Former Greenpeace President backs Trans Mountain pipe

Former Greenpeace president Patrick Moore believes Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline should move forward despite protests because he says it's in the best interest of the country.

Moore was among the early members of Greenpeace, but is now known for his opposing views, including support for the oilsands.

"I think people have been worked up about something that is very unlikely to be a big problem in the end," he told reporters this week, while speaking about protests opposing the pipeline last week on Burnaby Mountain.

Patrick Moore said it can be difficult to gain that support when people don't understand the broader economic implications of the project.

"I think there will always be people opposed to projects. People have been very much opposed to the whole Gateway project in the Lower Mainland of making transportation flow better to the ports, and they're opposed to the ports themselves," he said.

Moore recently wrote a book called "Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout" and is now the environment chair of the Frontier Centre of Public Policy, a Winnipeg-based think tank which says it promotes policy that will "help Canada's prairie region live up to its vast but unrealised economic potential."

Moore said moving oil out of Alberta and to international markets is in the economic interest of Canada.

"It's been put into a moral context now that fossil fuels are evil. They are not evil. They are 88% of all the energy that is underpinning civilization," he said.

Edited from various sources by Elizabeth Corner

Sources: CBC, Yahoo News Canada

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/business-news/02122014/former-greenpeace-president-backs-trans-mountain-pipe/