WWW.PGCITIZEN.CA | TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 201 1 inion EDITORIAL Bleak outlook for North Korea abundant. PUBLISHER: Hugh Nicholson MANAGING EDITOR: Sylvie Paillard ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Mick Kearns www.pgcitizen.ca Member of the B.C. Press Council A division of Glacier Ventures International Corp E-mail: letters@pgcitizen.ca. It’s hard for those of us in the West to fathom the emotional despair so evident on the thousands faces of North Koreans mourning for Kim Jong Il. News reports say more than five million Koreans have gathered at monuments and memorials in the capital city of Pyongyang since the country’s late ruler died last Monday. The mystery to us is threefold: partly because we reserve such heartfelt outpourings for the deaths of intimate friends and family, not political leaders, and also because to most of us, the “Dear Leader” was viewed as just another unpredictable, power-mad dictator who was undeserving of respect and adoration. We lump him in with the other dangerous and mad autocrats who have died in recent years -Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. They all had the cult of personality, something Kim Jong Il and his father before him, Kim Il Sung, spent their entire lives cultivating - a seemingly limitless power, they were leaders to be revered and feared. The same can’t be said for the Dear Leader’s successor, Kim Jong Un, in fact, little is known about mWhile the oldest son of highly liter- Kim Jong Il. The ate, North Korean, Cent.ral , News Agency has Korea's populace described him is cut off from the as a great person world, struggles dom of hra-ra, a description pre- to get enough viously used for food to eat (the his father and . grandfather. Uncountry is depen- fike other coundent on foreign tries like Libya supplies for at and , ,Iraq that didn’t have a suc- least one-fifth cessor groomed to of its 24 million immediately step into the previ-people) and hu- 0Us rukr’s ^ man rights abuses North Korea are reported faces more lim- ited options for evolution. While highly liter- ate, North Korea’s populace is cut off from the world, struggles to get enough food to eat (the country is dependent on foreign supplies for at least one-fifth of its 24 million people) and human rights abuses are reportedly rampant. At the same time, the country is one of the most militarized nations on the planet with an active nuclear weapons program. To us, the solutions are obvious - North Korea’s new leader should focus on improving its human rights record, scale back its weapons and military programs. Sadly, though, Kim Jong Un is such an unknown factor, experts are predicting he will take little action beyond the path his predecessors trod, focusing on keeping the country stable politically rather than improving the lives of those who rely on the course he charts for them. — Kamloops Daily News Pipeline spin doctoring at work This past week, Janet Holder, a British Columbian and the executive responsible for leading En-bridge’s Northern Gateway Project, wrote an open letter to British Columbians which appeared as a full page advertisement in the Citizen. It was brief and to the point - a well written letter such as you might expect from the person-in-charge although it is more likely that it was crafted by a public relations firm. In any case, it states: “We will help at every turn to listen and respond to your questions, or point you directly to places and people where you can engage in the conversation, whether in support or not. All we ask is that you do so with a sense of fair-minded investigation, civility and a thorough grasp of the issues, some straightforward, but many complex.” Wow. That is a mouthful. It is admirable that Enbridge will help at every turn but, of course, their purpose - and the purpose behind the letter - is to convince you and me that the pipeline is a good deal. That it should go ahead. Indeed, the whole letter is a bit like the instructions to a jury - you’ve hear the evidence now please take your time and deliberate thoroughly as you come to a conclusion - as long as you agree with us. I do think, though, that Enbridge really would like to have a complete and full conversation about the pipeline with the public. Partly because they know that we don’t really control the decision. It is in the hands of the environmental TODD WHITCOMBE review process. The Environmental Review Panel’s decision will hopefully be made on the basis of the submitted science along with the oral presentations made at public hearings by registered intervenors. Prince George has only one day of hearings set on January 18th, starting at 6 p.m. After all of the hearings, it will be the panel that recommends whether or not the pipeline should go forward. And then the politicians will act. The pipeline will not be put to a vote by the general public. It is not subject to a referendum. If it was then an open conversation about the pipeline might actually matter and Enbridge might not be willing to help at every turn with those opposed. In any case, the details of the pipeline and its benefits are slowly emerging. The Northern Gateway website is filling out with information. For example, under the Benefits to British Columbia tab there is a big graphic showing the overall benefits. The details, however, are in the fine print. I suspect that the P.R. firm in charge of the website is hoping that most