I heard sighs of relief coming all the way from Olympia when Don Orange won the seat for District 1 port commissioner with almost 65 percent of the vote, primarily based on a promise to terminate the Vancouver Energy lease. Later I read in The Columbian that the opponents of the oil terminal were taking a victory lap, and I wondered why.
Will there be a decrease in oil trains coming through Vancouver? No, and you don’t need an oil port to have a derailment like the one at Mosier, Ore., this year.
Will worldwide oil use go down and prevent global warming? No, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects 2017 to be the highest worldwide-use year ever, at 98.21 million barrels per day, and 2018 use to increase to approximately 100 million barrels per day with a projected yearly increase of 3 percent every year thereafter.
So what was accomplished? By electing Orange we have overridden the state process set up to evaluate these projects, and saved Gov. Inslee from offending the environmental voters that he needs to get elected or losing the industry money he has to have for the same reason. Orange gets to be the goat.
