Oil Spill in Squamish, BC

[gideonlow]

Oil should be illegal, end of story. This kind of shit has to stop.

Gideon

[KiteKarl]

Oil should be illegal, end of story. This kind of shit has to stop.

Gideon

Do you own a car or do you bike your gear to your favorite spot?

[Another Toby]

Oil should be illegal, end of story. This kind of shit has to stop.

Gideon

But the worst of it is the stuff we can't see, except as the puple haze sitting over major cities.
Seen "I (heart) Huckabees" with the fireman dude that refuses to use oil and rides his bike to the fire?
I'm a hipocrite along with most of us, but I have put a few tanks of old vege oil through my truck.

Awful to see this spill, good luck to the clean up crew and to the innocent wildlife of Squamish.

[gideonlow]

Oil should be illegal, end of story. This kind of shit has to stop.

Gideon

Do you own a car or do you bike your gear to your favorite spot?

Yes, I own a (fairly efficient) car and produce more carbon emmisions than is reasonable. What burns me is that we, as a human race, are fully capable of weaning ourselves from oil through a large variety of alternative technologies. What burns me even more is that we will indeed eventually build all the technology and infrastructure to get all of our energy from solar, wind, geothermal, and some forms of nuclear power--it just wont happen until the carbon fuels start to really run out. Why? Because of political systems corrupted by entrenched interests! If regulations with teeth provided proper economic incentives and penalties based on true impact to the environment, then things would change for the better VERY quickly (my quote above is the frustrated extreme of this concept). Just think if the $600+ billion dollars spent on the Iraq war had been channelled into alternative energy projects and research instead of guns and Halliburton . . . It boggles the mind.

Alas, in my home country of the USA, we are the worst offenders of all. We can't even get our shit together to raise absurdly low fuel economy standards. I think I've been completely depressed about this since the swearing-in of our latest president in 2001--thank goodness I can still kitesurf in a pristine spot or I would probably lose my sanity. The folks in BC aren't so lucky .

Enough ranting.

Good winds and clean shores . . .

Gideon

[cglazier]

The realitiy of the oil spill is dawning on us now.

First of all it was a freighter (not an oil tanker) and it lost 60,000 liters of bunker oil fuel when it accidentally hit a piling while leaving the terminal. Our main kiteboarding and windsurfing site near Vancouver is now closed indefinitely ..at least a month probably ..which ruins our summer season.

Only a few of us got covered in oil thanks to Michele, our rescue craft staff on duty at the time. She drove the seadoo around telling everyone to get off the water quickly. There were maybe 20 kiters and windsurfers out at the time. Now she has no job and the same for teachers at the Skypilot kiteboarding school that operated nearby. There will be claims settlements I am sure, but basically half our summer kitebarding season is lost


Chris Glazier
Vancouver

[skypilot]

The first pictures of our beach have been posted:













Skypilot
http://www.skypilotkiteboarding.com

[KiteKarl]

Oil should be illegal, end of story. This kind of shit has to stop.

Gideon

Do you own a car or do you bike your gear to your favorite spot?

Yes, I own a (fairly efficient) car and produce more carbon emmisions than is reasonable. What burns me is that we, as a human race, are fully capable of weaning ourselves from oil through a large variety of alternative technologies. What burns me even more is that we will indeed eventually build all the technology and infrastructure to get all of our energy from solar, wind, geothermal, and some forms of nuclear power--it just wont happen until the carbon fuels start to really run out. Why? Because of political systems corrupted by entrenched interests! If regulations with teeth provided proper economic incentives and penalties based on true impact to the environment, then things would change for the better VERY quickly (my quote above is the frustrated extreme of this concept). Just think if the $600+ billion dollars spent on the Iraq war had been channelled into alternative energy projects and research instead of guns and Halliburton . . . It boggles the mind.

Alas, in my home country of the USA, we are the worst offenders of all. We can't even get our shit together to raise absurdly low fuel economy standards. I think I've been completely depressed about this since the swearing-in of our latest president in 2001--thank goodness I can still kitesurf in a pristine spot or I would probably lose my sanity. The folks in BC aren't so lucky .

Enough ranting.

Good winds and clean shores . . .

Gideon

So true and so sad.

[skypilot]

Here is a shot to show everyone what the Squamish Spit looks like on a epic day. Sandbar showing, great wind and killer shot of Diamond Head!



Skypilot

[Another Toby]

I've just seen footage of the oil spill in Lebanon, what a disaster!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5233358.stm

[skyte]

See if we all ran our cars on biodiesel, it biodegrades naturally withing 20 days or so... if you'd just experienced an vegetable oil slick, things would be a bit greesey for a few days and would then wash away.

There's bioethanol for petrol cars too... half of Brazilian cars run on this and formula1 cars run on ethanol.

Ask your local MP why biofuel is not high on the agenda. Ask why car manufacturers are not obliged to research how to run cars on biofuels... many are doing this now, but it's simple technology and has already been done.

The oil companies run our world and I believe there's a gas pump shoved a long way up Bush's ass.

Deepest regrets about Squamish, I'd heard a lot of great things about that spot. Best of luck with the cleanup and shafting those responsible for the spill.