people don’t get past the graphic. After all, it promises British Columbians a lot. Some 3000 construction and 560 long term jobs, $1.2 billion in tax revenue, and $830 million in regional supply contracts. Sounds good until you start reading the fine print. The $1.2 billion in tax revenue is the projected total over 30 years. That amounts to only $40 million per year. Far be it for me to sniff at $40 million dollars but in terms of the provincial budget, that is a drop in the hat and could easily be chewed up by a major accident along the pipeline. And the 560 long term jobs breaking down to 19 operational (long term) jobs in the interior and 15 in the northeast. Not exactly a boon to our local economy. As to spending $830 million for regional supplies, it does sound promising and should help some of our local business for a few years. But that is the rub. It is a very short term infusion of cash. Not a sustainable long term industry which this region needs. All of that said, Enbridge is being forthright in putting the information before the public. After all, it can’t hurt them as it is not the public’s decision that matters. There is one line in Ms. Holder’s letter that I find disturbing though. It says: “I invite you to engage in the conversation based on informed, knowledge-based opinions, which are grounded in balanced facts and realities.” What exactly is a balanced fact? South of the border that is code word for information that agrees with the perceptions of the Republican Party regardless of the facts at hand. Here? I suspect that it is an appeal to some sort of notion that some facts have more truthiness than others (to use Stephen Colbert’s contribution to the English language.) I would disagree. Facts aren’t balanced. Opinions are. And it is important to keep those distinct. In any case, it is an interesting P.R. exercise. It will be interesting to see what effect it has on the success of the Northern Gateway project. ■ MAILBOX: Your Letters Emergency means emergency Re: Dr. Mamdouh Shubair Letter to the Editor If your son had the greenish material coming for three days and given your background in medicine why did you not make an appointment with your family doctor or go to the walk in clinic? Emergency means just that emergency. And people like you are the ones that make the waiting time longer for those who have arrived because of an emergency. The 24th of Nov. was a Thursday thus making it Tuesday that your son became ill. Plenty of time to call your doctor. I was one of the folks that had an emergency ( twice ) went there and was seen immediately, treated with care and attention. Heather Spicer LETTERS WELCOME: The Prince George Citizen welcomes letters to the editor from our readers. Submission should be sent by e-mail to: letters@princegeorgecitizen.com. No attachments, please. They can also be faxed to 562-7453, or mailed to Box 5700, 150 Brunswick St., Prince George V2L 5K9. Maximum length is 400 words and writers are limited to one submission every three weeks. Good that Kyoto is a no-go One would think that climate alarmists would be happy that Canada is pulling out of the Kyoto Accord. After all, if you really believe it’s imperative that immediate action be taken to drastically cut world CO2 emissions, Kyoto is not the way to go. In fact, meeting Kyoto targets has a worse result that doing nothing; it increases emissions worldwide because most “cuts” merely involve transferring emissions (and wealth) to countries with no emission restrictions. That’s what Kyoto is really about - wealth transfer from the capitalist countries. Had Canada met its target, it would have resulted in a temperature cut of merely 75 millionths of one degree (using IPCC formula), an utter waste of money and effort. China’s emissions increase by the same amount every 45 days. To suggest it’s more important that Canada’s emissions must be cut than China’s because our per capita rate is high is ludicrous. If your goal is to lower temperature you must make huge cuts in the world volume, which means all nations must cut, especially China. The only reason an alarmist would cling to Kyoto is because his real purpose is politcal and economic. There is no real global warming threat, no urgency and the leadership of the climate change movement don’t believe it themselves. They and the organizations they belong to have some of the highest carbon footprints in the world. If they really believed what they preached they’d act like it instead of jetting all over the world to conference after conference. All their predictions have been wrong thus far and actual scientific data does not support them. Sea level rise? In August NASA reported that it was dropping. It’s known that it fluctuates; a mean sea level benchmark carved in stone in 1841 shows it was 35 cm higher than now. Melting permafrost will release methane? Most of the Holocene has been much warmer than now and it never happened before. CO2 levels fluctuate also. Ice cores indicate that CO2 levels at the beginning of the 20th century were the same as the mid 1980’s. A few years back Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark postulated that cosmic radiation affected cloud formation and temperatures. In August, CERN (the European organization for nuclear research) released findings that confirmed his theory, accounting for nearly all warming of the 20th century. It’s time we were realistic about climate. Art Betke Prince George