Willful blindness

The ENGOs don't care about safety or the environment but rather the fiscal draw of their campaign de jour, their lust for more state power, and de-industrialization. They rather enjoy Oil train derailments as I suspect that they are so deluded that they believe that they can make fossils so out of favour that their pixie dust alternatives will replace them. It's not that they're anti-pipeline, it's that they are anti-human, anti-civilization, anti-all industrial-scale energy. They are the enemies of civilization.

At least this one wasn't in the middle of a town.

Oil by rail because of inadequate pipeline capacity. Warren won't miss a few rail cars in the scheme of things.

I agree Lance, and it is unfortunate that pipelines will only be a viable option(to urban ignorance) once a major downtown core is annihilated.

The same eco-idiots that opppose pipelines for oil support bird and bat chopping windfturbines

That's Charlie Angus' riding. Let it burn.

I don't get what this means ...

so you won't hear the enviro-whackos calling for safer pipelines.

I thought the EWs want NO PIPELINES and no rail transport of oil either ... so what did I miss?

It's minus 30 in Timmins. Just cut the crude into blocks and bring it out of the bush on skidoos:)

Most metro-ecos in TO and other places probably have never seen the railroad tracks in the centre of the universe let alone watch a 100 car tanker train going through their habitat.

TO is so out of touch. Politics means "lets make the 40% of people happy that get you elected". Way more than 40% of Ontarians live in a relatively small geographic area. Unless you can make those 40% care (and they won't because people are stubborn and ignorant) then politicians won't care either.

Oil gets moved. It is either by train, truck, pipeline or ship. You can rule out ships and it would be an overall great thing for oil to be refined in the east. The oil is going to get there somehow and I would pick pipelines over rail any day. People have stong opinions about things that aren't close to them. For example, it's easy to make a villan out of a seal hunter because they are far away and don't affect city people; you can sabatoge that guy for your 'cause' and the red blood on white ice makes a good photo. Start going after people's SUV's, ability to purchase gas on any corner, imported food, commuting and traffic jams, online shopping and manufacturing in China (+shipping) which make merchandise cheap but not environmentally friendly, and especially bottled water and you will get more of a stale response from most urban people.

Sadly common sense environmental decisions are not made based on science, they are based on political influence. Global warming, pipelines, and other related issues have nothing to do with empirical science and decision making anymore, and everything to do with public perception (ignorance). It probably doesn't help though that the companies are motivated by the same thing as the politicians (in general). Money and power.

Just to offer a different point of view though, us northerners don't mind when southern dollars finally do trickle up and build a state of the art heath centre or education centre, medivac us via Ornge, pay for our policing and transportation routes. All you have to do is compare it to the northern part of a certain neighbouring province to realize that Ontario has some pretty good things going for it too. Not a fan of the Ontario liberals, but better them then the 'blank check policies' of the NDP. That being said, the NDP and liberals seem to be more and more aligned as time goes on and media(or society) continues to polarize issues.

Sorry for the long post. To sum it up I believe that environmental issues are really urban and globalization (urban to urban) issues. The urban people want to make it into a rural issue and I can't understand that at all based on facts.

It's their issue so they should deal with it internally, instead of imposing it on someone who lives out in the wilderness in the middle of nowhere.

Some of those comments in the article are pure comedy.