Hello, Deep Sky Labs and welcome to Innisfail.
I’m sure I can speak for many of our citizens who are pleased, if not excited, that you will be bringing your carbon removal technologies here and storage expertise to Alberta, in an effort to ward off the effects of the climate crisis. I look forward to your public engagement sessions Sept. 18 and 19.
And kudos to our town council and administration in their efforts to make this come to fruition.
However, you have likely heard of some noisy resistance to your project through the news, social media, and one rather rambunctious and abbreviated town council meeting. Though lacking any actual statistics, I’m certain the collective cynicism is from an extremely small, albeit loud minority.
At the meeting in August, one speaker melodramatically opined on the imminent doom of having an experimental test site with state-of-the-art (proven) technologies, in our town (while another from the gallery bellowed “Chernobyl!”).
It will be “toying with mother nature” and “playing with our air." The speaker seemed oblivious that it has been humans’ very “toying” of our atmosphere for two centuries that has necessitated this and many other efforts to lessen the CO2 levels in our air and oceans and fend off these very consequences. Ridiculous.
And speak of the devil, one of the convoy’s very own honkers, seeking renewed relevance (and applause and FB likes) was blaring from the gallery the tired refrain about taxpayers paying council’s salaries, how council doesn’t answer their questions, and how they have “sold their souls to the devil!” (though at press time it remains unclear what it was in exchange for).
It’s always prudent to ask questions about new projects, technology, and businesses coming to town, or about anything one’s government is doing - but honking obnoxiously and disrespectfully? It’s just so ridiculous.
The “arguments” have continued on local Facebook pages ad nauseum, with Biblical plague-like consequences prophesied if this technology be permitted to proliferate.
It just all sounds like a dormant protest awakening for a cause. Any cause. Sorry it had to be you, Deep Sky Labs.
Perhaps you can quell some of the faux-fear at your upcoming Q&A sessions. If not, you may need an extra removal module at your plant for the extraneous CO2 that’s being exhaled.
It seems so simple. Water is life-giving, but too much can kill. If you’re basement’s flooded, you want to pump it out. The atmosphere has far too much CO2. It’s getting worse and it’s killing us and life around us. Let’s pump some out. That’s not so ridiculous, is it?
Jim Carroll,
Innisfail
