vancouver a perry perfect city with a quick glance but looking deeper will reveal some hidden secrets and our class uncovered a few in the form of a podcast. With my group we focus on the enviorment, you would think that with vancouver would make sure that the envirment was protected but sadly this is not true because of the constrution of the kinder morgan pipeline. Which is in the podcast below.
But we dont think that our podcast will reach far enough to make a diffence. So we wrote to our MP Terry Beach.
Dear Mr. Beech,
Did you know that the Kinder Morgan pipeline will double the amount of oil, that will be shipped from Alberta to Vancouver? It is the only pipeline system in North America that transports both crude oil and refined products to the West Coast. The Kinder Morgan pipeline is also a rising issue in Vancouver. If the oil that is being transported by ships out of the harbour spills, it would have a large toll on Vancouver’s communities. To improve and prepare for this issue, we need reassurance that community members health care will be covered if an oil spill affects their health.
If the oil that is spilled catches on fire and evaporates into the air, it can be cancerous to surrounding residents. Those that would be affected by the oil would be around 647,540, including citizens working in the Metro Vancouver port. It would be very unfair to all residents of the affected community to pay for potential check ups and treatment. For this reason I think that it would be only fair to increase funding for health care of all residents. A regular checkup would be around $40. If everybody got a checkup it would be around 25.9 million. Now say that 25% of those patients (161,885) where diagnosed with cancer, as a city we would then need approximately $4,856,550,000 every two months to cover chemotherapy fees. For an individual this would cost approximately $30,000 every year. Once again it would be very unfair to families with not enough money to cover all these fees just for a mistake they had no part in. The chances of the oil affecting us if it spills are also very high because many oils such as bitumen, benzene and crude oil that are being used have been proven by many to be very unsafe. The American Medical Forensic specialists have studied the effects of crude oil on humans and have come to the conclusion that it is very dangerous for many reasons. A few long term effects are central nervous system problems, blood damage, kidney damage, liver damage and an risk of cancer.
A while ago we interviewed someone who is a part of the North Shore Nope (NSN). The NSN is a local activist group, which are against the Kinder Morgan pipeline. A member told us about an event that happened to her husband a few years ago. Her husband and four other firefighters were exposed to diluted bitumen. Only a few months later, four out of the five firefighters died, from the fumes they had inhaled. This was a devastating event but you think this is bad? Imagine having the fumes from 189,000 litres of diluted bitumen in the air. Community members nearby will be affected, especially since each home won’t have proper equipment to keep us safe. This just shows how poisonous and harmful bitumen is. Imagine if it was in the air you breath, over time being exposed to these fumes could lead to death, just like what happened to the firefighters. Right now the air quality is at a three (out of ten), which is extremely low. This could all change from one spill. The healthy Vancouver that we know today could become the opposite.
We truly believe that the reassurance of community members health care will be covered if an oil spill affects their health. This will also show that Kinder Morgan truly cares about the residents of Vancouver.
After this project was completed we made a behind the scenes video.
This project hade a lot of steps to get to this point we when to the museum of vancouver we used this as a chance to get exposer to a lot of problems that have occured in vancouver a to pick a subject to do it on. Everyone in my group was intersend in the problem protaning to the enviorment. We ended up picking the problem of the kinder morgan pipeline. This was most likly do to the fact that in the recent years all of use where in a way forced to make a opion on the pipeline because it was going to effect use the most. At the begining i was agaist the pipeline and still after I have that opinion. This project only ended up reneforcing it.
To make the podcast we hade to right a script first with took a will. We ended up wrighting for five hours in a starbucks than later scraping the script. If I where to do this project again I would take more brakes to read what was preveusly writen to make sure that it soulds like how we planed.
With the letter we each wrote our own letter then we got the best parts from each one and made a know final one.
This project help me learn about a subject that I preveusly didnt know much about and it tought me the process of making a good podcast and help me with interving skill.
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