[sandworm101]

The actual drilling is not the real issue. The drills are indeed a negligible footprint. But every drilling site has a road. Every road has bridges. Then, should oil be pumped, pipelines and other support infrastructure. Surrounding all of this is then the local risk of spills, and the non-local implications of burning yet more oil. So to stop all that nasty stuff later, we need to stop the preliminary drilling today.

Canada is struggling with abandoned oil infrastructure, tar sand developments that companies do not want to clean up. (There was a recent supreme court case about this.) For all the pre-planning and taxation, everyone knows that some day in the future it will be the government saddled with cleanup costs.

[braythwayt]

I don't know why this is being downvoted. Agree or disagree, it's a reasonable contribution to the conversation. To me, downvotes are for bad-faith arguments, axe-grinding, comments that raise issues answered in TFA, and other things that worsen the quality of conversation.

[sandworm101]

People downvote things that make them angry. The closer one gets to an uncomfortable truth, the greater the anger.

I honestly think that the majority of downvotes on HN are from people silenced by the posting limit. Lacking the ability to respond in text, their only agency is to downvote. The calm and considerate people who read more and speak less don't hit that limit.

[marvindanig]

I don't know why you're being downvoted. I used to work in an oil and gas firm earlier. And I agree with everything that you have just said.