason to protest is that if all the tar sands are developed as planned and then turned into gasoline and burned in our cars, we will accelerate global warming drastically, with catastrophic consequences for all of us.
In general, I protested the mentality of “profits at any cost” that seems to have taken over the entire globe, which is responsible for the destruction of the middle class in the U.S., shipping well-paying jobs to countries with the weakest workers’ rights; the destruction of 30 percent of the world’s plant and animal species in the last few decades; climate change that is already wreaking havoc on our agriculture and water supplies, and countless other problems. We are at a critical point in the history of the human race, and if we don’t protest the engine that is driving this destruction, we will be included in that list of disappearing species.
