Fellow readers,  

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip is a conscientious, hard-working leader, not just of indigenous people, but of the many people in Canada who understand what the climate scientists and the biologists have been telling us:  that our current overuse of oil, including its transportation, severely endangers the waters, the air and the land that provide for ourselves and our children.

Trudeau thinks he has to compromise.  But nature will not compromise.   Nature sets limits, and we are now well past any conceivably safe rate of using fossil fuels.  Tar sands is particularly destructive ecologically.  We are destroying species and ecosystems at an unprecedented rate.  Business as usual is killing the planet we know.  Indigenous leaders understand that.  It's time for the prime minister to understand it.

With respect,
Fred Bass, public health physician, scientist, father and grandfather