Regular IN-SIGHTS reader Ken Holowanky wrote a letter to the Times Colonist in response to a diatribe by Gwyn Morgan, a man called “Shale Gas Baron” in The Tyee’s headline for a 2011 article by Andrew Nikiforuk. With the letter writer’s permission, I will repeat it. But first, a little about Gwyn Morgan.

He’s a retired gent struggling to get by on his almost $2 million a year pension. His last reported address is currently valued by BC Assessment Authority at $9 million. A piece published some time ago included this:

Nothing seems to upset Gwyn Morgan, the retired Canadian oil and gas CEO and fracking pioneer, more than public employees with pensions. Earlier this month, in his national newspaper column, Morgan fulminated against the expending of tax dollars on extravagant public-sector benefits.

Privatizing public services, he went on to suggest, just might free taxpayers from the scourge of public employee pensions that pay out defined benefits. Morgan himself just happens to enjoy a defined-benefit pension from the natural gas giant Encana that pays him $1.77 million a year. Canadian public employee pensions currently average $24,000 annually.

In his spare time, Morgan sits on the board of a major right-wing think tank that America’s Koch brothers help bankroll.

THE RELENTLESSLY HYPOCRITICAL GWYN MORGAN

Mr. Holowanky was responding to Morgan’s assertion that Canada, a nation of fewer than 40 million people, should eliminate carbon taxes and do little to address emissions. The excuse was that China, a nation with a population thirty-five times that of Canada, emits more greenhouse gases. Morgan was like a thief claiming no need for reform because someone else was committing a larger crime.

Morgan labelled federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault a fanatic, perhaps because the minister spent years before politics as a professional environmentalist working to save the planet.

What follows is Ken Holowanky’s cogent and comprehensive contribution to the Times Colonist:

Re: “Canada should call out China’s emissions charade,” column, Oct. 5.

Gwyn Morgan states China’s pollution levels are more than the rest of the world’s industrial nations combined. Morgan states that the NDP-backed Trudeau government is putting Canadian manufacturers at a disadvantage by way of the carbon taxes.

He says if we as consumers want to do our part to help with global emissions, we should be buying more North American made products.

I wholeheartedly agree, with some caveats.

The low cost of imported goods from China is not wholly because of carbon tax, or even lower labour costs (as we have been conditioned to believe.)

In most overseas countries where these goods come from, the machine shop that manufactures the products doesn’t need filtered ventilation for it’s workers and it can just dump the old lathe coolant out in the back 40.

Higher cost of our goods is not solely due to carbon tax. It is also due to proper application of common-sense health and environmental standards and the improper high cost of our industrial land base.

The federal NDP-Liberal government and the NDP provincial government are both adding to the unequally applied carbon tax issue by increasing the cost of our industrial land base.

Premier David Eby has created a property flipping bonanza for both domestic and foreign landowners by way of eliminating residential zoning.

Not only will workers be unable to have a bit of a backyard for their kids with room for a BBQ and garage for their tools, but the places they work at will lose land to condo developments.

Politicians do better personally by way of election donations from land assemblers that yield secured terms in office, than they do from supporting local manufacturers.

Eby has made living near one’s workplace possible only if one lives in a balcony-less condo tower, but ex-Premier Christy Clark is also to blame. She took a contingent of real estate “industry” representatives on a trade mission to China. I use the term “industry” loosely as it connotates adding value to goods. This could not be further from the truth.

My favoured first step to reduce emissions is to say to manufacturers (overseas or not), “If you can’ t build a washing machine or fridge that lasts 18 years (not 8) then you do not get any more steel or electricity. You wasted what you had.”